Believe it or not, barcodes were invented in 1951 but weren’t commercially successful until the 70s. You’d be hard-pressed to find another technology developed in the 50s that we still rely on today.
Barcodes offer many significant benefits to businesses, which is why this 70-year old technology hasn’t changed much.
- Barcodes are a proven and universal technology.
The benefits of the barcode’s longevity in commerce are twofold. Firstly, barcode scanning has had ample time to prove itself as an effective means of commerce identification. Secondly, these little striped squares have been so universally adopted in our modern world that there are countless inexpensive ways for any business to enjoy the benefits of a barcode scanning system (more on that below).For example, you’ll never run into a warehouse that doesn’t scan barcodes. That’d be absurd. Any organization, distributor, wholesaler, warehouser, or reseller in the commerce world is expected to be well-versed in barcode scanning technology.
- Barcodes mitigate error.
To err is human, and nobody knows this better than those in the eCommerce world. Anytime you can outsource a human task to technology, you’ll both save time and reduce errors.Now extrapolate that out to entire systems: shipping, receiving, and the buying and selling of billions of dollars of product. The number of introduced errors would be catastrophic. Barcodes help to prevent these things by systematizing how product data is collected and tracked.And the bottom line is that errors are costly. They cause poor customer experiences, waste time, and create bottlenecks in your logistics pipeline.
- Barcodes are inexpensive and discrete.
If you were to purchase a can of tomatoes from the grocery store and notice a QR code on the back, it might be a bit jarring. However, nobody bats an eye at barcodes. They’re everywhere, and even when taking up a lot of real estate on the product itself, they’re widespread enough to be expected. This makes them a discrete choice for branding purposes.Further, barcodes are cheap. The technology has been around for over half a century and costs very little to generate and print. Barcode scanners are inexpensive (well under $75 for a great one) and used worldwide as the gold standard for product scanning.Whether you have items for sale, raw materials, finished products, tools, parts supplies, or anything in between, barcode inventory management comes with lucrative benefits.
