S02E03 GHG - The last business card you ever need (Transcript)

# S02E03_GHG-The-last-business-card-you-ever-need

[00:00:00]

These are the supply chain dialogues. And my name is Daniel Helmig. Do you still remember, maybe still have this sinking feeling. Well, you have a new job and jeez need to get new business cards. You fill out a form. Or find the respective normally very well hidden corporate website and enter your new data. And this needs to be signed by a manager and off the request goes and depending where procurement now actually source the guards from. You get the new ones. Next week. Or if they are shipped via container ship from Asia, maybe in three weeks, if you're lucky, and then you have these new cards, which are looking so expensive. With nice fond. Good paper

maybe even bilingual and then you put them in your desk. [00:01:00] And a lot of them because you normally order too much of them anyway, which you never will use during the time that you have the job.

And then there are the business fairs, all these business fairs. When you hand out your business cars as if they were free candy. Knowing that 80 to 90% end in the trash can in less than a week. And yes. This is a scientifically proven fact. So wouldn't it be great to not worry about this stuff anymore? And saving trees and greenhouse gas emissions actually turning this spend category into a net zero. Maybe even negative emission, zero. And saving the use of chemicals to create these wonders of papetry. And getting your most important data actually to the other person so that it sticks. Really sticks. Well, there is a such a solution out there and [00:02:00] in the supply chain dialogues, we talk about solutions that category by category. Can reduce or zero down greenhouse gas emissions. We thought we start with something benign, which still is an itch for most procurement and sales professionals. Getting your contact details out there in a way that is no longer 19 century and actually is sticky.

I was lucky to get the Lars Seeger, the co-founder and CEO of contactify in our studio to tell us what actually is going on and how to turn this particular category to negative greenhouse gas emissions. A few words about Lars. His parents own the stationery business. And he grew up in the world of paper, postcards, pens, stamps. And you guess that business cards? He did his business and finance Master in St.Gallen one of the most prestigious universities in Europe for [00:03:00] business and used his newly learned knowledge to create a startup. Which could scale up the business card business digitally into the 21st century.

Lars as a driven entrepreneur, as much as he's driven in his private life in summer, he's playing lots of tennis, which is not astonishing in the land of Roger Federer and does marathons in the Swiss Alps around St.Moritz. And in winter, you can see him skiing down the slopes, either cross country or Alpine. I've learned skiing when I was 26, mostly to have a fleeting chance by the girlfriend at that time from lake of Constance while Lars and most other Swiss guys. And ladies get their base training when they all three to four years old. He has my envy. So enough of the introduction let's get into the discussion lars thank you for making the time

It's a pleasure, Daniel.

So let's dive directly into the 10 questions. So let's start with the [00:04:00] first question, which is what is the one thing you deeply appreciate in your life right now?

Well, if I look, if I compare myself to my friends and peers, I would definitely mentioned one point that sticks out. , and that is of tremendous pleasure for me, which is the variety of tasks I currently have and variety of insights I have in my life. That's obviously also something private, but that's something everybody could tell.

On the professional side of things, if you found your own company. The skills you need to develop and the variability, therefore, also of tasks you have on a daily basis is in the beginning overwhelming, but over time it becomes pleasure. So that's definitely something I, appreciate a lot.

I'm looking forward to actually dive into that during our little discussion here so that people understand what you're doing and why we're actually talking with each other. So, um, As you and I became in [00:05:00] contact when I bought a product and service that Contactify, the company where you are the co founder and CEO offers, with regard to a fully innovative business card solution, which based on what we know about your history is now quite interesting, coming as well from the stationary business as such.

I was so interested about this ingenious idea, I told many of my friends and former colleagues about it, something that I quite honestly very seldomly do. Would you mind explaining the product and the services you offer?

Yeah, sure. So thanks for being one of our customers, Daniel. So as, as you mentioned, right, with that background at hand, the first touch point of the customer journey was something that came to our mind when we thought about. You know, which product is still in use that might have potential to be revolutionized.

And now I'm speaking about the time of 2020, right? And we were all in, in that timeframe coming into touch with these digital products [00:06:00] and, adopted them. And on our end, when we looked at the first touch point of the customer journey and the product we offered at the stationary store of my mother, , was a paper card that you would hand out in a way that you would give it from one person to the other.

And this person would in, , almost all cases. Throw it away and so our solution helps companies to digitize that process in a way that you could easily hand over the information, via a QR code or an NFC card. And this information then are consolidated on a landing page, where you would have not only contact information, but it would be enriched with other information such as your LinkedIn profile or the information as that you want to place on at the first touch point of the customer journey to give a holistic view over, what you're doing or your company's doing, obviously it also entails an easy way for companies to manage these [00:07:00] profiles of their employees. And therefore it's easy to manage is also integrated into the current ecosystem. And in a nutshell is an efficient eco friendly. And, innovative way of transferring contact information as a substitute to a product that has been existing for decades already.

I must say this was as well the selling point for me because as a CPO for large companies, this was the one issue that I saw in most of the companies over the last 20, 30 years. And it's amazing that we're still in this quite analog kind of situation with the document that everyone getting involved, everyone is basically utilizing business cards.

You have a whole organization normally. behind that in your company to create them, to evaluate them, to assess them, to make sure that they're right. And you come up with this product and service, which makes all of this more or less null and void and concentrates on what is the most important [00:08:00] thing, which is the business to business, contact, which is fantastic.

What benefits have you been able to achieve for your customers so far?

If you look at the companies, we are our customers and the people within that company we're talking to, it's a lot about branding and marketing. So, obviously, there were people already adopting, channels such as LinkedIn, for exchanging information. However, companies had the issue of maintaining brand consistency as a set because LinkedIn is a decentralized channel for employees to promote themselves and not the company, with whatever information is placed on there.

So. Number one to your question is definitely brand consistency and the solution is built in a way that even though you could have various brands within your company, and it could be that you centralize the digital business card process of creating profiles and you would still have the [00:09:00] possibility.

To distribute cross border profiles for all employees in the specific brand and it's way easier, faster in the process itself, and therefore it saves a lot of time that can be spent otherwise.

Then secondly, we, deliver to all of these, companies KPIs.

And if you look at the analytics of how people, have been using the digital profiles, obviously that's something you can also then, use as a benefit over. Paper based cards because you get the analytics, but they are definitely receiving, a personalized, sustainability report where you can report how much CO2 has been reduced, over time, and then you can differentiate by brands and people, obviously, but you get the analytics out of it and you can, use these numbers and put it in your, CO2 calculation.

If you look at larger companies, you also have a cost cutting. So you would, reduce costs due to the fact that actually the process of creating, , and producing and promoting digital [00:10:00] business card, the physical cards are actually quite high. If you look at the European market, and therefore we can also deliver solution digital only that helps companies to reduce costs.

So these were the three main points. We helped our. Customers in order to make most use out of digital business cards.

And as one of your customers, I have to say, it is fascinating. The listeners cannot see it. I hold in my hand now my beautiful wood business card. , the one and only, the last one that I ever need from your company. And in the meantime, I counted about 500 interactions. And no need to exchange business cards, since I started with my company, which is fantastic.

Now, you have been in this business as well from the family side before. What does it normally take to produce business cards?

It's quite fascinating we've seen statistics in 2012 around 10 billion paper based cards have been printed [00:11:00] alone in the US. And as we've heard before, most of them Are actually, being thrown away and, end up, having a negative impact on your CO2 household.

However, , if you look at what it actually, entails, it's obviously, as you mentioned, the The paper itself, that that is one of the products we're trying to substitute. But then also the printing and the logistics around you should not neglect as it is quite an exhaustive process to produce these cards is individualized card by card.

And then lastly, it needs to be shipped to the respective address of every employee. And this is repeated, right? So every time you, would change, for example, your position, you would need to produce another hundred, 200 cards and you would then need to be shipped to your address.

And then afterwards, if you change again, you need to throw it away again. So, in a nutshell, I said it's, it's, the paper that is being consumed. It's the printing and everything [00:12:00] around the printing . And then lastly, packaging and distribution that uses quite some time and has an impact on, your, CO2 household.

And that's all what you actually eliminate, which is fantastic with just thinking differently about a solution and then adding as well services to that.

But do you have an overall sense in terms of how much of greenhouse gas emissions you can actually reduce by changing from this analog paper solution towards your solution as such?

So the calculation is based on insights we have from industry reports, but let me frame it in general. So by adopting digital business cards , companies are able to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in two significant ways. Firstly, there's no need to cut down trees, as I mentioned before, preserving valuable neutral resources.

And secondly, the harmful and environmentally damaging production process associated with [00:13:00] traditional paper cards is entirely avoided. So while the reduction in emissions for a single paper business card might seem minimal, the cumulative effect for example, at, um, Swissca on health insurance company in Switzerland.

We count around 15, 000 touch points for one month. So it's quite a significant number. So the cumulative effect is substantial. For instance, if a client, who implemented our digital business cards for fewer than 30 users can thereby decrease their co2 emissions by over 3. 5 Kilogram within just over one year.

So if you add the number up you would end up for to enough thousand users at SWISSCA at a quite significant amount of co2 emissions that can be Reduced and that that you can also speak about.

So for all these listeners to the podcast that are in a larger company, you can multiply what Lars just said with the [00:14:00] employees that actually you work with. And, hopefully that makes you excited. Which brings me to the next question Lars. So how does it normally work best to get in contact with you?

Number one is obviously to have a call with me or one of my colleagues at contactify. We now have over 100 customers worldwide that are using our products. Especially in the large enterprise segment. That this throughout industries, um, healthcare, manufacturing, production, chemical industry, and prominent financial services.

And typically as I've mentioned, these companies got in touch with our product that maybe another customer that is using it and then got in touch with us. And we were able to show them how. Different companies are using the product in a combination of software and hardware as you mentioned, right?

We have this wooden cart that is made of out of upcycled wood, um here in switzerland So we have a lot of combinations and variety of how you can [00:15:00] use it in a sense we can adopt it to the needs of that specific company There we would deep dive after a first call, into the requirements And then obviously we could do a proof of concept, try out what is best for your specific company.

And then afterwards we, we have extensive knowledge in rolling it out cross border with a lot of languages. And this would then be the last step, before you revolutionize, uh, your, your first touch point of the customer journey.

In connection with that was long enough, Chief Procurement Officer, when you have an idea and you find a company that you like, then you would like to have it implemented as quick as possible, specifically today. when we all need to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions to get into the net zero environment.

So in this category, what is your average kind of time from the first contact to having your great cards in the hands of all employees of a company? How long does it take?

Well, as you probably also know that the tricky parties [00:16:00] is, not the first touch point. And the first time you, meet someone, if this one would be the decision maker, then it will be quite easy. Let's say, um, we have a call today and we agreed that we will introduce it.

We would be, on the market in around two months. So this is our average time of a project. But the economic buyer or the functional buyer from the business side first has to convince a lot of stakeholders, right? So the time from the first hodgepodge until we actually sign contracts takes another two to three months, on average, as we talk to mostly enterprise customers, but from signing and agreement upon the rollout plan this is around two months.

Two months is actually nothing in the corporate space. So, it's just about how many of the people you internally have to convince . With regard to this, normally what is going to be done when people get in contact, they check out your website and, and read a little bit upon how you actually have in there.

And when I was looking at your website, you say that B2B [00:17:00] customer engagements relies on tools, tools that are from the nineties, and then you are doing it a little bit more broader than just talking about business cards. What do you mean by that?

B2B sales process, are quite complex. So over time we introduced digital business card three years ago. Um, we got guided from our existing customers, that were using digital business cards that they said, Hey, there might be a different use case.

You could also tackle generating profiles. Digital profiles, as we were doing it with digital business cards. And when we dive deeper into the direction, they were leading us, we saw that. If you look at how B two B sales processes, look like today, it's email pinging pong around a lot of stakeholders around the typical, quite complex product.

What plays into there is that if we look at who actually sits on the other side of the table, and who are the decision makers of tomorrow, they're all digital natives, [00:18:00] so we have kind of a combination of, complex products, multi stakeholder process over a lot longer period of time, while all of us at the table,

love a good digital customer experience, but all of us will send around various emails, information will get lost. And there is a lot of friction around the way of doing the sales, right? This is, this holds true. If I'm selling to you, my digital business card or to your company, but this holds also true if, for example, a chemical company wants to sell their complex chemical products, to their customers.

So a couple of months back, we were pointing in that direction and we developed a new product that is actually tackling this problem, still based on the same software, which is, landing page building and digital profiles.

It's amazing when you start with a business card and some services, how much you can actually expand if you really look holistically at the whole process

now [00:19:00] recently you sold a majority share to a company called Mesoneer and now provide what you call a one-stop contract platform for customers and buyers.

What do you do there to actually move them from the 90s as you mentioned beforehand?

So we sold the majority share of our startup to Mesoneer, which is a larger it, company in doing mostly software. Projects in Switzerland. And this obviously helped us a lot in terms of reputation because companies typically are a bit afraid of working together with startups and implementing a product, which they don't know if the company and the product therefore exists in a couple of years.

So this helped us getting more reputation and more credibility. Plus more, means and power in the back to now really push into, this direction of our new product called spaces while still maintaining digital business cards. And what we do with our solution now is, so if you come to contactify, you will have one product at hand [00:20:00] that helps you at the first touch point of the customer journey, moving on, if you are successful at your first touch point of the customer journey, you will generate leads that later turn into customers, right?

The way of turning leads into customers that is then also supported by contactify with our product called spaces. , helping you to overcome the complexity in B2B sales processes. What it actually means is you have the chance to create within seconds as a sales rep, um, microsite landing pages for your buyer.

And by buyer, I not necessarily mean procurement, but by buyer, I mean, typically a business buyer that would have, all the information about a certain deal. Product information or solution architecture. That could also be, information about pricing that could be reference customers.

These are all widgets on, on the micro side. And these, microsite would then by the sales department or by support functions. Be customized towards your buyer's need, and [00:21:00] they both could collaborate on that microsite in order to make the sale, faster. So higher conversion rate and faster sales cycles are the value proposition behind the product, it also helps to orchestrate internal sales process. And if you look at That statistics, it's more difficult to make sale internally , so it helps the internal seller to orchestrate his people and get alignment on the most relevant points of transaction while not losing any information that he has been provided in the past.

Obviously you will also get a lot of analytics on the behavior of the buyers. And as a seller, you would see the whole buying center at one point, because you would see who is engaging with what piece of content during the process.

Interesting. Now, this sounds a lot as well, like customer relationship management, this whole CRM stuff, which is being controlled by mega companies such as [00:22:00] salesforce. com. And You could ask the question, why does a potential customer actually need you? And how do you interface your solution with these different CRM systems, which are out there?

And since we're on it, what do you do about data security, according GDPR and so on. If you could go into this a little bit as well, I would appreciate it.

Also a question that is typically being asked by investors, because the major risk of every startup is that it's being disrupted by one of the bigger players, right? But in that specific case, and we looked at the CRM market, obviously quite closely, the CRM market is now.

About orchestrating internal sales process. So you, build a funnel. You would, also have some marketing automation measurements. You would generate leads, you would nurture and classify leads, and then. Once the lead is sales qualified, you would push it down the funnel by, sales tracking the deal [00:23:00] status.

And then afterwards you would have it converted. And this whole process of how actually a customer is flowing through the funnel and the steps behind that's CRM work orchestrating, customers or potential customers leads through the funnel and keeping track of the engagement. After the CRM.

What has been happening in the past is a category evolved called sales enablement. So you try to enable sales by, giving them the best digital assets, in order to engage with the customer best. It's called buyer enablement. So now as a sales rep, you want to enable your buyer to make an easier, buy. So it's actually another category that is coming after CRM and sales enablement. And therefore we now see a big opportunity for large companies. , to enable their buyers, and giving the best in class buying experience. Touching upon your last point, in terms of G D P [00:24:00] R, we invest a lot in penetration tests, meaning our IT Becomes state of the art. We have, in Germany, GDPR standards are even higher, but we comply according to, and.

This is a key milestone we achieved as a, as a startup being GDPR compliant across all standards in the world, because you comply with DSKFO, which is the highest standards, we are able now also to work as set with companies , which work in highly regulated industry of highly sensitive data.

And we comply with all of that. And this helps us a lot now to, to win projects. So

I think when you look at where as well in our discussion where we started, we talked more or less about a replacement from from one product, which is the business card paper into something which is the last business card you ever need and the services around that and then going further into the field of CRM and then getting to [00:25:00] something which I love, which is buyer enablement, something which I quite honestly see.

For the last 38 years that I was in the supply chain business very seldomly I've heard, , you are on a very interesting journey . When you look back at the last couple of years, Lars.

What new behaviors or habits had the most significant positive impact for your life to actually manage all the wonderful things that you're doing right now and stay healthy and and sane while going at it.

Improved adaptability. So you need to stay super flexible in an entrepreneurial journey. And you need to adopt to various situations you've never been in before.

And you even need to adopt in terms of business model whenever you see something is not working the way. You thought it will work because there are a lot of uncertainties markets change, right? We started with our company in zero interest rate environment or negative interest rate environment now We're in [00:26:00] a quite different environment , so a lot of things change in that journey and you're mostly directly impacted and you need to stay Adaptive all the time.

That is definitely something I've learned over the past few months and years, in a sometimes painful way. It's a great skill that, helps you in various aspects of life. The second point you just touched upon, I think if you're under so much pressure, when you're on your entrepreneurial path, I think it's super important to have a great personal wellbeing , and that you also see that you balance, different aspects and in the beginning you run, run, run, and then at one point you see you need, you also need to relax a bit.

So I think this combination and balance is, is key to a longterm success.

So you're already preparing for the ski slopes, in winter, which, which is helpful then. Lars, thank you so much for taking the time with me today. All the best to you and your team. And, thank you for, for joining the podcast.

Thank you, Daniel. It [00:27:00] was a pleasure. Thanks. .

To get rid of the whole topic of business cards and come to something which is much cleaner, much better. 21st century solution, reach out to the folks from contactify. Check out their contactify.biz. Scroll down to the end of the page and just pluck in what you wish for. And they will come back to you as soon as possible. Please mention that you heard it here on the supply chain dialogues.

Thank you very much for listening .

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