TOKYO: Businesses helping members of society exchange business cards through digital technology are starting to spread in Japan, in response to the novel coronavirus crisis.

With corporate sales activities shifting to video conferences, services offered by such companies allow people to hold meetings and negotiate business deals online after exchanging greetings with potential business clients, no matter where they are.

The paperless business cards, however, are relatively unknown and businesses still need to improve the cards’ user-friendliness, to help establish a new lifestyle of limiting interpersonal contact.

Teleconferencing systems have been in wider use among sales representatives and other workers at companies, as more and more people are working from home.

In June, Sansan Inc., a major business card management service company, started a new service for corporations in which people send a URL link of their digital business cards to potential clients they met online if they want to know which department the potential clients belong to and their positions.

If the people receiving the URL link use the service, both sides can successfully exchange business cards with a click of a mouse.

Even people who are not service users can still exchange digital business cards if they are sent the URL link via a message function during a videoconference and take a picture of their own business card after scanning a quick response, or QR, code on their smartphones.

According to Sansan, half of some 6,000 corporate clients are service users.

“In many online meetings, (people) either do not know what positions the participants hold or fail to gather customer information,” an official at Sansan said, adding that the new service has received positive feedback.

“Business cards are an important communication (tool) with clients,” said Atsushi Tsukamoto, head of a team promoting the digitization of business processes at Sumitomo Mitsui Trust Bank, a corporate client of Sansan.

“We’d also like to use (Sansan’s service) in our non-face-to-face sales activities,” Tsukamoto added.

Japan’s industry ministry joined the service in July.

With other companies starting their own digital business card services, such cards are spreading in the public and private sectors.

Some service users, however, have experienced difficulty in explaining how to exchange digital business cards to clients who are unfamiliar with information technology, such as smaller companies.

Noting that it will still take time for the exchange of digital business cards to be known widely, Kazuhiro Fukunaga, deputy marketing manager at Sansan, said, “We will work on improving (the service’s) usability as our highest priority.”

JIJI Press