Will management at tech companies really demand drastic cutbacks?
The short answer is most likely yes – Considering tech stocks dropped 13.3% by April’s end, the Fed raised interest rates, and investors dumped tech stocks on a massive scale. All this points to the fact that technology companies will be looking to ‘become more efficient’.
But even if management is not yet breathing down your neck, senior executives would serve themselves well by proactively seeking out ways to optimize operational output.
By taking this kind of initiative, and preemptively making tough decisions, you can stand out as a strong leader, and be viewed as an asset to the company in the longer term.
What you need is an action plan to help your department run more efficiently so that you can show concrete results by the end of this quarter.
Start improving your team’s bottom line by outsourcing web data collection
Web data collection (also known as scraping) is something that you are probably doing regularly as part of many aspects of your department’s day-to-day workflow:
Strategic/competitive analysis
This includes collecting web data pertaining to your company’s dynamic pricing models, services/products being offered in comparison with competitors (e.g. product catalogs) as well as real-time consumer demand/feedback (e.g. marketplace reviews, social media sentiment analysis).
System backend / product optimization
This consists of all data being fed to systems in order to enable your technology to configure, analyze, and make intelligible recommendations. For example, a company that has a platform for stock recommendations that collects data points pertaining to stock trade volume, sentiment regarding certain securities as well as news stories that can influence valuations.
Marketing campaigns
Marketing departments collect data that sheds light on competitor ad campaigns including messaging, imagery, and user engagement in order to optimize campaigns. User-generated web data from marketplaces, social media, and search engines help spotlight where consumer demand/interest currently lies.
Start thinking about how you outsource your web data collection operations as part of your game plan to become a leaner, more efficient machine. This will enable you to leverage the more specialized, knowledge-based infrastructure, technology, and manpower of a third party.
Outsourcing models
Project-based web data collection outsourcing
This option works great for departments that are consistently dealing with new markets, products, and audiences. When you need to present a Proof of Concept (POC) for how your company’s app can respond better to live data, for example, you will probably need massive amounts of web data. By relying on third-party infrastructure, your data collection operations can be scaled up or down based on your real-time needs so that you can have more dynamic workflows and tweak your budget on a need-be basis.
Operational-based web data collection outsourcing
This is an approach that will help you augment your department’s capabilities by maximizing their output without the need for hiring new team members. This option will help you save on costs such as payroll, admin, recruitment, as well as onboarding. By relying on third-party architecture, your product developers, growth teams, and customer satisfaction reps will be able to quickly gain access to real-time user/customer/competitor-generated data. This will in turn help them achieve better results by reducing the time it takes from ‘data collection’ to ‘informed action’.
The bottom line
Outsourcing web data collection will enable you to cut costs and be more efficient by:
- Eliminating the effort and time required to clean and enhance raw data sets.
- Mitigating the costs of building, and maintaining target Datasets by dividing the resources needed for data discovery and enrichment among a handful of companies.
- Leveraging the hardware/software, data collection know-how, and DevOps/IT personnel of a third-party company, shifting the burden of maintenance, Research and Development (R&D), and cybersecurity to a service provider.
Start cutting costs, and put your action plan into motion by outsourcing your web data collection workflows.
