How to Deal with a Pile of Business Cards

Do you recognize this situation? Have you faced the chaos of business cards? I understand you... When I had accumulated more than three hundred business cards on my desk, it occurred to me that I needed to take action. This problem is particularly relevant when you need to find a specific business card in this pile, or when someone from your contacts calls, and you have no idea who they are or where they're from. So, I'll tell you how I solved this problem, and perhaps it will be useful to someone.

Stage 1: Digitizing Business Cards

First, of course, I tried manually entering data from the business cards into Google Contacts, but I quickly realized that it would take "not just a week." So I started looking for a way to scan business cards in bulk.

Here, it's important to consider a few basic rules: scan vertical business cards vertically, and horizontal ones horizontally. It's also recommended to scan them at the highest resolution and in color to reduce the chance of errors. In the end, I ended up with about 40 scans in A4 format, with 8 business cards in each. After successfully scanning the business cards, they needed to be recognized. There are many programs available for this purpose.

Stage 2: Managing Contacts

Now, the most interesting stage. Managing a large number of contacts is quite challenging, so it would be great to have a convenient manager for finding and cataloging them, as well as a tool for merging contacts with profiles on social networks, obtaining photos, and the latest updates.

Stage 3: Using Contacts on Your Smartphone

And finally, on your smartphone (because that's where you're most likely to need contacts), it's convenient to use an application that maximally utilizes all the information about your contacts. The best option here would be to create a digital business card that will always be at hand and won't get lost.