While we were still in stealth mode building a great contact management product, we realized that the humble business card is not dead yet. We wanted to build a comprehensive product that provides users with a one-stop shop for contact management. The three main pillars of the solution are:
- Here are few screens from the
redesigned ScanBizCards Business Card iOS appConsolidating and cleaning the contacts in one place - Providing the most up to date contact information – no more stale contacts in your address book
- Synchronizing clean, complete and up-to-date contacts back to the users’ preferred applications
Initially we concentrated on integration with all the popular digital repositories of contact information like LinkedIn, Outlook, Gmail, etc. However, as we surveyed our early beta users we discovered that printed business cards were still a significant source of new contact information. If we wanted to offer a truly comprehensive contact management solution, we were going to have to provide a means for inputting printed business cards.
Mobile business card scanners are some of the most popular business applications. These apps come in two flavors. The first type are those that use transcription based services, where the user takes a picture of the business card and then a human being transcribes the information into digital format, such as Card Munch (owned by LinkedIn) and Full Contact’s Card Reader. The second type incorporates Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology to automatically digitize and index the information directly from the image. We decided that our users would require access to both capabilities.
While we were exploring the options to build, buy or license, we were humbled with how difficult it is to build an OCR engine. Licensing wasn’t cost effective, as some of the known OCR engines were charging $2/download, which is a hard cost to justify in a mainly free app. We looked at the companies with the most popular mobile business scanners and realized that a small company based in New York City called ScanBizCards would be the best candidate for the following reasons:
- Best in category OCR
- ScanBizCards focused on business users
- With over 2 million users using the app, they were consistently in the Top 10 Paid Business Apps
- The team at ScanBizCards was not only technically gifted, but our goals were aligned to provide the best contacts management solution to professionals
After few discussions with Patrick and Danny (the Co-Founders), we realized that ScanBizCards was a perfect fit in terms of vision, personnel and software. CircleBack recently completed the acquisition and integrated the core business card scanning technology in the CircleBack product.
ScanBizCards will continue to function as an independent app. The combined development team released an Enterprise Version of ScanBizCards for Salesforce late last year. In addition, we are excited to share that the teams have been working tirelessly on a new version of the application with a much improved design that will be released in the Google and Apple stores very soon.
We are very excited and look forward to bringing awesome products to our users.
View Comments (28)
Hi!
Congratulations on your new endeavor. It is always nice to have the entire contacts in one place.. This is a big commitment not only y the user's side but also by the provider's.. Obtaining the entire contact information of the readers/ users has already a financial benefit!.. while asking even for the " web syncro" a fee, may not be seen as fair by the users. moreover, there are also other providers similar to that of your services..
thus, in order to have a "boom" effect since the "launch", you need to let your services for free..
kind regards,
Guven
Hi Guven,
Thanks for your comment!
The WebSync service is part of the ScanBizCards app for free. There is no additional fee for the functionality in the CircleBack app or CircleBack Web products. I hope this clarifies things!
Hi Ryan,
You are correct in saying websynch was free, but my pro account has the service disabled and as well i cant synch with evernote. I'm afraid to delete the app and try reinstalling it since i am not confident that my data is in the cloud.
Hi Fred,
Your account was indeed expired. Please try logging in again on the app or online and you should see that you have had your access extended for quite some time. Please let me know if you have any further trouble.
Hi I had purchased this program and had some cards in storage. I upgraded my telephone and was unable to find or recover the few cards that I had in. Can you find record of my purchase of the upgrade and how do I get it on my new telephone?
Hi Barry,
Thanks for your inquiry. Since you purchased the ScanBizCards app, (I'm assuming for iPhone) Apple iTunes keeps a record of it in the cloud. On your iPhone:
1. Tap the App Store icon from your Home screen.
2. Tap Updates (bottom, right corner of the app).
3. Tap Purchased (top of the app).
4. Scroll down and find the ScanBizCards app and click the Cloud Download symbol.
The app should install to your device after you enter your Apple ID password.
That's it!
Hi, after scanning a card I cannot fill up correctly so exist only the pic I made.
I'm sorry to hear you are experiencing a problem. Would you be able to send us a photo of the card? I'll have our engineers take a look at it.
It appears with one of the more recent updates that you are no longer able to edit the picture of the card that you have taken. Now all my new cards have the border of whatever I took the picture on (it table, desk, ext) i would really like this functionality added back to the app as it makes it looks clunky and unpolished. Thanks!
Paul
We really appreciate your feedback, Paul. I'll let the ScanBizCard developers know your thoughts!
The previous version is much better and I realise missed the ability to edit the information (usually need some adjustment). In addition, Paul is right as this version does not allow us to crop the card to the right size. Very frustrated on this. Please advise on when previous features will be brought back.
@Wilson Just wanted to let you know cropping should be available this week in the next update. We're just waiting for Apple to approve the new version at this point.
I bought ScanBizCards Premium which used to work on my HTC One, however it does not work now. Each time, I wanted to open the program, it said ScanBizCards has stopped. Do you know how to restore my App ?
Richard Sun
Hi Richard: Please send an email with your problem to help@circleback.com. Our support team will then be able to get in touch with you to find a solution for your HTC One. Take care! -Ryan
Hello !!!!! I LOVE ScanBizCards !!!!!!!!!!! My hats are off to the company !!!! at the top of my app it says in a yellow marker "PRO" on it. So I am assuming i bought the Pro Version. The problem I am having is that it will not tel me create a new account to websync. It also says I have to pay for this service. I thought earlier in these posts it was stated it was free. I was just curious if someone can help me create an account so I can sync my cards. You have done a great job. Dont stop making it greater:)
Shirley
Hi Shirley,
Your account was extended and made free. Sorry for the confusion. Thanks for your support and please don't hesitate to reach back out!
Hello! I'm in need of assistance with the 'sync' portion. I have/purchased and am good through 2033 :)
Thanks in advance
Hi Linda,
Please shoot us a message to help@circleback.com and our support staff will be able to help you out straightaway.
Thanks!
I love ScanBizCards and have shared with many friends that have also begun using your product. Looking forward to bigger and better things now with CircleBack. I have decided to leave Outlook and work straight from Google and would love to have my contacts sync directly my Google contacts. So many programs sync with Google...it would make life much better for many.
Is that is the works and any idea when something like that might happen?
Dawn
Hi Dawn,
Thank you for the feedback. We are trying to always add new features to our product and this is definitely on our to-do list. For now, if you follow the instructions here for syncing your contacts from google to your address book, you should find your scanned cards getting synced to google after you save them to your phones address book.
https://support.google.com/mail/answer/3008051
In addition check out our new app CircleBack, found on our homepage https://www.circleback.com . This will be able to sync your networks just like you want and still scan business cards. We are in an active beta program right now, so any feedback would be much appreciated!
Thanks!
Hi ,
I would like my daughter who now works with me in the family business to share all my contacts .How can we do this please guide.I dont paying a little extra for this just dont want her to have to go through scanning the thousand plus cards I have already in my contacts.
Thanks
Urooj
Karachi
Pakistan
PS love your app !! Just keep it simple as it is !!
Hi Urooj,
The easiest method to achieve this is to use our free WebSync Account. On the homescreen of the ScanBizCards app you'll see a WebSync backup section at the bottom of the screen. Please create a free account, and then have your daughter log-in to the same account on her phone. She can then have access to all the cards you've scanned and can then add them to her address book. Please contact support if you have any issues at help@circleback.com
Thanks!
I updated the app on my iphone - OS 6 & post update of the software I am unable to use the app. on tapping on the take picture icon the app shuts down!
Hi,
Please note we have deprecated support for iOS6 as of our last update. Currently we only support iOS7+ due to the structural changes iOS8 necessitated in the app. Very sorry for the inconvenience!