Customer Stories

German Red Cross Uses Dynamsoft Barcode Reader SDK to Quickly Automate Barcode-to-PDF Procedure

Red Cross

Industry

Non-Profit, Accounting

Product

Dynamsoft Barcode Reader

Technology

C++

Key Requirements

  • Off-the-shelf enterprise-grade barcode solution
  • C++ programming for seamless integration
  • Use barcodes to automate process of associating PDF files

Snapshot

The German Red Cross, or the DRK, is the national Red Cross Society in Germany with more than 3.5 million members. It provides a wide range of services that includes complete hospitals, care for the elderly and children, and more. The accounting team wanted a barcode scanning tool to use to automate certain tasks.

They understood creating a barcode scanning application on their own would be costly in time, resources, and money. So, they found the Dynamsoft Barcode Reader SDK online. It allows developers to easily embed comprehensive barcode scanning in a website, desktop or mobile application and it supports the most common 1D and 2D barcodes. The team at German Red Cross was able to then implement the new tool in just a week. More importantly, it delivered the automation they were after.

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About German Red Cross

According to Wikipedia, the German Red Cross, or the DRK, is the national Red Cross Society in Germany. It has more than 3.5 million members and is the third largest Red Cross society in the world. It provides a wide range of services within and outside Germany. This includes providing 52 hospitals, care for the elderly (over 500 nursing homes and a network of ambulant nursing care for the elderly covering all over the country), care for children and youth (i.e. 1.300 kindergartens, full range of social services for children). The German Red Cross also provides 75 percent of the blood supply in Germany and 60 percent of the emergency medical services in Germany. This includes providing first aid training. Its headquarters provides international humanitarian aid (disaster management and development assistance) in over 50 countries in the world.

The German Red Cross office of the Kreisverband Wangen e.V. near Lake Constance, just east of Munich, needed barcode scanning to simplify their accounting practices.

Has more than 3.5
million members

The third largest Red
Cross society

Providing 52 hospitals,
care for the elderly,
children, youth

A Technology Need

The team wanted a barcode scanning tool to use in accounting, to increase productivity by automating certain tasks. To this end, they wanted to be able to start the tool, use it to read data off a barcode, and automatically rename associated PDF files the same as the barcode number.

Initial research started with how to build the tool internally. The team quickly realized creating a barcode scanning application from scratch would be immensely time, resource and cost consuming. Thus, the development team behind the German Red Cross found a solution online – Dynamsoft Barcode Reader.

Getting Going with a Solution

The Dynamsoft Barcode Reader software development kit (SDK) allows developers to quickly embed full-featured barcode scanning in a web, desktop or mobile application. This can be done using a few lines of code instead of spending months researching and understanding relevant standards and coding thousands of lines.

So, in practically no time at all, the Dynamsoft SDK lets application managers create high-speed and reliable barcode scanner software to meet their business needs. Barcode scanner APIs are provided for Windows (C++ API, .NET API), Linux (C/C++ API), iOS (Objective-C and Swift), and Android (Java API).

Supported barcode symbologies include linear barcodes (1D): Code 39, Code 93, Code 128, Codabar, Interleaved 2 of 5, EAN-8, EAN-13, UPC-A, UPC-E, and Industrial 2 of 5. For 2D barcodes, support is included for: QR code, Data Matrix, and PDF417.

The barcode reader library supports scanning barcodes from various image file formats, such as bmp, jpg, png, gif, and tiff; from single-page and multi-page PDFs; and from device-independent bitmap (DIB) formats which can be obtained from cameras or scanners; from an image encoded as a base64 string; or from an image file stream.

You can also create barcode reading templates with settings such as: barcode region, barcode count, barcode format, deblur level, and more. These settings allow for customizations specific to your scenario so decoding is more accurately, speedily, and reliably optimized.

Other capabilities built into the SDK include multi-thread barcode processing, reading multiple barcodes in one image, detecting barcodes at any orientation or rotation angle, decoding barcodes from out-of-focus or blurred images, and reading barcodes from low-quality images via pre-processing.

"We wrote the barcode tool in C++ and used examples provided by the Dynamsoft team, which were very helpful. As a result, we now have a high-quality SDK integrated in our application to easily scan barcodes. We're very happy with the SDK and help received from Dynamsoft."

- Martin Held, German Red Cross Kreisverband Wangen e.V.

Advantages Gained

The team at German Red Cross was up and running with the new tool in a week. It immediately provided the automating and time-saving realizations they coveted.
Dynamsoft's Solution

About Dynamsoft Barcode Reader

The Dynamsoft Barcode Reader SDK enables developers to efficiently embed barcode reading functionality in their web, desktop or mobile application using just a few lines of code. programmers can create high-speed and reliable barcode scanner applications to meet demanding business needs.

The SDK provides support across common platforms: Android, iOS, JavaScript, Linux, and Windows. It has suppport for most 1D and 2D barcode symbols.