ScanBizCards is a Feature-rich App for Scanning Business Cards & Managing Contacts
by Toni McQuilken
Dec 16, 2011 9:17 AM –
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ScanBizCards Biz Card Reader. The only business card reader offering BOTH the choice to scan cards in seconds right on your phone – or submit instead for 100% accurate manual transcription! The only business card reader with cloud backup & sync across multiple Android and iOS devices + web-based access to cards from any browser.
Price: Free, $3.99
Tested on: Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1
Content Rating: Everyone
Pros & Cons:
Pros
- Very full-featured business card app.
- You can manually scan and check cards, or pay for a transcription service to do it for you.
- It imports directly into the phone’s address book or a growing variety of business contact managers.
- You can connect to the person on LinkedIn directly through the app.
- Has a Web-sync subscription option for additional backup and syncing features.
Cons
- There is so much there, it can take a bit to find it all.
- Requires manual intervention in areas where we feel is unnecessary.
- The free version really is just a test to see if it works, since the limitations make it impractical for even light use.
Features:
ScanBizCards is a very, very full-featured app for scanning, saving and storing contact information from business cards. You can check out the huge list on the company’s website, but I’ll be focusing on the few I thing are the most important here.
First of all, it is nice to have a variety of ways to get the information into the app. You can take a picture of it with your device’s camera – and it does support double-sided cards which is a nice bonus – you can use a card image saved to your device’s memory, or you can use a flatbed scanner to do multiple cards at a time, which is uploaded to the Web interface and then synced with the app. This requires the additional Web sync subscription service, but it is an option. For this test, I used a sample card the company itself had up specifically for this purpose so I wouldn’t be posting anyone’s business card who might not appreciate having it live.
Importing the card was very simple – once you choose your method of input, it will pull in the image and automatically do its best to match up the information to defined parameters, such as name, phone number, etc. I found it did a pretty decent job, but it wasn’t perfect; the extension on the contact was a long one, and instead of listing it as an extension, the app tried to make it into a second phone number. However, it is very easy to go in and edit the information, at the same time adding any notes or custom fields you might want to include with the card. One thing I didn’t like was that any characters, such as ampersands or small icons came through as random letters in the transcription, which just added to the information that had to be cleaned up before adding to the address book. One feature I really did like is that at the bottom of the edit screen, you’ll see a list of all the information the app ignored, so you don’t have to figure out if anything you need is missing, you can see what the app thought was superfluous and make the decision to continue to ignore it, or add it to a field. While editing, you see an image of the card at the top of the page, so it is very easy to see what belongs where, and double check the information.
If you have a lot of cards, or you don’t want to go through each card yourself checking for accuracy, the company does offer a transcription service, at $0.18 per card. The developer is guaranteeing 100% accuracy on any cards they transcribe for you.
Once you have the card scanned and edited, you can choose to save it to your phone’s address book, or export it to either Jigsaw (data backup) or Salesforce (sales lead tool). You can also choose to connect on LinkedIn, and the app will create an invite form for that site using the email on the card.
One thing of note, this app requires manual intervention in areas where we feel is unnecessary. For example, once a card is scanned you have to manually crop the edges, this should be automatically done as we see in competitor apps like CamCard.
The free version is really more for a quick test than even light usage. You can scan as many cards as you want, but you can only save two per week in the free version; you can only have one custom folder for sorting the cards in the app versus as many as you would like in the premium; you can add information via email signatures instead of cards only in the premium; and the export to Salesforce and the ability to connect on LinkedIn are premium-only features. The extra features aren’t as big of a deal not to have unless they are something you’re specifically looking for, but the limitation on card saves is a big drawback that pretty much insures you’ll need the paid version to do much of anything with the app.
Watch on Mobile
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ScanBizCards Main
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ScanBizCards Working
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Scan BizCards Card Scan
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ScanBizCards Card Info
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ScanBizCards Card Actions
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ScanBizCards Edit
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ScanBizCards Web Sync
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ScanBizCards Double Sided
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ScanBizCards Suggestions
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ScanBizcards Ignored
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ScanBizCards Help
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ScanBizCards Options
Usefulness:
If you have a stack of business cards you’d love to get into your address book, this is an extremely useful app (definitely a networker’s dream). I only touched on some of the features here, so this app definitely has something for everyone when it comes to ways to import the information, and then sort and use it.
Ease of Use:
I found it to be fairly easy to use the app for straight importing information in and making the edits myself. When I started looking around the app, all the extras and things you can do with it start to get a bit overwhelming unless you’re willing to spend some time getting to know what they do. And some, like the links to Salesforce, are only useful if you actually use that program as well.
As the manual editing of information is a perk within the app, sometimes this can be its Achilles heel as you may want to automate most of this tedium versus manually fiddling with data. But… I guess that’s where ScanBizCards’ paid transcription service comes in.
Frequently Used:
You’ll use this app every time you attend an event where someone (or multiple someones) hands you a business card.
Interface:
This is the one place I felt the app fell down a bit, sadly. When you first start the app, you get one look and feel. When you’re scanning and editing a card, you get another, and then there’s a third for the section of links to the FAQ, help desk, etc. I wish the developer would unify these three areas, so it feels like one experience, rather than feeling a bit like you’re using three different apps.
Tags:
Android App,
Android Apps,
Android Tablet Apps,
AndroidTapp.com App Review,
Business Card,
Business Card Reader,
Business Card Scanner,
Contact Management,
Networking App,
ScanBizCards
Categorised in: Business, Tools
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