The stream of consciousness ramblings of a young entrepreneur…

So I have a challenge I’ve been dealing with for some years now and I’ve yet to decide on the most cost/time-efficient solution.  As you’re probably aware, there are a number of options out there.  From an old school rolodex to a new school card scanner, there’s an option for you if you want lo-tech or hi-tech.

Personally, I don’t want to spend $250 on a good card scanner (referenced below) and at the same time - I won’t deal with piles of rubber-banded cards around with post-it notes on them.  The post-its act as a sort of rudimentary tagging system.  Tagging is something I cry for every night after scouring through business cards.  The ability to easily tag business cards with certain info (such as notes from the discussion and where I met them) would make life tremendously easier.  I really wish there was a card management solution which integrated tagging to the digitizing method.  I’m sure many others have this desire as well, especially anyone who spends time in sales or networking.  Moving on though, let’s take a look at just a few of the existing options out there.

1. Rubber-Banded Piles –>  Everyone’s familiar with this method.  When you collect business cards, group them up and rubber band them together for later review.  The strength  for this method is primarily in that it is setup for easy grouping.  You can group based on company, name, where you met them, etc…  The shortfalls of rubber-banding are numerous…  There’s no easy way to search through a stack of 50 cards, the cards get damaged & worn (I’m somewhat particular about things like this…), there’s no duplication ability, it’s hard to keep notes about specific contacts, etc.

 

2. Add to Address Book –>  Another common answer is to add all of the cards to your Address Book (in my case Outlook & Thunderbird via Plaxo).  The method you get them there is up to you whether it’s a card scan or a high school student paid minimum wage a couple hours a week…whatever your fancy!  The strength is that you have the contact information digital and portable.  It’s easily duplcated.  You can also take notes inside of your address book.  The downside is you end up with thousands of contacts in your address book; most of which you’ll never need.  My Blackberry also syncs with my email address book - can you imagine syncing 3000 contacts in to a Blackberry!?  This brings me to the next half point…

 

3. (Really more of a 2.5) Enter high priority into Address Book –>  Ok, so this is obviously the next evolution/potential resolution to the problem presented in #2.  My response to that is:  “Excellent!  I now have the contacts I think will be important - what about if I’m not my stack of cards and need someone’s contact information that I didn’t think would be a priority?”

 

4. CardScan CardScan CardScan!  –> Alright, so I’ve heard this one more times than I can stand.  I don’t want to spend $250 on a CardScan Executive v8 (the Personal edition doesn’t scan in color).  I have a feeling I’m not going to have much choice, but I’m holding out as long as possible.  The CardScan option poses a LOT of benefits, duplication is easy, transportation is easy, quick scanning and it doesn’t HAVE to be included in Outlook.  The downside in my opinion is that I still don’t have access to all of my contact information if I want it on my Blackberry.  It does provide the digital records but not the mobile records.

 

5. Throw Away! –>  I’ll skip this one and merely say, I’m a packrat.  Plain and simple - I’ve tried many times to rectify this - but I’ve experienced far too many situations with contact information where I realize I need someone’s information from a few years back.  Simply put, this solution doesn’t truly solve my problem on a large scale.

 

My end-all solution is to have a ASP-model CRM solution with a separate client/server based-application that runs on my Blackberry that I can use to sync the CRM data with my local machine, my laptop and my Blackberry and have it still remain separate from my primary contact database.  Ideally it would have an option to link to sync certain information with my PIM, such as calender appointments and individual contacts I choose.  I’ve yet to find a software suite or CRM tool that provides that capability. I believe that, when combined with the CardScan method would provide nearly the ultimate solution.

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