How Can Ready-To-Use Data Fuel Your Business?

In an era of intertwined online businesses, the proverb “knowledge is power” is slowly but surely being replaced by a new one – “data is power.” Today, businesses rely heavily on data to gain valuable insights that can improve a company’s marketing strategies and business decisions.

Obtaining this data can be challenging as websites often have numerous security measures guarding their data. These roadblocks require advanced and costly web scraping bots, multiple scraping process adjustments, and data parsing and structurization, but they’re not the only way to obtain valuable insights. Ready-to-use datasets serve the same purpose but don’t need the steps above.

Such datasets are the topic of our discussion today. Stay with us as we explore the world of already scraped and structured data, show you the benefits of using these datasets, and look into various scenarios where these are useful. We’ll also elaborate on how you can choose reliable ones.

 

Scraped and Structured Data: Datasets 101

 

Employing an existing web scraping bot requires a lot of modifications, while creating a custom one for your company’s needs can be costly. The freshly scraped data must first be converted from unstructured to structured formats, and only then can your analytics teams use it to gain insights and help adjust your company’s strategies.

Instead of going this route, you can also get ready-to-use datasets. Namely, there are also data as a service (DaaS) companies, making obtaining valuable and insightful data more manageable. By creating current and real-time datasets, these companies make web scraping bots obsolete, and many businesses are taking this route instead of investing in custom-made scrapers.

 

Top Benefits of Using Datasets

 

Now that we know more about how datasets work, we can jump into their advantages over scraping data yourself. Below is a list of these ready-to-use dataset benefits.

• Eliminating Web Scraping Costs – If you go the datasets route, you’ll notice they’re often a much smaller and better investment than scraping data yourself. Namely, datasets can be pretty inexpensive compared to the costs of multiple web scraping bots or creating a custom-made one for your business’s needs.
• Structured and Ready-To-Use – While scraped data requires parsing and converting into structured formats, using datasets means skipping this step. By buying datasets, you can quickly get insightful information and peek into the current market trends, as data already comes in CSV, JSON, or other structured formats.
• Flexible Delivery Options – DaaS companies have real-time data divided into categories, ensuring no website is missed, which is a common occurrence when scraping yourself. On top of that, you can obtain this data through SFTP or cloud storage like AWS S3, as these companies often integrate well with your business’s infrastructure.
• Instantaneous Insights – Scraping data yourself is incredibly time-consuming, and you can always end up with useless data, as various dynamic JavaScript elements on websites can ruin your scraping attempt. On the other hand, buying datasets means instant access to real-time, structured data delivered upon the agreed frequency.

With such benefits, it’s clear why more and more businesses are turning toward ready-to-use datasets instead of scraping data themselves.

 

 

Datasets Utilization Scenarios

 

Data is power, and ready-to-made datasets have multiple purposes, with many companies often using them for the following:

• Finding business and investment opportunities and monitoring competitors through company datasets;
• Identifying talent, analyzing tech firms, enhancing the company’s hiring strategies, and predicting future labor market situations with job posting, community, and code datasets;
• Enhancing product analysis, finding potential risks, and keeping an eye on the competition’s offerings  through product review datasets;
• Modifying selling strategies, refining products and services, and looking into customer satisfaction with e-commerce product data;

These scenarios mainly involve standard datasets, but you can always buy datasets tailored to your company’s needs, significantly boosting their usability.

 

How to Choose Reliable Datasets

 

While data is everywhere, only some DaaS companies will fit your needs or provide quality datasets. Choosing a reliable one is crucial in creating accurate analyses that can help your business, so let’s dive into a few tips that can guide you.

1. Define your business’s data objectives and needs;
2. Look into reviewed datasets and those verified by independent researchers;
3. Find reliable and trustworthy DaaS companies that fit your data profile;
4. Continually check for the quality of the received data before analysis.

Before committing to a particular DaaS company, try others and go through these steps with each. That way, you’ll find the best datasets for your needs.

 

Conclusion

 

In the world of business intelligence, where data’s value is skyrocketing, more and more businesses are turning toward DaaS companies and ready-to-use datasets – instead of scraping data themselves, they can simply buy datasets. 

These datasets bring several advantages, including structured data, flexible delivery, and quicker market trend insights. As such, datasets are valuable in numerous industries, but finding the right DaaS company is critical for getting these benefits.