What Is Barcode And Its Benefits?

 
Today in all the business sectors, it is required to have all the product information in a well-arranged manner, so that they can be accessed quickly and correctly. Also, to eliminate the human errors, different kinds of technology and practices are implemented. Barcode is one of such technology that plays an effective role to access all the product information quickly and effectively. This is one of the best ways to compile the information in a graphical code which can be further used in the market.
 

What is Barcode?

Barcode is a machine readable visual pattern in which an information is available in particular encoded format. Or we can say that barcode is machine readable representation of data and this data holds some information about a product or object.
Also read: Commonly used 1D (Linear) Barcodes
Basically, there are two kinds of barcodes i.e. 1D barcode and 2D barcode.
1D or Linear barcode contains parallel lines of different sizes and widths representing information when it is scanned. It then determines the scanned object and its information. All the information in this code is organized horizontally from left to right and can be read by any type of barcode scanner.
 

2D barcode systematically represents data using two-dimensional symbols and shapes. This helps 2D encoded data to hold much more information of a product and it is smaller in size than a 1D code.  Also, 2D barcode cannot be scanned by a normal barcode scanner, an image scanner is required to scan them.
 

 

Benefits of using Barcode:

1. Data obtained through a barcode is quickly available. Since the information is scanned directly into the computer, it is ready in a fraction of a second.
2. As one barcode can be used both for catalog and pricing information, it is possible to quickly obtain data on both. Furthermore, barcodes can be customized to enter other relevant information as needed. They provide fast, reliable data for a wide variety of applications.
3. Using a barcode reduces employee training time. It takes only a few minutes to ready the hand-held scanner for scanning barcodes.

 
So using the barcode technology in the retail market and other consumer goods related business is a good option for product data management. Also, it saves a lot of time in getting product information and maintains transparency between seller and consumer.