Conference Lead Capture App.
BMI Global Ed · 2017–2022 · BMI Smart Scan for iOS and Android
A phone app that replaced paper lead forms at international student-recruitment fairs. Universities scan a student's badge, see what they want to study and know which leads to follow up first, even without the venue's internet.
Leads on paper, lost to a competitor
Universities book a stand at these fairs to meet prospective students, who register online or at the door and get a printed badge when they check in. Each exhibitor recorded the students it met its own way, and leadership asked me for a digital replacement.
Paper forms and spreadsheets
Some exhibitors wrote leads on paper forms, others typed them into their own spreadsheet on a laptop. There was no shared record.
Inaccurate data
Details written down by hand in a busy hall were often wrong or incomplete.
Hot leads going cold
Leads took a long time to reach the people who follow them up. By then a student keen to apply could already be talking to another university.
Where the badge comes from: Conference Check-in & Badge Printing.
Scan, see, rate, send
I proposed a phone app for exhibitor staff, then architected and built it. It turns the badge a student already carries into a complete, accurate lead.
Scan the badge
Point the phone's camera at the QR code on the badge the student was given at check-in. If the camera struggles, type in the badge's barcode number instead.
See who you just met
The student's details appear straight away: where and what they want to study, and the language they want to study in. It is what they registered with, so there is nothing to mistype.
Mark the promising ones
Give each student a Low, Medium or High priority and add a note, so the admissions team knows who to contact first.
Send the list
After the fair the whole list goes to the institution by email, ready to act on, with nothing to type up.
Offline by design
Some venues' internet could not be relied on, and a lead lost to a dropped connection is a lead lost for good. So every scan is saved on the phone first, and the app only needs a connection to sign in and to send the list.
Built for how exhibitors actually worked
Once the first version was in use, I spent seven weeks at fairs across Latin America and in Dubai, sitting with exhibitors one by one and watching how they used it. What I saw changed the app.
Fast Scan
I had designed for a recruiter who scans one student, then stops to rate and comment. At busy stands many wanted to scan as many students as they could, so I added a mode that scans back to back and skips the notes.
A simpler flow
Some of the first version was over-engineered for people working a crowded stand. I cut the flow back to what they used and added the features they asked for.
What I did
I took the app from an idea to the App Store, coded it with one other developer and looked after it for five years. When it needed a rebuild, I wrote the specification and an outside software company built it in Flutter. That version is the one live on the App Store and Google Play today.
- Proposed the app to leadership as the answer to paper and spreadsheet lead capture.
- Architected it, coded it with one other developer, and took it from an empty repository to its first App Store submission in 60 days.
- Designed it to work offline, so a weak venue connection could never cost a lead.
- Watched exhibitors use it for seven weeks in Latin America and Dubai, then simplified the flow and added Fast Scan.
- Wrote the specification for its rebuild and handed it to a third-party company, whose version is live today.
Tech stack
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