How can I pass data into a user selected application?

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C#

.NET

WPF

We have an application which reads data such as barcodes from a document scanner and then passes that data to a running application such as an Excel spreadsheet. The user determines how the data is formatted - it can contain special key presses such as Escape and Tab, and fixed text such as "First name" as well as the incoming data - and they choose the application that receives the formatted output. The formatted data is simply pasted into the destination application using System.Windows.Forms.SendKeys.SendWait().

Is there a really neat way to make this more flexible and powerful? I'm thinking we could implement some sort of data source (WCF?) which clients could plumb into with a little coding. Maybe customers want to stuff our data into their SQL database. Obviously I could write database code to do that myself, but there must be some automated framework about.

Sorry to ramble a bit, and thanks in advance for suggestions.

What I have tried:

See the above description for details.