Having been in business for years and like many other business professionals, I have to attend a fair share of meetings. At many of these, I’d be meeting someone for the first time. Of course, we’d greet one another and exchange business cards, and at the end of a day of several such meetings, I’d have collected between five-20 business cards.
Now some unfortunate soul (usually myself) would have to deal with typing out the names, job titles, emails, phone numbers, etc. from each card and saving it to our CRM. Oh, and then occasionally, there would be conferences and networking events I’d have to attend. My work bag would need a separate compartment for all the business cards received.
So being a sucker for efficiency, I searched for tools which would solve this niggling problem. There were a handful of apps which using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology scans printed cards to grab the contact data automatically. Problem solved, right? No.
Only some of the scanned data would be accurate and then I’d still have to copy and paste the data into my CRM. So essentially, only part of the problem was being partially solved. Not good.
As a result of recent restrictions on physical mobility and more regional and international business, remote meetings are here to stay. Fewer cards to collect then! Yes, but we still have to manually copy and save names, phone numbers, emails, etc. into a CRM or contact list.
It’s time to fix this
Being a designer and entrepreneur my entire career, my natural instinct is to come up with new and innovative ways to tackle challenges in the best possible manner. And given that this challenge continued to hinder me personally, I decided to investigate.
Why has no one successfully fixed this problem? Well, none of the attempts had really and thoroughly addressed the complete needs which businesses and business people have in this process.
When I analysed the deeper issues at hand, I realised that it wasn’t simply about making business cards fully digital. Nor just about facilitating easier contact data exchange.
It is much more about data integrity and automating the storage of that data centrally. And this would then contribute to the necessary digital transformation for every company.
Is it the biggest problem we encounter? No, but it’s one which everyone who takes meetings has. And on a daily basis. And this made it clear to me that this seemingly small problem invariably aggregates to being a very big one begging for the proper fix.
The journey required exploring the fundamental values which contact data provide as an asset for both individual business people as well as to the companies who employ them. Then it required creating and refining the product such that the user experience would be as seamless as possible.
Also Read: Succeeding as a technical founder with Dave Shanley
But building a great product is only part a of creating a business. The key is to create practical and viable strategies to market and scale the company with a revenue model which the market would accept and embrace.
No easy feat, I assure you. But having grown various businesses over the years, the process, whilst challenging, was something I was confident of handling.
A complete solution to bring efficiency
This is what gave birth to my company, Shake. Shake is a contact data exchange and management app platform which truly digitises the business card and makes for seamless data distribution and collection. More importantly, the platform addresses a variety of needs and problems which businesses and business people likely didn’t even realise they have.
And the benefits are real and tangible. By fully digitising contact data, the process of exchanging and saving this data is made far more simply, which clearly increases productivity. Because the data is in the cloud, the data integrity is never outdated.
Furthermore, with many people and companies placing more priority on CSR and environmental concerns, Shake promotes a greener carbon footprint for sustainability contributions whilst reducing measurable costs.
Of course, we ensure that the data privacy is optimised not only for individual users but also for companies to save and access this data automatically.
Having already signed up close to 100 companies not only in Asia but also in Europe, the Americas and even the Middle East, our ultimate goal is to solve the problem with contact data, for business people and companies, throughout the world.
Aside from our team injecting our own cash into the business, we’ve had the fortune of securing angel investment from a number of quality investors. As we are continuing to grow our sales team and presence, we’re also continuing to fundraise.
So, we welcome every business person to try Shake and soon, your bag and your desk will be free of the clutter of business cards. More importantly, you’ll have added an integral step to your and your company’s digital transformation journey.
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