Case study 1 : How Mercedes Benz optimised lead management through Bric APP

Mercedes Benz had a typical problem, they had multiple branches with each branch operating as a sales & service hub but had in-consistent new car sales though the walk - in traffic indicated otherwise..

They realised that though a business card is collected from almost every walk-in customer, the data never reaches the head office for driving engagement through marketing activities or sales tracking as they did not have a practise of scanning business cards. The branches that had an one off business card scanner were never used owing to the hassle of scanning and editing cards.Hence the lost opportunity. 

The marketing team got in touch with Bric APP's sales team which immediately chalked out a plan.They scanned business cards into PDF sheets which were accumulated for a life time and collated branch wise. They then used Bric APP's bulkscan service to scan business cards from the PDF sheets into customer data which were accessible on Bric APP's web dashboard.These cards were then synced to salesforce within seconds from the Web dashboard.

Incrementally all the front desk & sales personnel were equipped with Bric enterprise APP and started scanning every business card from a walk-in customer or prospect which immediately gets tagged to the respective branches and the head office.Every day the head office personnel can get real time updates on no of walk-ins / business cards scanned and the notes captured on them. And this data flows into Salesforce as well..

The sales team were also able to export business cards to Outlook and organize business cards in a much more efficient manner.

Mercedes Benz were so satisfied with the solution that they featured BricAPP in their annual newsletter.

Bric APP is not just being used as a business card scanner but also as a comprehensive business card management solution.

Check out Bric APP for clearing your business card clutter !

Business card scanner machines - Do they really solve the problem ?

Scenario 1 : large organization with a distributed salesforce and heavy influx of business cards which are suppoused to get scanned weekly through the office card scanner, but the Math doesn't add up ..   WHY ?

Scenario 2 : The sales team has returned from a trade fair with a large stack of cards and a tearing hurry to email the clients, and a card scanner is purchased.What seemed like 500 cards seems to return just 500 cards . .WHY ?

Scenario 3 : Katie the temp manages the office card scanner and each person has to wait their turn and be nice to Katie till she scans the cards of Senior Mgt and then obliges . .  But the wait is indefinite . . WHY ?

So Why does a card scanner fail in each scenario ? Lets find out.

Accuracy : The card scanners use a technology called OCR and no matter how accurate or evolved the software can be, it can never read all the cards accurately. 

This is because the layout, style of font, back ground colour varies from business card to card and there is never a standard template.

Human intervention : Due to the reason above, every card needs to be reviewed before it is saved. An email ID or name that gets mis-spelled can become redundant data and so the reviewer ends up spending time on all the cards scanned.

Time : Despite all the ergonomics, the average engagement with a card takes about 2.20 minutes from inserting the card, conversion and the review.

To scan 100 cards, it takes about 3 man hours, something that makes the user lose interest quickly

Portability : Cards are received at events, trade fairs, meetings etc. In each instance the sales person has to wait till they come back to office to scan the cards. 

Most of the business card scanners need to be connected to a PC with a software installed for it to function optimally.This is another major setback for quickly converting cards to contacts.

Cloud back up & Integrations : While some of the card scanners do offer integrations off late, most of the card scanners predominantly focus on reading cards and converting it to an excel.

The user has to download CSV files from here and upload to to other CRM software or contact folders.

Wear & tear : Like any other machine, the card scanner is subject to wear and tear too, though this may not be a major deterrent from an overall perspective, it does have a shelf life that can't be fixed.

So if a business card scanner machine is not effective, what is the solution ?

Bric APP is an one stop solution to all of the above, whether you want to scan cards one by one or multiple cards together as bulk.

Bric APP uses human transcription to accurately convert the cards and minimises the need to review data and at the same time facilitates quick scanning of all the cards.

 The cards will get processed at our back end and get updated back to the mobile & web APP within a few minutes.

Bric APP exports data to Salesforce, MS Outlook, Zoho, Hubspot and Google contacts as well as an Excel CSV.

Bric APP's bulk scan service facilitates users to send multiple images of business cards grouped together as a JPG or PDF file and we will crop and process these images as single records.

The cards can be scanned from a flat bed scanner or from a mobile phone grouping multiple cards together.

This service is ideal if you have accumulated 100s' of cards over a period of time or from a trade fair and scanning them one by one on the mobile APP can be laborious.

Bric APP is available on Android & IOS with a personal version and an enterprise version available for sales teams to scan business cards into a master directory of the company. 

         Bric APP scanning is accurate, fast and great value for money  . .  . 

Bric APP for IOS - Releasing shortly

            The much-awaited business card scanner APP for 2018

   Bric business card scanner for IOS is finally completing closed beta testing and should be available on the APP store by mid-February. A big thanks to all our early subscribers and customers who paid in advance for the patience.

What to expect in the first version :

   The business card scanner will work slightly different from the Android version, we have done away with the OCR option as we found no value in that as all our active Android users use the transcription option. The card scanner will hence have a single camera interface to capture pictures.

   The business card organizer feature helps sort all the contacts according to name, company or recent scans and helps to sync data to the iPhone address book and Google contacts. Scanning business cards to Salesforce and Office 365 will be available in the next version.

  You can also export business cards as excel either from the mobile APP or the web dashboard as CSV or Xls files, this is an easy fix to upload cards to other CRM or contact folders.

  Users can use the notes option to capture important information about the cardholder and also use this as a tag to search contacts.

  The IOS APP is also backed with a web interface and the scanned business cards can be accessed from both the APP & the web interface.

  The other options like Call / SMS / Email from the APP, bulk export & sync options are all part of this release. The scanned business cards can be shared with colleagues & friends as URL / VCF files through SMS & Email.

Why Bric APP for IOS ?

   If you are looking for a business card scanner that has an accuracy of  ~ 99%, fast scanning and transcription charges as low as 7 ¢ per card, then look no further than Bric APP. All you need to do is scan business cards continuously till you exhaust your stack and forget about it. The scanned business cards will get accurately transcribed and updated back to the contact folders with a cloud back up.

                   Sign up to avail 100 cards of free transcription

All About Bric APP

Owing to numerous queries on what we do and how different are we from the rest of the Business card scanner APPS, Card readers etc, we are putting together everything in a blog 

Intro Video

Card scanning & Accuracy :

The most important aspect of a business card scanner is accuracy, which an OCR ( optical character recognition scanner ) can never be, which means each card has to be checked by the user & edited wherever required. Imagine a scenario where you return back from a trade fair with 250 cards... Nightmare? 

Bric APP uses a combination OCR, AI & human intervention to turn out 99% accuracy in data capture. Hence it makes the process faster than a pure play transcription service with the same accuracy.
The service is competitively priced at a price range of 8 ¢ to 12 ¢ per card depending on the subscription which is almost 1/3 rd the price of the Industry average. Some of the vintage players charge around 30 ¢ per card.

Another very interesting card scan service is the Bric bulkscan service. Read the blog to know how you can get 100's of cards converted in no time.

Data Export & Sync :
The next important use case for a business card scanner App is to get the scanned data onto other folders.

Bric APP syncs the data to Phone book, Google Contacts, MS Outlook,  Salesforce and soon into other CRM like Hubspot, Zoho, freshsales, Zapier and so on. The data can also be exported as a CSV or XLS file and updated to other software.

The Important differentiator here is, there is no cap on no of exports syncs per day/week etc like most Scanning APPS. It's unlimited and has a simple interface to select & push multiple cards to multiple folders.

Sharing Cards :
Saved cards can be easily shared with colleagues APP to APP, APP to Mobile or APP to Email. The sharing does not require the recipient to have the APP, it can just be shared as a URL / VCF file through SMS or email. The contacts can directly sync into their contact folder.

Web account :
Bric APP also has a web interface from where scanned cards can be viewed, downloaded as CSV / XLS files. The upcoming features are integrations to other CRM from the web, data edits and uploading image files for transcription. A web interface gives a larger screen interface to engage with the data.

Sharing Personal Cards :
While this is still not an evolved feature in Bric APP and there is a lot of work to go into this like creating a personal card etc, Bric APP still enables users to scan their cards and share it as a URL / VCF file, similar to how contacts can be shared. It updates everyone as and when the card is updated

Bric APP has three versions, a freemium, Pro & an enterprise version, whereby the first two are for individuals and the third is best suited for corporates.

Check out Bric API for developers to integrate card scanning for their software / CRM

Bric API - Business card scanner API

Pass card images and get accurate results in Json

Most CRM / ERP software requires inputting customer/vendor details into the software and a major source of this data are business cards. Anything that involves manual input is a pain and in turn, results in lesser data entering the system and potential opportunity losses on account of that.

The CRM software in turn services lesser data resulting in a possible revenue loss for the provider. The solution to this would be to provide a feature to scan business card data directly into the CRM or ERP software, however, the provider may not have the bandwidth or feasibility to build a card scanner just for this functionality and here is where Bric API helps

Bric API is a simple yet powerful card scanner API to pass images of business cards and receive accurately transcribed data in JSON format. Bric differs from other card scanner APIs' by using a combination of back-end OCR & human transcription to return accurate data at a reasonably fast turnaround time.As part of the service offering, Bric will not record or store any of the client data that is transcribed on its server and data is erased once it is returned back.

Bric API is ideal for CRM / ERP / in-house customised CRM that has a need to extract business card data onto its system. The client has to ensure there is an interface either to capture images from the device camera or pass scanned images from any other source and Bric will do the rest.

If you are looking for a card scanner API that is accurate, fast, Secure & at the most competitive rates in the market, Do check out Bric API and sign up for a free trial!

Check out the Bric APP for teams and professionals . . .

Bric Enterprise - Customised Business Card Management Software

Business card scanners / APPS are an important tool for most organizations to effectively manage customer contacts, leads etc.The requirement may vary from one company to the other however the common practice is either to purchase a business card scanner machine which has its own limitations or purchase Business card scanner APPs through a subscription model.

The disadvantage of a subscription model is that it lacks flexibility or customisations which may be a critical requirement for mid-size/large enterprises.The other disadvantage is the fact that the data resides on the service provider's server which may be a point of concern for some organizations if their internal policies' or the jurisdictions in which they operate do not permit that.

Bric Enterprise is a perfect solution for the above, where the entire business card management software which includes a Mobile APP, Web-APP & a transcription dashboard is customised according to the organization's needs and hosted on the company's server or on a private cloud.The solution works exactly like the Bric Business version with integrations to Salesforce, Office 365, Google etc along with other customisations if any.

Bric Enterprise is a one-time software purchase with AMC arrangements and covers all incremental updates for a defined period.

Sign up on Bric Enterprise to enquire & get your own customised software. 

Bric bulk scan - Fastest way to scan 100s' of business cards

             Easy Conversion of  business cards to contacts 

Capturing business cards one by one on a card scanner APP or a business card scanner machine can be a laborious activity if you are left with heaps of business cards and when that keeps piling up with each trade fair/exhibition.

Bric APP's bulk scan service digitizes business cards scanned as PDF sheets / JPG images into accurate data.

You can scan biz cards ( multiple cards ) from a flatbed scanner and send them across as PDF files, we will crop, process and transcribe the data into individual records accurately.

These records are securely backed up and can be accessed on both PC & mobile APP. You can export business cards as Excel CSV, sync cards to salesforce, Outlook, Zoho, Hubspot as well as Google contacts. 

The bulk scan service can also be used to scan cards from different branches etc with a different account and a master database.

You can also scan incremental cards from the enterprise version of the APP

We have helped companies scan from 500 cards to 9000 cards through our service.

                Sign up now 

Bric Web App - Accessing your card directory online

                          Bric Web App - Accessing your card directory online

                                             

It's great to have business cards saved on mobile Apps like Bric App, accessed on the go etc but what if you need to access and engage with contacts from a larger screen real estate, have a team review or search, sort, type notes and quickly download CSV / Xls files on to desktop?

Bric Web App is the solution. Bric has a web interface from which you can access all the cards scanned on the mobile App. The web app enables users to view, search, sort & download files as CSV or Xls formats. The option to print label will also be rolled out shortly.

                                                   

       The Geo tags option plots the contacts on a map with contact details mapped on to the pin which helps marketers to identify & explore sales opportunities.

Bric Enterprise Admin portal :

Bric Enterprise App has an admin access to all the business cards scanned by all the users/sales teams in the company. It also populates data on date & time stamps of the scanned cards, user wise card scanning activity and so on which is used by a lot of existing companies for sales tracking.

know more @ www.business.bricapp.com

                              Get Bric App! Stay Productive ...
     



     

Scan Business cards to Outlook in seconds . .

Ever juggled with the misery of collecting business cards & typing them into your Outlook account? 

Look no further, with Bric APP business card scanner you can scan business cards into your account in seconds and can also be rest assured that accurate data is synced to your account...

                                    How it works?                                

Bric APP combines a powerful OCR backed by human validation to digitize business cards and turnaround results quickly.The results are 99.9% accurate and minimizes the need to check each data unlike a traditional business card reader.The user can configure their Outlook account with Bric APP ( through a secure Microsoft interface ) and all the scanned cards can automatically sync into their Outlook account or can manually select & push only specific cards.

Bric APP integrates to Office 365 / Corporate Exchange and other Microsoft accounts like live.com, hotmail.com, Msn.com etc. Bric APP also integrates with Google accounts, phone book, Salesforce with options to Export cards as a CSV file as well as a web interface to access the account.

               Get Bric APP  ... Secure your contacts. .Stay productive!

                             Know more at www.bricapp.com.                                    

Syncing Business card data to Salesforce . .

Industry estimates hardly 30% of business cards received, enter into Salesforce, why ??

Salesforce is one of the most Popularly used CRM and has evolved over years into a robust tool for customer management. However, like any other CRM, the success of the solution is derived from the amount of data that goes into the CRM and this where the pain point arises.

Business cards are the most common source of customer data and updating this data onto Salesforce is a major road block as it takes at least 3 minutes to capture all relevant information from the card.Imagine a scenario where a sales person accumulates 50 cards and that translates to 2.5 hours of data entry work.It is because of this reason that sales people shy away from capturing data on Salesforce and either update few cards or postpone it to another day.

Bric APP  Solves this problem with just a 10-second engagement with the APP by facilitating direct sync of business cards scanned on to a Salesforce account instantly.The user just needs to login to their Salesforce account through Bric APP, set their Sync preferences to the respective account or leads and set it.The user can either set auto sync of each card scanned or manually select & sync specific cards to their SF Account.

Bric APP commits to a 99.9% data accuracy of business cards through its optional back end human transcription and also syncs data to Google, Phone-book, MS Outlook along with a web dashboard.

Get the Android APP now!!

Bric Enterprise is the corporate version for teams with all the features as above along with a centralized master repository of cards with admin access.

  Each business card is a potential customer, Secure it with Bric!

    

                   visit us @ www.business.bricapp.com

How Bric APP topped its search category on Google play ahead of Microsoft & others

How do you make an app rise above million other apps? How to make it appear in the top 10 searches of its product category? And how do you make it go viral?

These are some of the points that an app developer mulls over even before writing the first code. If this is a large company, then they end up spending enormous amount of marketing dollars on Google ,FB Ads and even incentivized campaigns to get the app on top.

What if you don’t have that kind of marketing budget but still want to get on top?

Well, Bric got to the second position and still features within the top 6 places on four search criteria' without any of the above and sharing some insights.

1. Awesome product: MVP is now MAP (most awesome product), a sub optimal product will lead to uninstalls which in turn will affect the app ranking

2. Reviews & ratings: Try and reach out to as many users to rate your app, a happy user will provide a good rating which in turn will help the overall app rating. This is a key factor to rank higher.

3.Reviews of users: Pay attention to what users comment on the review section and respond at the earliest. A lot of our users have revised an adverse rating purely basis our response time and sorting out the issue quickly

4. App metadata: While this is secondary, but it is important to have a better conversion rate from the no of visitors visiting your app. app Icon, description, graphic image and screenshots influence the install of the app and you have to continuously keep testing to hit the right note

5.Bug fixes & updates: Do look out for app crashes, bugs in each release and try to fix them ASAP. These limits usage and influences uninstalls which in turn pushes the app ranking down

These are largely the factors that we stuck to and got Bric on top. However by nature of the product, we were also able to build a lot of stickiness by ensuring the user has compelling reasons to manage business cards from Bric.

We built what the users wanted and noticed immediate spikes in usage whether as a business card scanner, contact management app or as a tool to share cards.

The traction on Bric also led us to a lot of installs on Bric Enterprise, which is a cloud-based contact management APP for enterprises to manage business cards sourced by the sales teams.

Hope this article was of use to you and would be keen to know your feedback /comments.

The Power of Networking

An important aspect of a successful career is the ability to meet people and leverage the contact to good use. Most of the jobs at senior levels are swung more through contacts than through head hunting firms. Contacts also lead people to new customers, partnerships and play a critical role in the success of that Individual.

So what is networking?

Anything from striking a conversation with a cab driver to a stranger in the elevator falls under the ambit of networking. Some people are naturally good at opening a conversation with anyone at any scenario while some might have inhibitions breaking ice or even may not be too keen in participating in a conversation initiated by others.

Tips on Networking:

1)   A friendly smile is a good start at getting to know people we meet every day like neighbours, Co-commuters on public transport, Building lifts etc

2)   Make it a point to meet and self introduce as many people as possible in trade fairs, conferences, etc as the whole agenda there by itself is to meet people

3)   The smile can soon convert to a hello followed by a self introduction and an intro line like “ Hi, I see that we have been travelling the same route and I am Mark & work with….  Or live in….“

4)   If there is an opportunity to cross paths with an important person you always wanted to meet, make sure to read up enough about that person and quote areas that they would appreciate to hear about them or their company during the conversation

5)   Actively exchange business cards & make it a point to store these business cards in a manner that it can be easily accessed at any point of time. Bric app is a great tool to quickly exchange and store business cards in such instances

6)   Once a contact is established, make it a point to stay in touch by quickly sending them a “nice meeting you “email and keep refreshing memories with periodic pleasantries and festive greetings

Hope this article was of use to people who wish to polish their networking skills and more to follow in the blogs to come