Why Outsourcing Web Scraping Beats Doing It In-House

Data is a very powerful tool in today’s information-driven world. With the right set of data, your business can thrive, beat the competition, and make smart and informed decisions. But the tricky part is getting the right set of data. It’s not always readily available. And if you know where to find it, it’s not always easy to acquire it.

The public web is a wealth of information, and the good thing about web scraping is that you can gather it at scale. For companies that require a large amount of data, web scrapers can gather this data from multiple websites. But not every company has the capacity to handle this internally, while those who prefer to do it on their own may not always know how to do it properly. This is why outsourcing this business process is the best approach. Moreover, working with an outsourcing company to handle your web scraping needs offers a lot of advantages.

Access to Better Infrastructure

If you decide to start your own internal web scraping process, you will need to prepare your manpower and your business tools. Without the right hardware and software for web scraping, you won’t be able to run the process as efficiently as necessary. Scraping large sets of data will require a specific and customized scripts and software. You can opt to buy data scraping software tool, but it’s not easy to get things started. You will still need to train a team to handle this task and set up your IT infrastructure to accommodate this additional process. On the other hand, if you decide to partner with an outsourcing company, you won’t have to bother with any of these preparations as your provider will already have the right technology in place and will take care of everything to deliver the requested data.

Work with Experienced Data Crawlers

Finding the right person for the job is not always easy, especially if you are not familiar with the process that you want to implement. If you need your web scraping done right, you need the right people to do it for you. You can hire web scraping developers and start your process with an in-house team, but you will need to onboard and train them, which can be tricky if you are not sure how to proceed. If you want to get your web scraping done by professionals, work with an outsourcing company. Most outsourcing providers who offer web scraping have a roster of experienced web scraping developers handling the work. They will take care of everything to get your data ready the way you want it prepared.

Scalability of Web Scraping Service

Managing web scraping and data collection in house is not always easy to scale. Even if you already have a small team available, scaling will still eat up a large chunk of your budget and resources. You will need to train more people, get additional software licenses, and increase your hardware and bandwidth. If you want to skip all of these tedious steps for doing web scraping in-house, pass it on to your preferred outsourcing company. This way, you can easily scale up or down, depending on your business needs.

Better Data Quality and Management

What do you do with the data that you gather from web scraping? Unfortunately, not all of the data you gather from the Internet is clean, organized, or useful. After the scraping process, there will still be additional steps such as data cleansing, organizing, and maintenance. This means a lot of manpower and resources taken away from your business if you choose to manage it internally. This is one of the reasons why outsourcing web scraping makes more sense. There is less hassle on your end, and once the data you need is available, you receive it from your outsourcing provider clean, organized, and ready to use.

Varied Formats of Data Delivery

Another advantage of working with an outsourcing company is that you can request that they provide the data in a specific format. Outline your format needs and goals and explain how you want to receive it. Be it in a spreadsheet format, JSON or through an API, you get to decide how you want your provider to hand over the information to you.

Uninterrupted Flow of Data

An outsourcing company’s main focus is to deliver service to their clients. With this in mind, you can rest assured that you will receive data sets as frequently and as consistently as you need. This continuous flow of data into your business can help you get more things done, conceptualize more products or services, market to more people, or increase your sales.

Enhanced Focus on Your Core Functions

With fewer distractions from the preparations and issues that arise from handling web scraping in-house, you get to focus on the most important processes in your business. You can simply request regular reports or updates from your outsourcing partner to learn more about how the web scraping is going and receive the data you need once it’s ready for you.

Conclusion

By working with an outsourcing partner for web scraping data collection, you can get more things done and worry less about how to gather the right set of information for your business. Here at Assivo, we have provided professional web scraping services for years and have worked with multiple, highly satisfied clients who needed specific, hard-to-collect data. If you need your web scraping process done by professionals, reach out to us here at Assivo, and we’ll be more than happy to help you get the perfect set of data to help you grow your business.