
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 in-house, 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.
Here are some of them:
Access To Better Infrastructure
If you decide to start your own web scraping process in-house, 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 do the whole process as efficiently as necessary. Scraping large sets of data will require a specific and customized scripts and software. You can opt to buy a data scraping software tool right off the internet, but it’s not going to be that easy to get things started from thereon and do the process in-house. 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 yourself with any of these preparations as your provider will take care of everything to deliver the data that you need for your business.
Work With Experienced Data Crawlers
It’s not always easy to find the right person for the job, especially if you are not familiar with the process that you want to jumpstart. 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 in-house, 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
If you plan to scale your data gathering process, it’s not always that easy to do it in-house. Even if you already have a small team of web scrapers 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, increase your hardware and bandwidth, and more. It is doable, but it can be tricky. If you want to skip all of these tedious steps for doing web scraping in-house, then 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? The thing is, not everything that you gather from the internet is clean, organized and useful data. After the scraping process, there will still be additional processes such as data cleansing, organizing, and maintenance. This means a lot of manpower and resources taken away from your business, if you’re ever handling your web scraping in-house. 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 all clean, organized and ready to use.
Varied Formats of Data Delivery
Another advantage of working with an outsourcing company is that you can request for them to provide you with your needed data in a specific format. You just need to specify what you need from them and how you want to receive it. Be it in a spreadsheet format, JSON or through an API, you get to decide on 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 get to receive the data sets that you need as frequently and as consistently as possible. This continuous flow of data for 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 less distractions from any of the preparations and issues that may arise from handling your web scraping in-house, you get to focus more on the most important processes in your business. With better focus, you can get more things done. You can simply request for regular reports or updates from your outsourcing partner to learn more about how the web scraping is going and just receive the data you need once it’s ready for you.
Conclusion
Outsourcing web scraping is definitely the way to go. By working with an outsourcing partner, 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 been providing 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.