A customized DATAWIN high-performance scanner counts supervisory board elections, general meetings, works council elections and general meetings quickly and cost-effectively.

Since 1987 HVBEST Event-Service GmbH has been a service provider in the area of shareholders’ meetings, supervisory board elections and general member assemblies. HVBEST offers a wide spectrum of experi-ence in the fields of planning, organization and implementation. Well-known corporations such as Porsche, Metro, Deutsche Post, Deutsche Bahn and Thyssen Krupp are among HVBEST’s customers.

Initial situation:
Desire for fast, efficient and secure counting

Before the implementation of the DATAWIN devices, the counting of votes at supervisory board elections and general member assemblies was carried out among others by means of MDEs (mobile data acquisition devices) or by acclamation (voting by a show of hands). When counting is conducted by a show of hands, especially the expenditure of time and the human factor, as potential sources of error, are problematic. The disadvantage of counting by acclamation is that the voters must be individually queried for their votes and then the votes must be entered into the “electronic ballot box”.

Project aims:
Automated vote counting with high usability

Optimization of the counting process and introduction of a fast, automated solution. Furthermore, due to the slighter number of staff involved, costs are reduced, inaccurate results from manual counting processes are avoided. To keep the handling of the devices as simple as possible, plain and easily understandable operation is requisite. The result must be vote counting that is reproducible and comprehensible to comply with all the legal requirements.

Project description:
Customizing of a HEMERA S high performance scanner

First of all, optical mark readers from DATAWIN are employed for the recording of the ballots at elections and voting procedures. To prevent double counting of one and the same voting document, the devices were equipped with a supplementary print head. During the reading-in process, a number is applied to each document and this registers the document as having been read in. Individual doc-uments can be identified via an additionally integrated barcode reader.

Because of the different formats of the ballots, different devices must still be used at this point. A remedy here is provided by the high-performance scanner HEMERA S, developed in the meantime, that can process different formats without difficulty.

In close cooperation with HVBEST, the device is modified in such a manner that it fulfills all the technical demands. Besides its tolerance to varying document formats, it convinces due to its high processing speed of up to 25,000 documents per hour. At the end of the counting process, there are images in digital form for each document. These images are available at any time for quick and easy subsequent checking.

Customer testimonial:

„Upon our request, it was possible to implement individual adjustments. This flexibility is an essential factor of the successful cooperation with DATAWIN. The quality of its products, the competent support and, not least, the people with whom we have worked together successfully for many years, all these speak in favor of DATAWIN.“

Dietmar Franz, CEO of HVBEST Event-Service GmbH