There is a great onus being placed on digital transformation now and over the past few years. The pandemic certainly showed how important eCommerce and having a digital platform was for business, and many companies left stuck behind found themselves in dire straits.
In 2019, before Covid struck, about 70% of businesses either had a digital transformation plan ready or were working on one. To show how seriously these businesses were taking DT, about 40% of tech budgets were for digital transformation.
This transformation helps businesses streamline by adding more automation to their processes. And one way to create more automation is to use proxies to help with data collection.
Why do you need to streamline your operations in 2023?
The last few years were hard for workers, families, and businesses alike. There were temporary lockdowns during the pandemic which unfortunately led to many permanent closures.
Even with financial aid from the government, numerous businesses have struggled to emerge from the grip of Covid, and those that have are now battling with record inflation and rising costs for materials and manufacturing.
Streamlining operations is necessary to cut costs, improve efficiency, and increase productivity. Proxies for business users can help by allowing automated data scraping and API requests.
Is automation an effective way to gather data?
If you use a proxy and the right tools you can set up an automated data scraping project. Automation is effective because it is fast, and ensures fewer mistakes are made.
The consulting firm, Gartner, estimates that automation can save up to 25,000 hours of correcting human errors when used in finance operations. This can mean cost savings of over $870,000 approximately.
The risk of human error is why businesses are expected to put around $3.4 trillion into digital transformation strategies in the next 3 years. You can of course collect data manually, but some margin for human error exists, and automation would be vastly less expensive.
Why are proxies needed for automated web scraping?
You might think that you can set up some code or use a program to run your web scraping project and that would be it. However, your activities need to be masked so that they may carry on unhindered.
There is no need to be alarmed here, you can web scrape without fear of a knock on the door, but the sites that you wish to search can shut you down without warning. Websites are monitored for unusual activity including web scraping. And if your IP flags up then you will be added to a blacklist.
This means that you will no longer be able to access that website, and your chances of gathering data will be nil unless you use a proxy.
A proxy will provide you with an alternative IP address so that your web scraping can continue unabated. By rotating residential IP addresses you will look like a regular visitor to a website and attract little attention.
This will let you continue automating your data gathering, and hopefully bring some much-needed financial gains. At the end of last year, 98% of CEOs said they expected a US recession to come according to one PR Newswire report. If this is true then automated processes will be more vital than ever.
Is automation the way businesses are heading now?
Automation in the business allows for all manner of tedious and repetitive tasks to be handled with minimal human contact. This results in time and money being saved and allows workers to handle far more important processes.
Web scraping can be automated to assist with SEO, rankings, market research, and email harvesting. Without automation, this wouldn’t be financially viable.
Clearly, not all employees like automation, and they worry about losing their jobs. But, when certain areas are automated correctly, they can free up workers from mundane tasks and reduce human error. This can make employees more productive and happier.
Is data scraping always a good idea?
Depending on how you use your web scrapers, you could generate some highly valuable information. The data will need to be cleaned, and not all of it will be usable, but you can gather historical data on other companies in your sector, and scrape their social media for potential leads.
SEO strategies improve business success when implemented correctly, and data scraping is invaluable in discovering what keywords and tags your rivals use, and this can lead to higher search rankings.
However, web scraping is not good when it is used to directly copy video, images, and text content to be used on another site.
Summary
Automation goes back to just after the Second World War and probably came to the public’s attention when car manufacturers started to lay people off in preference for robots.
But, automated processes are commonplace now across all manner of industries. Using proxies for data scraping is just another way to introduce automation to the workplace, and one that can help to reduce costs and time.