Business Intelligence is an important tool in the business world today.
The internet allows for a massive amount of data to be readily available to those who know how to gather it and make meaning out of it. However, with so much data to sift through, it can be challenging, time consuming and costly to drill down to the data that really matters for your business.
Automated web scraping services, such as data scraping by Scraping Solutions, allow you to collect the data that you need with a few click of a button. Web scraping is the process of crawling through visible content on the internet in order to find and extract specific sets of data. This makes the processes of data extraction infinitely easier and less time consuming.
Business Intelligence & Web Scraping
Business intelligence is the process of analyzing data in order to make informed business decisions based on facts and patterns through the use of technology. Business intelligence begins with collecting data, which is then analysed and assembled in reports so that management can use the information to make better decisions.
Though Business Intelligence can take multiple forms and utilise a broad range of methods and technologies, data collection is the basis of each venture. Web scraping is a method of data collection that allows the business to get insights on their larger environment, such as customers and competitors. The data gathered can then be used to inform decisions and strategies.
Customers
In any business, customers are crucial for success. Businesses must be attuned to the needs and wants of their customers, and they need to know who their customers are and how they can be reached. Customer satisfaction is always a concern, as businesses seek new ways of improving customer experience in order to ensure a good reputation and customer retention.
Valuable customer insights can be gathered through web scraping.
Customer sentiments can be ascertained through reviews and social media. User behaviors and demographics can also be gathered without the hassle and expense of lengthy market research methods like surveys and focus group.
Customer insights can be used to inform product offerings, research and development, ad campaigns and brand decisions, among other things.
Competitors
After customers, competitors are the most important things for a business to keep tabs on. Business Intelligence tools not only focus on your own offerings, but also highlight the importance of how you compare to competitors.
Web scraping gathers competitive intelligence that you can use to inform your business decisions in order to give you an edge on the competition. A common example of how this is used is on pricing decisions. You can gather data on how competitors price similar products and determine the best price for your own product based on the analysis of this data.
Competitive pricing allows you to increase your profits by determining the price that will make you the most sales and the most money.
Better data = better decisions
As the premise of business intelligence is to use data to inform business decisions, it stands to reason that better data will give you better decisions.
Using a web scraping service makes it easy to get the exact data you want by programming customised extractions based on your needs. This gives you better quality data than manual extraction and minimises risk of errors.
The data gathered through web scraping is also more significant than data collected elsewhere because it is a constant collection, allowing you real time access to information. You know what’s happening now, allowing you to make better decisions for the future.