The Truth Behind Data Mining Outsourcing Service

We have come to this what we call the information era where industries are craving for useful data needed for decision making, product creations - among other vital uses for business. Data mining and converting them to become useful information is part of this trend which makes businesses to grow to their optimum potentials. However, a lot of companies cannot handle by themselves alone the processes data mining involved as they are just overwhelmed by other important tasks. This is where data mining outsourcing comes into play.

There have been a lot of definitions introduced but it can simply be explained as a process that includes sorting through huge amounts of raw data to be able to extract valuable information needed by industries and businesses in various fields. In most cases, this is done by professionals, business organizations, and financial analysts. There has been a rapid growth in the number of sectors or groups who are getting into it though.

There are a number of reasons why there is a rapid growth in data mining outsourcing service subscriptions. Some of these are presented below:

Wide Array of services included

A lot of companies are turning to data mining outsourcing because it caters a lot of services. Such services include, but not limited to congregation data from websites into database applications, collecting contact information from various websites, extracting data from websites using software, sorting stories from news sources, and accumulating business information from competitors.

A lot of companies are benefiting

A lot of industries are benefiting from it because it is quick and feasible. Information extracted by data mining outsourcing service providers are used in crucial decision-making in the area of direct marketing, e-commerce, customer relation management, health care, scientific test and other experimental endeavor, telecommunications, financial services, and a whole lot more.

Have a lot of advantages

Subscribing for data mining outsourcing service offers many advantages because providers ensure clients of rendering services with global standards. They strive to work with improved technology scalability, advanced infrastructure resources, quick turnaround time, cost-effective prices, more secure network system to ensure information safety, and increased market coverage.

Outsourcing allows companies to concentrate in their core business operations and therefore can improve overall productivity. No wonder why data mining outsourcing has been a prime choice of many businesses - it propels business towards greater profits.


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Usefulness of Web Scraping Services

For any business or organization, surveys and market research play important roles in the strategic decision-making process. Data extraction and web scraping techniques are important tools that find relevant data and information for your personal or business use. Many companies employ people to copy-paste data manually from the web pages. This process is very reliable but very costly as it results to time wastage and effort. This is so because the data collected is less compared to the resources spent and time taken to gather such data.

Nowadays, various data mining companies have developed effective web scraping techniques that can crawl over thousands of websites and their pages to harvest particular information. The information extracted is then stored into a CSV file, database, XML file, or any other source with the required format. After the data has been collected and stored, data mining process can be used to extract the hidden patterns and trends contained in the data. By understanding the correlations and patterns in the data; policies can be formulated and thereby aiding the decision-making process. The information can also be stored for future reference.

The following are some of the common examples of data extraction process:

• Scrap through a government portal in order to extract the names of the citizens who are reliable for a given survey.
• Scraping competitor websites for feature data and product pricing
• Using web scraping to download videos and images for stock photography site or for website design

Automated Data Collection
It is important to note that web scraping process allows a company to monitor the website data changes over a given time frame. It also collects the data on a routine basis regularly. Automated data collection techniques are quite important as they help companies to discover customer trends and market trends. By determining market trends, it is possible to understand the customer behavior and predict the likelihood of how the data will change.

The following are some of the examples of the automated data collection:

• Monitoring price information for the particular stocks on hourly basis
• Collecting mortgage rates from the various financial institutions on the daily basis
• Checking on weather reports on regular basis as required

By using web scraping services it is possible to extract any data that is related to your business. The data can then be downloaded into a spreadsheet or a database for it to be analyzed and compared. Storing the data in a database or in a required format makes it easier for interpretation and understanding of the correlations and for identification of the hidden patterns.

Through web scraping it is possible to get quicker and accurate results and thus saving many resources in terms of money and time. With data extraction services, it is possible to fetch information about pricing, mailing, database, profile data, and competitors data on a consistent basis. With the emergence of professional data mining companies outsourcing your services will greatly reduce your costs and at the same time you are assured of high quality services.


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Data Mining - Techniques and Process of Data Mining

Data mining as the name suggest is extracting informative data from a huge source of information. It is like segregating a drop from the ocean. Here a drop is the most important information essential for your business, and the ocean is the huge database built up by you.

Recognized in Business

Businesses have become too creative, by coming up with new patterns and trends and of behavior through data mining techniques or automated statistical analysis. Once the desired information is found from the huge database it could be used for various applications. If you want to get involved into other functions of your business you should take help of professional data mining services available in the industry

Data Collection

Data collection is the first step required towards a constructive data-mining program. Almost all businesses require collecting data. It is the process of finding important data essential for your business, filtering and preparing it for a data mining outsourcing process. For those who are already have experience to track customer data in a database management system, have probably achieved their destination.

Algorithm selection

You may select one or more data mining algorithms to resolve your problem. You already have database. You may experiment using several techniques. Your selection of algorithm depends upon the problem that you are want to resolve, the data collected, as well as the tools you possess.

Regression Technique

The most well-know and the oldest statistical technique utilized for data mining is regression. Using a numerical dataset, it then further develops a mathematical formula applicable to the data. Here taking your new data use it into existing mathematical formula developed by you and you will get a prediction of future behavior. Now knowing the use is not enough. You will have to learn about its limitations associated with it. This technique works best with continuous quantitative data as age, speed or weight. While working on categorical data as gender, name or color, where order is not significant it better to use another suitable technique.

Classification Technique

There is another technique, called classification analysis technique which is suitable for both, categorical data as well as a mix of categorical and numeric data. Compared to regression technique, classification technique can process a broader range of data, and therefore is popular. Here one can easily interpret output. Here you will get a decision tree requiring a series of binary decisions.



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The A B C D of Data Mining Services

If you are very new to the term 'data mining', let the meaning be explained to you. It is form of back office support services that are being offered by many call centers to analyze data from numerous resources and amalgamate them for some useful task. The business establishments in the present generation need to develop a strategy that helps them to cooperate with the market trends and allow them to perform well. The process of data mining is actually the retrieval process of essential and informative data that helps an organization to analyze the business perspectives and can further generate better interests in cutting cost, developing revenue and to acquire valuable data on business services/products.

It is a powerful analytical tool that permits the user to customize a wide range of data in different formats and categories as per their necessity. The data mining process is an integral part of a business plan for companies that need to undertake a diverse research on the customer building process. These analytical skills are generally performed by skilled industrial experts who assist the firms to accelerate their growth through the critical business activities. With a vast applicability in the present time, the back office support services with the data mining process is helping the businesses in understanding and predicting valuable information. Some of them include:

    Profiles of customers
    Customer buying behavior
    Customer buying trends
    Industry analysis

For a layman it is somewhat the process of processing some statistical data or methods. These processes are implemented with some specific tools that preform the following:

    Automated model scoring
    Business templates
    Computing target columns
    Database integration
    Exporting models to other applications
    Incorporating financial information

There are some benefits of Data Mining. Few of them are as follows:

    To understand the requirements of the customers which can help in efficient planning.
    Helps in minimizing risk and improve ROI.
    Generate more business and target the relevant market.
    Risk free outsourcing experience
    Provide data access to business analysts
    A better understanding of the demand supply graph
    Improve profitability by detect unusual pattern in sales, claims, transactions
    To cut down the expenses of Direct Marketing

Data mining is generally a part of the offshore back office services and outsourced to business establishments that require diverse data base on customers and their particular approach towards any service or product. For example banks, telecommunication companies, insurance companies, etc. require huge data base to promote their new policies. If you represent a similar company that needs appropriate data mining process then it is better that you outsource back office support services from a third party and fulfill your business goals with excellent results.

Katie Cardwell works as a senior sales and marketing analyst for a multinational call center company, based in United States of America. She takes care of all the business operations and analysis the back office support services that power an organization. Her extensive knowledge and expertise on Non -voice call center services such as Data Mining Services, Back office support services, etc, have helped many business players to stand with a straight spine and thus making a foothold in the data processing industry.


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Unleash the Hidden Potential of Your Business Data With Data Mining and Extraction Services

Every business, small or large, is continuously amassing data about customers, employees and nearly every process in their business cycle. Although all management staff utilize data collected from their business as a basis for decision making in areas such as marketing, forecasting, planning and trouble-shooting, very often they are just barely scratching the surface. Manual data analysis is time-consuming and error-prone, and its limited functions result in the overlooking of valuable information that improve bottom-lines. Often, the sheer quantity of data prevents accurate and useful analysis by those without the necessary technology and experience. It is an unfortunate reality that much of this data goes to waste and companies often never realize that a valuable resource is being left untapped.

Automated data mining services allow your company to tap into the latent potential of large volumes of raw data and convert it into information that can be used in decision-making. While the use of the latest software makes data mining and data extraction fast and affordable, experienced professional data analysts are a key part of the data mining services offered by our company. Making the most of your data involves more than automatically generated reports from statistical software. It takes analysis and interpretation skills that can only be performed by experienced data analysis experts to ensure that your business databases are translated into information that you can easily comprehend and use in almost every aspect of your business.

Who Can Benefit From Data Mining Services?

If you are wondering what types of companies can benefit from data extraction services, the answer is virtually every type of business. This includes organizations dealing in customer service, sales and marketing, financial products, research and insurance.

How is Raw Data Converted to Useful Information?

There are several steps in data mining and extraction, but the most important thing for you as a business owner is to be assured that, throughout the process, the confidentiality of your data is our primary concern. Upon receiving your data, it is converted into the necessary format so that it can be entered into a data warehouse system. Next, it is compiled into a database, which is then sifted through by data mining experts to identify relevant data. Our trained and experienced staff then scan and analyze your data using a variety of methods to identify association or relationships between variables; clusters and classes, to identify correlations and groups within your data; and patterns, which allow trends to be identified and predictions to be made. Finally, the results are compiled in the form of written reports, visual data and spreadsheets, according to the needs of your business.

Our team of data mining, extraction and analyses experts have already helped a great number of businesses to tap into the potential of their raw data, with our speedy, cost-efficient and confidential services. Contact us today for more information on how our data mining and extraction services can help your business.


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Data Mining Is Useful for Business Application and Market Research Services

One day of data mining is an important tool in a market for modern business and market research to transform data into an information system advantage. Most companies in India that offers a complete solution and services for these services. The extraction or to provide companies with important information for analysis and research.

These services are primarily today by companies because the firm body search of all trade associations, retail, financial or market, the institute and the government needs a large amount of information for their development of market research. This service allows you to receive all types of information when needed. With this method, you simply remove your name and information filter.

This service is of great importance, because their applications to help businesses understand that it can perform actions and consumer buying trends and industry analysis, etc. There are business applications use these services:
1) Research Services
2) consumption behavior
3) E-commerce
4) Direct marketing
5) financial services and
6) customer relationship management, etc.

Benefits of Data mining services in Business

• Understand the customer need for better decision
• Generate more business
• Target the Relevant Market.
• Risk free outsourcing experience
• Provide data access to business analysts
• Help to minimize risk and improve ROI.
• Improve profitability by detect unusual pattern in sales, claims, transactions
• Major decrease in Direct Marketing expenses

Understanding the customer's need for a better fit to generate more business target market.To provide risk-free outsourcing experience data access for business analysts to minimize risk and improve return on investment.

The use of these services in the area to help ensure that the data more relevant to business applications. The different types of text mining such as mining, web mining, relational databases, data mining, graphics, audio and video industry, which all used in enterprise applications.


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Internet Data Mining - How Does it Help Businesses?

Internet has become an indispensable medium for people to conduct different types of businesses and transactions too. This has given rise to the employment of different internet data mining tools and strategies so that they could better their main purpose of existence on the internet platform and also increase their customer base manifold.

Internet data-mining encompasses various processes of collecting and summarizing different data from various websites or webpage contents or make use of different login procedures so that they could identify various patterns. With the help of internet data-mining it becomes extremely easy to spot a potential competitor, pep up the customer support service on the website and make it more customers oriented.

There are different types of internet data_mining techniques which include content, usage and structure mining. Content mining focuses more on the subject matter that is present on a website which includes the video, audio, images and text. Usage mining focuses on a process where the servers report the aspects accessed by users through the server access logs. This data helps in creating an effective and an efficient website structure. Structure mining focuses on the nature of connection of the websites. This is effective in finding out the similarities between various websites.

Also known as web data_mining, with the aid of the tools and the techniques, one can predict the potential growth in a selective market regarding a specific product. Data gathering has never been so easy and one could make use of a variety of tools to gather data and that too in simpler methods. With the help of the data mining tools, screen scraping, web harvesting and web crawling have become very easy and requisite data can be put readily into a usable style and format. Gathering data from anywhere in the web has become as simple as saying 1-2-3. Internet data-mining tools therefore are effective predictors of the future trends that the business might take.


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Data Mining Services

You will get all solutions regarding data mining from many companies in India. You can consult a variety of companies for data mining services and considering the variety is beneficial to customers. These companies also offer web research services which will help companies to perform critical business activities.

Very competitive prices for commodities will be the results where there is competition among qualified players in the data mining, data collection services and other computer-based services. Every company willing to cut down their costs regarding outsourcing data mining services and BPO data mining services will benefit from the companies offering data mining services in India. In addition, web research services are being sourced from the companies.

Outsourcing is a great way to reduce costs regarding labor, and companies in India will benefit from companies in India as well as from outside the country. The most famous aspect of outsourcing is data entry. Preference of outsourcing services from offshore countries has been a practice by companies to reduce costs, and therefore, it is not a wonder getting outsource data mining to India.

For companies which are seeking for outsourcing services such as outsource web data extraction, it is good to consider a variety of companies. The comparison will help them get best quality of service and businesses will grow rapidly in regard to the opportunities provided by the outsourcing companies. Outsourcing does not only provide opportunities for companies to reduce costs but to get labor where countries are experiencing shortage.

Outsourcing presents good and fast communication opportunity to companies. People will be communicating at the most convenient time they have to get the job done. The company is able to gather dedicated resources and team to accomplish their purpose. Outsourcing is a good way of getting a good job because the company will look for the best workforce. In addition, the competition for the outsourcing provides a rich ground to get the best providers.

In order to retain the job, providers will need to perform very well. The company will be getting high quality services even in regard to the price they are offering. In fact, it is possible to get people to work on your projects. Companies are able to get work done with the shortest time possible. For instance, where there is a lot of work to be done, companies may post the projects onto the websites and the projects will get people to work on them. The time factor comes in where the company will not have to wait if it wants the projects completed immediately.

Outsourcing has been effective in cutting labor costs because companies will not have to pay the extra amount required to retain employees such as the allowances relating to travels, as well as housing and health. These responsibilities are met by the companies that employ people on a permanent basis. The opportunity presented by the outsourcing of data and services is comfort among many other things because these jobs can be completed at home. This is the reason why the jobs will be preferred more in the future.



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Enjoy Valuable Advantages of Finding Professional Online Data Entry Services

Outsourcing is eyed as a cost-effective means to make the business cycle run. The market consists of a lot of heartened buyers who have enjoyed the fruits of outsourcing by compensating a trivial sum to online data entry service providers. They have felt that the sum they shelled out to these services is quite insignificant when compared to the work they got completed by doing so. Of late, its effect among corporate people is so huge that even those who did not prefer to outsource their projects have embraced this practice realizing quite a few of the several advantages that it has in store. Online Data Entry Services is subcontracted to a lot of individuals and other smaller business units that take such projects as their prime source of occupation.

Many services are distributed to companies who approach these online data entry service providers. Some of the commonly used services are web research, mortgage research, product entry and lastly data mining and extraction services. Adept professionals are at your service in these service providers as those who run such units strongly believe in deploying a team of skilled professionals to help clients realize results as quick as possible. Moreover, the systems that are up for utilization in these units are technically advanced both in terms of utility and security hence you need not fear for having outsourced some crucial data sheets belonging to your company. These providers value your information as how they treasure you association and hence you need not actually care a lot about the confidentiality of your information.

Business firms can look forward to receiving high-class data entry from the hands of online data entry services that undertake such projects. Some of the below-mentioned points are a short listing of what interests business in subcontracting the work to professionals.

    Keying in the data happens to be the first phase at the end of which the companies get understandable information to make strategic decisions with. What appeared as raw data represented by mere numbers some time ago is a pointer or a guide, at present, to accelerate business progress.
    Systems being used for such processes offer complete protection to the information.
    As chances of obtaining high quality information rises, the company's business executive is expected to arrive at excellent decisions that reflect on the company's better performance in future.
    Turnaround time is considerably shortened.
    Cost-effective approach does hold a lot of substance since it considerably decreases the operational overheads related to data entry services within the business wing of the company itself.

Saving money and time holds a unique advantage and outsourcing of such online data entry services proffers these businesses this distinctive edge. Thriving companies intend to focus on their core operations instead of delving into such non-core activities, which do not weigh as good as other essential industrial operations that they need to look after. Why should one take and put these chores on themselves when some professionals who are capable of delivering effective results can be picked from the outsourcing market.


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Realtor.com details anti-scraping efforts

Realtor.com operator Move Inc. says it’s blocking automated Web bots from accessing more than 1 million pages a day on the listing site, and that such efforts have resulted in a sharp decline in attempts at "scraping."

The company says it monitors about 137 million interactions on the site per day, looking for patterns that indicate illicit behavior such as the systematic copying of listing data, blocking suspicious IPs from accessing Realtor.com.

Realtor.com gets its listing data directly from multiple listing services (MLSs). According to a survey of MLS executives by the Council of Multiple Listing Services (CMLS), most are concerned about scraping — the unauthorized copying and reuse of their listing data.

"Scraping happens everyday, and it’s something that’s surprisingly inexpensive for cybercriminals to do," Move Creative Director Amit Kulkarni said in a blog post detailing the company’s anti-scraping efforts.

As an example, Kulkarni posted a solicitation from a website where companies or individuals put projects they want to contract out to programmers up for bid.

"I am looking for someone to write a program to scrape data from Realtor.com," the bid request said. "The program would take U.S. ZIP codes (from a ‘.txt’ file), input them into Realtor.com, and then take the output from the pages that follow and create a ‘.csv’ file for each ZIP code. Ultimately, I will be running the program for thousands of different ZIP codes. I am willing to pay up to $50 for this program."
- See more at: http://www.inman.com/2012/04/20/realtorcom-details-anti-scraping-efforts/#sthash.dJcEugh6.dpuf

he post attracted 12 bids, closing on March 26, 2011, with the status, "awarded."

But Kulkarni said Realtor.com has been so successful at thwarting such efforts that scraping attempts are on the decline, falling from 385 million attempts in October 2011 to 75 million attempts in February.

Brian Larson, president of consulting firm Larson/Sobotka Business Advisors LLC, told Inman News in December that he expects more MLSs will go after "data pirates" who redistribute MLS data without authorization, and that his firm was working with clients to evaluate ways of shutting them down.



Source: http://www.inman.com/2012/04/20/realtorcom-details-anti-scraping-efforts/

Data Mining and Financial Data Analysis

Introduction:

Most marketers understand the value of collecting financial data, but also realize the challenges of leveraging this knowledge to create intelligent, proactive pathways back to the customer. Data mining - technologies and techniques for recognizing and tracking patterns within data - helps businesses sift through layers of seemingly unrelated data for meaningful relationships, where they can anticipate, rather than simply react to, customer needs as well as financial need. In this accessible introduction, we provides a business and technological overview of data mining and outlines how, along with sound business processes and complementary technologies, data mining can reinforce and redefine for financial analysis.

Objective:

1. The main objective of mining techniques is to discuss how customized data mining tools should be developed for financial data analysis.

2. Usage pattern, in terms of the purpose can be categories as per the need for financial analysis.

3. Develop a tool for financial analysis through data mining techniques.

Data mining:

Data mining is the procedure for extracting or mining knowledge for the large quantity of data or we can say data mining is "knowledge mining for data" or also we can say Knowledge Discovery in Database (KDD). Means data mining is : data collection , database creation, data management, data analysis and understanding.

There are some steps in the process of knowledge discovery in database, such as

1. Data cleaning. (To remove nose and inconsistent data)

2. Data integration. (Where multiple data source may be combined.)

3. Data selection. (Where data relevant to the analysis task are retrieved from the database.)

4. Data transformation. (Where data are transformed or consolidated into forms appropriate for mining by performing summary or aggregation operations, for instance)

5. Data mining. (An essential process where intelligent methods are applied in order to extract data patterns.)

6. Pattern evaluation. (To identify the truly interesting patterns representing knowledge based on some interesting measures.)

7. Knowledge presentation.(Where visualization and knowledge representation techniques are used to present the mined knowledge to the user.)

Data Warehouse:

A data warehouse is a repository of information collected from multiple sources, stored under a unified schema and which usually resides at a single site.

Text:

Most of the banks and financial institutions offer a wide verity of banking services such as checking, savings, business and individual customer transactions, credit and investment services like mutual funds etc. Some also offer insurance services and stock investment services.

There are different types of analysis available, but in this case we want to give one analysis known as "Evolution Analysis".

Data evolution analysis is used for the object whose behavior changes over time. Although this may include characterization, discrimination, association, classification, or clustering of time related data, means we can say this evolution analysis is done through the time series data analysis, sequence or periodicity pattern matching and similarity based data analysis.

Data collect from banking and financial sectors are often relatively complete, reliable and high quality, which gives the facility for analysis and data mining. Here we discuss few cases such as,

Eg, 1. Suppose we have stock market data of the last few years available. And we would like to invest in shares of best companies. A data mining study of stock exchange data may identify stock evolution regularities for overall stocks and for the stocks of particular companies. Such regularities may help predict future trends in stock market prices, contributing our decision making regarding stock investments.

Eg, 2. One may like to view the debt and revenue change by month, by region and by other factors along with minimum, maximum, total, average, and other statistical information. Data ware houses, give the facility for comparative analysis and outlier analysis all are play important roles in financial data analysis and mining.

Eg, 3. Loan payment prediction and customer credit analysis are critical to the business of the bank. There are many factors can strongly influence loan payment performance and customer credit rating. Data mining may help identify important factors and eliminate irrelevant one.

Factors related to the risk of loan payments like term of the loan, debt ratio, payment to income ratio, credit history and many more. The banks than decide whose profile shows relatively low risks according to the critical factor analysis.

We can perform the task faster and create a more sophisticated presentation with financial analysis software. These products condense complex data analyses into easy-to-understand graphic presentations. And there's a bonus: Such software can vault our practice to a more advanced business consulting level and help we attract new clients.

To help us find a program that best fits our needs-and our budget-we examined some of the leading packages that represent, by vendors' estimates, more than 90% of the market. Although all the packages are marketed as financial analysis software, they don't all perform every function needed for full-spectrum analyses. It should allow us to provide a unique service to clients.

The Products:

ACCPAC CFO (Comprehensive Financial Optimizer) is designed for small and medium-size enterprises and can help make business-planning decisions by modeling the impact of various options. This is accomplished by demonstrating the what-if outcomes of small changes. A roll forward feature prepares budgets or forecast reports in minutes. The program also generates a financial scorecard of key financial information and indicators.

Customized Financial Analysis by BizBench provides financial benchmarking to determine how a company compares to others in its industry by using the Risk Management Association (RMA) database. It also highlights key ratios that need improvement and year-to-year trend analysis. A unique function, Back Calculation, calculates the profit targets or the appropriate asset base to support existing sales and profitability. Its DuPont Model Analysis demonstrates how each ratio affects return on equity.

Financial Analysis CS reviews and compares a client's financial position with business peers or industry standards. It also can compare multiple locations of a single business to determine which are most profitable. Users who subscribe to the RMA option can integrate with Financial Analysis CS, which then lets them provide aggregated financial indicators of peers or industry standards, showing clients how their businesses compare.

iLumen regularly collects a client's financial information to provide ongoing analysis. It also provides benchmarking information, comparing the client's financial performance with industry peers. The system is Web-based and can monitor a client's performance on a monthly, quarterly and annual basis. The network can upload a trial balance file directly from any accounting software program and provide charts, graphs and ratios that demonstrate a company's performance for the period. Analysis tools are viewed through customized dashboards.

PlanGuru by New Horizon Technologies can generate client-ready integrated balance sheets, income statements and cash-flow statements. The program includes tools for analyzing data, making projections, forecasting and budgeting. It also supports multiple resulting scenarios. The system can calculate up to 21 financial ratios as well as the breakeven point. PlanGuru uses a spreadsheet-style interface and wizards that guide users through data entry. It can import from Excel, QuickBooks, Peachtree and plain text files. It comes in professional and consultant editions. An add-on, called the Business Analyzer, calculates benchmarks.

ProfitCents by Sageworks is Web-based, so it requires no software or updates. It integrates with QuickBooks, CCH, Caseware, Creative Solutions and Best Software applications. It also provides a wide variety of businesses analyses for nonprofits and sole proprietorships. The company offers free consulting, training and customer support. It's also available in Spanish.

ProfitSystem fx Profit Driver by CCH Tax and Accounting provides a wide range of financial diagnostics and analytics. It provides data in spreadsheet form and can calculate benchmarking against industry standards. The program can track up to 40 periods.



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PDF Scraping: Making Modern File Formats More Accessible

Data scraping is the process of automatically sorting through information contained on the internet inside html, PDF or other documents and collecting relevant information to into databases and spreadsheets for later retrieval. On most websites, the text is easily and accessibly written in the source code but an increasing number of businesses are using Adobe PDF format (Portable Document Format: A format which can be viewed by the free Adobe Acrobat software on almost any operating system. See below for a link.). The advantage of PDF format is that the document looks exactly the same no matter which computer you view it from making it ideal for business forms, specification sheets, etc.; the disadvantage is that the text is converted into an image from which you often cannot easily copy and paste. PDF Scraping is the process of data scraping information contained in PDF files. To PDF scrape a PDF document, you must employ a more diverse set of tools.

There are two main types of PDF files: those built from a text file and those built from an image (likely scanned in). Adobe's own software is capable of PDF scraping from text-based PDF files but special tools are needed for PDF scraping text from image-based PDF files. The primary tool for PDF scraping is the OCR program. OCR, or Optical Character Recognition, programs scan a document for small pictures that they can separate into letters. These pictures are then compared to actual letters and if matches are found, the letters are copied into a file. OCR programs can perform PDF scraping of image-based PDF files quite accurately but they are not perfect.

Once the OCR program or Adobe program has finished PDF scraping a document, you can search through the data to find the parts you are most interested in. This information can then be stored into your favorite database or spreadsheet program. Some PDF scraping programs can sort the data into databases and/or spreadsheets automatically making your job that much easier.

Quite often you will not find a PDF scraping program that will obtain exactly the data you want without customization. Surprisingly a search on Google only turned up one business, (the amusingly named ScrapeGoat.com http://www.ScrapeGoat.com) that will create a customized PDF scraping utility for your project. A handful of off the shelf utilities claim to be customizable, but seem to require a bit of programming knowledge and time commitment to use effectively. Obtaining the data yourself with one of these tools may be possible but will likely prove quite tedious and time consuming. It may be advisable to contract a company that specializes in PDF scraping to do it for you quickly and professionally.

Let's explore some real world examples of the uses of PDF scraping technology. A group at Cornell University wanted to improve a database of technical documents in PDF format by taking the old PDF file where the links and references were just images of text and changing the links and references into working clickable links thus making the database easy to navigate and cross-reference. They employed a PDF scraping utility to deconstruct the PDF files and figure out where the links were. They then could create a simple script to re-create the PDF files with working links replacing the old text image.

A computer hardware vendor wanted to display specifications data for his hardware on his website. He hired a company to perform PDF scraping of the hardware documentation on the manufacturers' website and save the PDF scraped data into a database he could use to update his webpage automatically.

PDF Scraping is just collecting information that is available on the public internet. PDF Scraping does not violate copyright laws.

PDF Scraping is a great new technology that can significantly reduce your workload if it involves retrieving information from PDF files. Applications exist that can help you with smaller, easier PDF Scraping projects but companies exist that will create custom applications for larger or more intricate PDF Scraping jobs.


Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?PDF-Scraping:-Making-Modern-File-Formats-More-Accessible&id=193321

Scraping vs Indexing of IDX data

MIBOR – the Metropolitan Indianapolis Board of REALTORS has recently responded to a complaint regarding a violation of their IDX rules and regulations – specifically the “anti-scraping” regulations.

MIBOR has correctly responded to the complaint ruling that an IDX property search page which allows data to be copied and re-purposed is in violation of their rules.  I begin this post with this acknowledgement to clarify that MIBOR is in no way behaving badly.  Indeed, they are enforcing their published rules and regulations correctly.

This issue has created a very difficult situation for MIBOR, NAR, and the unfortunate member of MIBOR who is in violation of the rules.  Clearly the member had no intention of violating the rules – it is a case of confusion between the term “scraping” and “indexing” of an agent’s real estate listing website.

Here are some common definitions of the terms:

scraping is a technique in which a computer program extracts data from the display output of another program.

An index is any data structure which improves the performance of look-up.  Indexing is the task of creating that data structure using spiders.

Spiders are programs that automatically fetches data to feed search engine results.

In this case, Google has indexed listing information on a real estate agent’s website in a way that easily allows a consumer to access that information with a click-through.  At issue here is the notion that Google has scraped components of the listing information and displayed that in the search result which links to the agent’s IDX compliant listing detail page.  As such, Google has both “indexed” and “scraped” the data.

I applaud NAR for stepping up to tackle this issue in a way that serves the best interests of the member, broker, Association of REALTORS, and the MLS.  Modifying this rule to allow for indexing and limiting scraping will take some highly technical lawyering.  Indeed, the differences between scraping and indexing is a matter of use case and intent rather than technique.  The legal bill for sorting this out is likely to be a big one :-)

What I believe is more at issue here is the notion that third party websites like Trulia and Zillow do not need to adhere to these rules – giving them a huge advantage at winning the eyes of consumers through search engine optimization techniques that agents and brokers are forbidden from pursuing.


Source: http://waves.wavgroup.com/2009/05/19/scraping-vs-indexing-of-idx-data/