Singapore, June 4, 2020 – Sansan Inc. (Sansan), a Japanese provider of cloud-based contact management solutions for corporations, today announced that it is adding a virtual business card exchange function to its suite of offerings and introducing ‘Sansan Virtual Cards’.
Sansan’s IPO on the Tokyo Stock Exchange was Japan’s biggest IPO of 2019 and it seeks to continue its strong momentum as well as retain customer and investor confidence, in the year ahead.
In these times when remote and online work has become commonplace, due to the coronavirus pandemic, the leading technology startup from Japan displays nimbleness as it launches new innovations.
While this new workstyle has led to people working from anywhere, there is still no established method for exchanging business cards online.
A business card exchange opens a communication pathway to a potential business partner and new opportunities. Aspiring to retain this experience in the age of remote and online work, Sansan has launched ‘Sansan Virtual Cards’.
This function will be integrated into the virtual meeting platforms to make it easier for people who are meeting virtually to exchange contacts.
As employees work remotely and meet new people virtually on different platforms, it becomes even more difficult for the companies to funnel all these new connections and maintain one central database of contacts.
These companies will now, still be able to maintain, a holistic database of contacts, driving up overall efficiencies.
Key customers who will be onboarded into this function include Ngee Ann Polytechnic, SuperSteam, and CEO Asia from Singapore, PT. Affirmate Bisnis Nusantara, and OS Selnajaya from Indonesia and Global Partners Consulting, ISI-Dentsu of America, Inc. amongst others, from across the globe.
“The launch of Sansan Virtual Cards is a key strategic milestone for us as we seek to strengthen our regional footprint. We are introducing the service to our existing customers and have already brought up to 1000 customers globally on to the new function in the first phase, who are exchanging business cards virtually, given the current remote work situation,” says Edward Senju, Regional CEO, Sansan. “The initial response has been immensely positive, and we are innovating this new technology to better integrate with lifestyles and workstyles of people. We expect to see this open up new business opportunities for us in the future.”
Sansan’s mission is to turn encounters into innovation as it continues to do so in the advent of the pandemic induced global shifts, that the world is experiencing.
The new function enables the company to help its customers navigate these shifts and sell more effectively.
A simple process to exchange virtual cards during online meetings
The digital business card function enables Sansan users to carry virtual cards that can be issued to them via Sansan, in addition to their paper business cards.
These online business cards can be sent easily to others using the Virtual Business Card Exchange function.
This enables exchange during online business meetings and virtual events in the same way as face-to-face meetings.
The new function lets Sansan users issue a link to their virtual business card and send it to the people they meet.
In addition to their name, email address, company name, and title, they can also send their profile photo with the business card, if the photo is uploaded to Sansan.
Those who receive a virtual business card can easily import the information to their phonebook or Sansan.
To return the gesture, they just need to send their own business card’s photo, back to the sender, completing the online exchange.
To receive the virtual business card, a person can also take a photo of a QR code on their phone and save the details into their list of contacts.
Cloud-based Sansan’s namesake platform has enabled companies to scan and organise business cards into a proprietary, expanding AI-informed database.
The company is one of Japan’s most-funded tech start-ups, having generated over US$120 million in funding before its IPO. Sansan is listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange Mothers Market. Sansan’s investors included Goldman Sachs, Salesforce, Nikkei, Japan Post Capital, Cyber Agent, T. Rowe Price, SBI Investment, and DCM Ventures.
Today, Sansan owns over 80% share of the Japanese market, scanning and organising hundreds of millions of cards and contacts a year.
About Sansan
Launched in 2007, Sansan is a fully-featured, cloud-based contact management solution for corporations. Centred on business cards, and using a proprietary system of digitisation harnessing the power of both AI and humans, it seamlessly organises contacts into a secure online database, accessible at any time from either the web or mobile app. The database is optimised and integrated with external information by an advanced AI system and is fully shareable within organisations. As of 2019, Sansan is used by almost 6,000 companies, ranging from small businesses to international corporations.
For more information, please visit sansan.com.
