Growing economic uncertainties and rising business costs are pushing Asian business leaders to identify innovative ways of improving business performance. The spotlight must be on driving higher employee productivity and collaboration, according to Sansan. 

About 90 percent of the respondents said that they had not digitized all their business cards. In the age of followers, connections, and friends on social networking platforms, physical business cards are still used as a way to establish personal connections, however, these are often getting lost in the plethora of paperwork surrounding people at work today. 

Digitization impacts productivity 

More than half of the respondents said that they are manually entering their contacts’ details into spreadsheets in order to maintain a record of their connections made by exchanging business cards. Even though Singapore is known for being the pioneer of all things digital where AI and automation has penetrated daily life and replacing routine tasks, digitization of business cards still remains a new concept. 

“Businesses must be aware that digitising business cards and making a shareable cloud-based database available within the company can help their employees save time spent looking for contacts and building new relationships,” said Edward Senju, Regional CEO, Sansan. 

Relevance of referrals 

Referrals continue to be a medium to drive business in Singapore. The study reinforces the importance of existing human connections to build new business relationships. About 2.3 times more referral business was garnered by respondents who shared their contacts within the companies, as compared to the ones who kept those contacts to themselves. 

Key takeaway 

In an era where digitization has become the norm, it becomes crucial that HR leaders take a look at simple practices and mechanisms through which employee productivity can be boosted in order to promote collaboration across silos and functions.