A New Tool for Automatic Data Capture

As the marketing contact for TabletKiosk, I often get to try out third party hardware accessories to determine how they work with our tablets.

I don't get blown away too often, however I was recently introduced to a scanning solution which really enhances the usability of the Sahara for some specialized business applications.

The Snapshell, from Card Scanning Solutions, is a small USB scanner which reads the Optical Character Recognition (OCR) from Driver's Licenses (all 50 US states and over 45 countries), reads ID and PDF417 barcodes. This data can then be sent directly to a database or can populate a form.

The Snapshell works especially well with our Sahara Touch Tablets because it captures the relevant information from the driver's license information to reduce the need for typing in key information in a mobile setting. It can also read the embedded electronic watermark to authenticate IDs, In just seconds! No typing required!

Just imagine using the Snapshell for the following:

- Car Dealers and Car Rentals who need to get a copy of the customer's driver licence as a part of the selling process.
- Bars & Clubs who need to identify the age of their customers.
- Places who need to have an access and visitors control, like office buildings, schools and clubs
- Loan and mortgage Brokers who need a copy of their customer's ID card
- Mobile bloodbanks who need to collect donor information
- Clinical trials

For privacy concerns, the image capture can be deleted and you are left with just the relevant data which is collected from the license

I've been playing with the Snapshell at my desk and it's really remarkable how it works. In addition to scanning driver's licenses (yes that's really my license with some key info deleted out) I have also been running their Scan to Contacts software to scan my piles of business cards directly directly into Outlook. Note that this is the only software which does not require cards to be scanned into a 3rd party application before the information is imported into Outlook.

If you work in a business setting where you are constantly collecting the very same data that is referenced on a driver's license (you can customize which data you collect), this may be a great solution for you.