The primary advantage of barcodes is that it helps the company to control the stock. Because nearly all the products in the market today have barcodes, the firm can use this technology to maintain secure and accurate control over its inventory. Warehouse for example, can use barcodes to scan and record all the products that enter and exit the center. For retailers, the barcodes on the various products can be scanned and recorded and the information used in inventory management knowing which items are on the shelves and the ones which are safely stored. Similarly in the transport sector, companies that deliver transportation services can scan all the products they accept and then scan them after making the delivery. Businesses can also link the barcodes with clients portals to make sure the customers get instant information as soon products are available for purchase.
The second advantage of barcodes is that it helps businesses reduce human errors. Administrative and information entry mistakes can bring unsalvageable damage to a business leading to higher cargo costs, unhappy clients, and a lot of time used to find issues. In a few circumstances, administrative blunders can have a significantly more dramatic effect for instance the basic significance of information and item accuracy in pharmaceutical, patient safety or blood donation center applications. It is important to note that in such industries human errors in data entry can negatively affect the business image, interfere with the reputation of the business in a negative way and in some situations the business can be sued by the affected party or the client. It is important to note that the standard human error rate is estimated to be one in every three hundred characters entered. With such statistics it is estimated that many businesses make huge losses every year. On the other hand, barcode technology is more accurate and is estimated to make one error in every thirty-six trillion characters based on the type of machine used.
The third benefit of barcodes is that it is cost-effective compared to manual data entry. Although barcode technology was originally expensive, the popularity of this system and the innovation of inexpensive equipment have made this system to be affordable for virtually all organizations. Even small businesses that lack huge capital can make use of the internet and download various barcodes fonts for free and start using this system to manage their inventory without making any initial capital investments.