Businesses no longer rely exclusively on purpose-built scanning solutions to capture information from barcodes, which are now synonymous to enterprise supply chain operations such as asset identification, visibility, and track-and-trace. Since the launch of smartphones and other camera-enabled consumer mobile computing devices in the last decade or so, several application developers have also empowered consumers to know more about their purchases, thereby helping them make informed decisions and elevating their levels of engagement. There is now an installed base of more than 1 billion smartphones and hundreds of millions of tablets. VDC’s research shows that the data capture industry is expanding its footprint to now proactively leverage the capabilities of these powerful computing devices by introducing solutions that enable enterprise-grade performance on these smartphones and tablets. Not only are these solutions helping consumers and small businesses to take greater advantage of barcode scanning functionality, but they are enabling large enterprises to mobilize a higher percentage of their workforce and workflows, and also supporting them in their endeavor to take advantage of the BYOD (bring your own device) trend.
New and emerging solution providers, including independent software vendors like Scandit, are changing the way the world views barcode scanning and devices that enable the same. Enterprise investments in smartphones/tablets in support of line-of-business workers’ everyday operations across various industry verticals are not ad-hoc anymore. More organizations in field service, logistics, and retail are now proactively evaluating and even making investments in widely available consumer device and rugged smartphone/tablet options, choosing these over purpose-built data capture solutions.
Consumer smart device adoption is not restricted to any specific section of users; there is a range of smartphones and tablets available across a broad spectrum of price points, making these very accessible regardless of an individual or business’ financial status, industry, or region. Historically, barcode scanning using these devices has been a cumbersome process requiring significant camera alignment and barcode label re-positioning to enable data capture. Now software platforms like the one by Scandit have made barcode scanning using regular smartphones and tablet a relatively easy undertaking. VDC believes the opportunity is particularly ripe in retail establishments for apparel, grocery, and specialty goods (like furniture and electronics) for inventory management, clienteling, mPOS, and self-shopping applications, as well as in other commercial centers such as field sales and service to help facilitate order entry, asset tracking, picking, proof-of-delivery, and fulfillment applications. Businesses across all tier levels want to capitalize on these devices’ high availability, ease of use, intuitiveness, and user familiarity to facilitate end-to-end data capture functionality.
Scandit’s Barcode Scanner SDK for iOS, Android, and Windows among other platforms, enables the camera on smart devices to capture barcode information from any angle, offering high read rates and high levels of scanning efficiency. The company licenses its barcode scanner platform to hundreds of customers around the globe, and its solutions are used across all major verticals. From a technical standpoint, Scandit’s Barcode Scanner SDK is constantly evolving and improving to support enhanced scanning capabilities equipped to support a broad range of barcode symbologies so it can compete with purpose-built OEM imager scan engines developed by AIDC industry veterans. Decode speeds, processing times, performance in highly variable light conditions, and motion tolerance may vary from purpose-built engines, however, features like omnidirectional data and image capture, high density barcode scanning, and blurry/damaged barcode decoding are all made available to Scandit’s user base.
As part of the primary research process for the recently-published Scandit-focused white paper (download here), VDC interviewed several end-user organizations with existing investments in Scandit’s technology, including its Barcode Scanner SDK and Enterprise Solutions that use the platform to enable enterprise-grade barcode scanning using their end-to-end mobile applications. These conversations highlighted the various different types of market development opportunities available to Scandit, be it the use of consumer devices for barcode scanning by a contractor-based workforce mobilizing their workflows, or consumers using their personal devices to support self-shopping applications, or even large, distributed organizations enabling order entry and traceability via Scandit-powered apps.
You can download this White Paper here. Our next blog will focus on VDC’s outlook for Scandit’s future and what lies ahead for the company.
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