AppAssessor

Free Business Card Scanner for Salesforce [In-Depth Review]

By Andreea Doroftei

How many times has your sales team sat down immediately after exchanging business cards to input the data into Salesforce? Probably very few!

Scan to Salesforce makes the process of entering business card data into Salesforce simple. Your team can add contact details and notes, and upload the contact data into Salesforce before misplacing the business card.

An image of the business card itself will always be attached to the Salesforce record, meaning that you never lose valuable information that might have been scribbled down during the conversation.

This in-depth review will dive into Scan to Salesforce’s features, ideal use cases, setup effort, and how this app could be a great addition to your Salesforce org.

https://youtu.be/K4J3SGH8dVU

Features

Scan to Salesforce focuses on data accuracy, achieving a 99% rate. While your team is saving time on data entry, your Salesforce data quality is not compromised.

By combining the capabilities of both OCR and AI, data can be read and digitized in 16 different languages – including non-Roman character sets such as Japanese, Chinese, and Arabic.

What’s more, is that you can make use of all the below features for free. Developed by Sansan, Inc., their team continuously makes improvements to the managed package, with frequent releases.

Mobile Experience

Nowadays there’s rarely a situation where our smartphone is out of reach. Therefore, it makes sense that creating the Salesforce record with all the information after a business meeting should happen in seconds, directly from the mobile device.

The Scan to Salesforce Mobile App is available to both Android and iOS users and once the AppExchange package is installed in the Salesforce org as well, we can get to scanning!

Business Card Scanning for Salesforce

If you have physical business cards or digital (including email signatures), Scan to Salesforce lets you scan, digitize, and upload the data into Salesforce in no time.

The app can process as many as 4 business cards at once, regardless of their type or what they have written on them.

Once the cards are recognized, the records can be accessed and edited, to either correct the data if needed or add more – such as a picture of the back of the business card.

While handwritten annotations cannot be transcribed directly into fields, a picture of the card will be saved as a file after transferring it to a Lead or a Contact, so no information is lost.

Another way to get your data into Salesforce if the physical business card is not an option, is to upload saved card images and email signatures. This can be done using the Library Upload function, highlighted below and selecting the desired picture.

For example, a business card snip as well as an email signature can easily be cropped to include only the necessary data, and then it’s ready to be imported into Salesforce, one picture being the equivalent of one scanned record.

Notes and Data Corrections

Notes can be added to each record, which will ultimately sync to the Description field on the Lead or Contact. In case there is any extra data to be added or changed versus what’s captured from the business card or email signature, the information can be edited in the queue prior to the upload to Salesforce.

With the help of the high OCR quality and address validation feature, most Leads/Contacts fields can be filled in properly and automatically.

After the desired information is logged, the data can be uploaded to Salesforce as a custom object (“SSCard”) record, in a matter of seconds.

Within the Scan to Salesforce mobile app settings, you can choose the language, enable Name and Address normalization (which ensures capitalization where it should be), and add any context to the upload, such as the time and location of the scan into the Description field.

The End User guide contains step by step instructions to get your users up and running quickly.

Aura Components

Scan to Salesforce can be added as a tab on the Salesforce navigation bar, or it can be accessed via the App Launcher, once the correct user permissions are in place. These views are part of the Aura Component Bundle.

The tab home page displays records of the SSCard object created by the current user, but it can also display all the records which the users has access to according to the sharing settings.

Mass Actions

Within the Admin Settings, you can specify if business cards should be transferred to both Leads and Contacts, or only one of them.

Users can transfer the cards to either Leads and Contacts, and also set an owner for them. Once at least one card is transferred as a Lead, the “Display Report” button becomes available as a way to overview all Leads created by Scan to Salesforce (the available report for created records can also be switched between Leads or Contacts).

If your app settings have been set to create Contact records (instead of Leads), then Scan to Salesforce attempts to match the “Company Name” with an existing Account record in your Salesforce org.

When no match is found (like in the example below), the user can opt to create a new Account, or choose an existing one to relate the Contact to, similar to how the native Lead conversion process works in Salesforce.

Set Predefined Field Values

Scan to Salesforce works with both Standard as well as Custom fields, and predefined values can be input for any.

In the example below, I’ve decided to have a predefined Lead Source of “Scan to Salesforce” for all the Leads transferred from scanned business cards. The value had to be created as a picklist value first, and then it became available to choose in the Scan to Salesforce Lead Settings page.

Use Cases

Sales

Sales reps interact with a large number of prospects on a daily basis, which can turn into a tedious task when it comes to ensuring these prospects can be found in your Salesforce instance.

Be it a business card or the email signature of a prospect such as the one below, Scan to Salesforce ensures that the least amount of time is spent manually inputting data in your CRM.

Marketing

As marketing efforts are often tracked in Salesforce using Campaigns, there is a possibility to directly assign either the Leads or Contacts created from the scanned business cards as Campaign Members.

For those teams leveraging Pardot for their nurture efforts, Sansan does provide an easy to follow guide on how to leverage Pardot Scenarios as part of this business card scanning process as well.

Admin

Since the scanned business cards will be created in Salesforce as records of the SSCard__c custom object, the System Admin will have peace of mind that this data is being uploaded in the correct format to maintain data quality and clean reporting. This is better than having users transferring the scanned business cards to Leads and Contacts by themselves.

Fixed values defined for records created from Scan to Salesforce can of course be used in Lead Assignment rules as well, hence removing the need to set an owner manually.

Impact

Scan to Salesforce by Sansan is sure to streamline the Lead/Contact creation process following a prospect meeting or trade show event, allowing sales reps and marketing to focus on the meaningful follow-up conversations rather than data input.

Setup

As you might already know, neither a managed package nor a mobile app takes more than a few minutes to install. Both an admin and user permission set are available as part of the package, lowering the time to configure even more.

You can benefit from the entire Scan to Salesforce functionality as soon as the installation is done; the initial setup process being as easy as it gets.

Sansan does also provide a comprehensive Admin Guide and an Admin Quick Start video tutorial which will help with a smooth implementation.

Support

The FAQ button is always available on the page to easily access the Scan to Salesforce knowledge base, where you can also submit a support request from. A YouTube channel offers tutorials and tips. Email support is also available during business hours.

Pricing

Both the Scan to Salesforce Salesforce app and the partner mobile app for iOS or Android are available for free with full functionality!

Summary

Time spent on data entry should be dramatically reduced and Scan to Salesforce has the potential to become one of your best allies to achieve just that.

Since there is no cost involved, it’s certainly worth giving it a try by downloading the AppExchange package and the Scan to Salesforce Mobile App.

The Author

Andreea Doroftei

Andreea is a Salesforce Technical Instructor at Salesforce Ben. She is an 18x certified Salesforce Professional with a passion for User Experience and Automation. 

Comments:

    Irina
    October 20, 2021 3:48 pm
    Hi there, our Lead Assignment Rule does not fire when creating Leads with the ScanToSalesforce-App. So I think this is a mistake in your blog entry! The Add-In is not able to do that. Best Irina
    Andreea D
    January 31, 2022 10:26 pm
    Hello Irina, Thank you for going through the post, and apologies for the delay in getting back to you on this. At the time when I wrote the post, I have tested the exact scenario mentioned - "Fixed values defined for records created from Scan to Salesforce can of course be used in Lead Assignment rules as well, hence removing the need to set an owner manually". Within the Scan to Salesforce App, you can find the Admin settings by clicking on the wrench and that's where you can map the Lead fields. That wouldn't mean the app itself has anything to do with the assignment rules, but it would be simply using the values generated by the Scan to Salesforce App (or any other integration tbh) on Lead fields. My particular test was based on the standard Lead Source field - I have chosen the fixed value Scan to Salesforce (previously created as a picklist value) and I made sure to have an active assignment rule containing a rule with that criteria. Luckily, I still have access to the org the package is in, tested my assignment rule once again and it does work as expected. When it comes to troubleshooting the assignment rules not firing, there might be that the assignment rules conflicting between them, maybe the values don't match, maybe there's custom code preventing them from firing, maybe the box wasn't checked etc.
    Olaf
    February 28, 2024 6:40 am
    Hi Andreea, Scan to Salesforce is bought by SanSan and will terminate soon (May '24). I tried to find free alternatives, however was not successful. Do you know of any alternatives in the market? Thanks, Olaf
    Sille
    April 03, 2024 1:03 pm
    Hi Olaf, I'm searching for the same as you. Did you find any relevant alternatives?

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