August 12, 2022

Benefits of Data Extraction - Comprehensive Guide for 2022

You may wonder, what exactly is data extraction and how does it work? Furthermore, you would also want to know its benefits. This guide on benefits of data extraction will help you understand how data extraction helps a business get that competitive edge.

Data extraction is one of the vital activities for any business that deals with a large amount of unstructured and semi-structured data. It has especially gained more prominence as businesses need to deal with an increased amount of data.

What is Data Extraction?

Data extraction is the process of getting information from a source and processing it to help improve organisational processes. The ETP (Extract Translate Load) process has one of the vital activities that include data extraction. Businesses use data extraction as an activity to lay the foundation for successful analysis and improve their decision-making.

Data extraction often gets used when performing data mining on large databases or websites. Data miners should be able to extract relevant information from these sources to analyze and determine what patterns exist within them.

The data extraction process involves two steps: extracting and formatting. The first step involves taking the raw data from its original form and putting it into a more usable form. For example, if you want to mine tweets from Twitter, you will have to extract individual tweets from their original format before analysing the content for patterns.

The second step involves changing the format of this extracted information. It can help other applications like Excel read the information better.

What is the Importance of Data Extraction?

Data extraction is a critical activity that can make or break an organisation’s efforts to make the best sense of its data. According to a study, the market size of data extraction will increase at a CAGR of 11.8% between 2020 and 2027. It will grow from $2.14 billion in 2019 to reach $4.90 billion by 2027.

Data extraction is thus a crucial part of any business as it helps make informed decisions about operations. Data extraction helps companies automate their processes, which reduces human error, saves time and money spent on manual work, and enhances efficiency.

Here’s a Detailed Version of the Benefits of Data Extraction for Businesses

Helps in Decision-Making

Data extraction provides vital information to businesses to help them make informed decisions about their investments, operations, and products and services offered by them. It helps companies make strategic decisions regarding marketing campaigns, new product development, etc.

Reduces Manual Labor

Manual labor is an expensive affair as it involves hiring more people and providing them with ample training to extract data from different sources like emails, PDF files, etc. Data extraction software allows businesses to avoid hiring more staff members or outsourcing this task.

Data Extraction ETL

The ETL process can help you understand the importance of the data extraction process. ETL is one of the critical activities that allows you to collate data from various disparate sources and integrate them into a common format. Here’s how the ETL procedure works.

Data Extraction

Extraction involves mining data from different sources and systems. The first step of the process is identifying the data before transforming and processing it. You can bring varied data types to mine and make it relevant for business intelligence.

Data Extraction Transform

You can refine the data when you extract it successfully. The transformation step involves sorting, structuring, and sanitizing the data to make it suitable for further processes. The sanitization process includes removing duplicate entries, eliminating missing information, and auditing the information to ensure accuracy.

Data Extraction Loading

This is the last step in the process you can reach with the help of quality data. You need to supply the data to a unified target location.

What are the Different Types of Data?

There are several ways you can categorise data. Here’s how you can do that. Let’s first look at data classification according to their source.

Digital Sources

Digital sources are data captured and stored in a digital format. The different digital data sources include emails, Word files, spreadsheets, e-invoices, etc. You can organise them as either structured or unstructured data. Structured data gets stored in organised fields and values, while unstructured data does not follow that. You can use data scraping techniques to extract relevant information from digital sources.

Physical Sources

Physical data sources can be plenty, including books, newspapers, hard copy invoices, letters, brochures, marketing materials, etc. An example of a physical source is the data on a customer's invoice printed on paper and mailed to you. The extraction of information from such sources can be a time-consuming activity.

Users need to manually find the source document, extract the information, and enter it into a digital system. You can leverage tools like optical character recognition (OCR) software to scan a document and extract its information within minutes.

Here’s How you can Classify Data according to its Structure at the Source

Structured Data

Structured data offers a convenient structure that allows you to extract information seamlessly from the source. For example, you may have a digital database of your customers sorted by their buying history. It will be easy for you to segregate and group them. You can use relevant outreach messages to target a specific group and improve sales.

Unstructured Data

Unstructured data is any data yet to get converted into a formal structure, such as a table or a list. It includes documents, emails, spreadsheets, and other items not available in database format.

Unstructured data is difficult to use because it's not organised in a way that's easy for machines to process. For example, it can be difficult for computers to determine what the different parts of a document mean and how those parts fit together.

Unstructured data also hampers data extraction as it is difficult for computers to read and understand unstructured documents. You can do data extraction of unstructured sources with the help of a text pattern matching mechanism, using tables to identify common sections, and text analytics.

Here’s How you can Classify Data according to its Nature

Financial Data

Financial data is the information you and your business generate through your company’s operations. For example, if you are a business owner and want to know what your profit margins are for the month, you need to look at your financial data. There are several ways to process financial data, like analysing and compiling reports.

Customer Data

Customer data is any information you collect from your customers and use to improve your business. It's a broad term and includes everything from customer name and address to their favourite colour or shoe size. When you are processing customer data, you're doing everything from organising it to ensuring it's accurate and up-to-date.

Performance Data

Performance data is the information that tells you if your business is successful. You can use it to improve your business, whether that's increasing revenue or ensuring more customers are happy with their experience. The best way to process performance data is through analysis and reporting. It allows you to identify trends and patterns in your business to adjust accordingly.

How does the Data Extraction Process Work?

Here are various ways you can extract structured and unstructured data.

Structured Data Extraction

Structured data extraction allows you to gather information from websites and other sources. Structured data extraction involves using software to read the source material, identifying the relevant information, and presenting it in a structured format like a spreadsheet or database.

Structured data extraction can be of two types: full extraction and increment extraction.

Full Extraction

Full data extraction refers to data retrieval from a given source in one step rather than using multiple ones to retrieve the information. It is different from partial data extraction, which involves using multiple steps to retrieve the same information. The process will be less complicated when you have the apt data extraction tools.

Incremental Extraction

Extracting incrementally is a continuous process that involves several steps at regular intervals. The goal is to extract relevant data from a database table using predefined rules. You can complete the process in several passes depending on how varied and large the information is, the data you want to extract, and the time available for this task.

Unstructured Data Extraction

Unstructured data extraction can help extract data from documents, text-based files, images, and videos. The process works by identifying patterns in the unstructured content and extracting them. These patterns can be anything from complete sentences to individual words or phrases that appear within a piece of text. Once identified, these patterns then get extracted and converted into structured data formats.

Challenges Associated with Data Extraction

Here are some obstacles that affect the data extraction process:

Data Quality

Inaccurate or incomplete data can cause problems with data analysis and decision-making processes. For example, if a company has incorrect information about what products its customers purchase, it will not be able to effectively target them with marketing campaigns or predict future customer behaviour.

Another problem with inaccurate or incomplete data is that it can lead to bad decisions by business managers. For example, if a sales manager doesn't know how much inventory they have on hand, they might make decisions based on incorrect assumptions about their current stock levels.

Non-Standardized Formats

When you extract data from various sources, there's no standard format to work with. Different sources have different data in varied formats. It is up to you to figure out what those formats are and how to use them. This can take time and effort, especially if you're unfamiliar with the source material or if it is difficult or time-consuming to access.

Incomplete Data

It is not always easy to tell what is missing, and often the only way to find that out is to try extracting it. The problem is that there is a chance that you could fail in your attempt, which would waste time and resources.

Lack of Information Access

Data may often remain stored in PDFs and other documents that are not easily searchable, making it difficult to find the information you need. In addition, data may remain stored in multiple locations, which can make it difficult to locate all the information you need.

Advantages of Data Extraction

Here are the benefits of data extraction and how it helps businesses:

Data Accessibility

Data extraction is a process that allows you to easily access the data you need from various sources and formats. You can extract data from documents, images, spreadsheets, databases, and other sources with the help of related tools. The extracted information then helps you analyse it for further use.

Reduces Errors

Data extraction reduces errors that can happen due to manual information processing. When an organisation uses data extraction, it can reduce costs and processing errors due to manual processes. It will ensure the data is consistent across multiple sources.

Enhances Productivity

Data extraction enhances productivity by providing users with the ability to extract data quickly from large amounts of unstructured text. This allows users to identify relevant information and eliminate extraneous data, which increases the speed at which they can complete a task or find the information they need.

Automates Processes

Data extraction can automate information processing, which saves you time in the long run. You will also save money by not hiring new employees and training existing ones on how to do the job. Automated processes are also more reliable than manual ones, which means your data will be more accurate than if it were processed manually.

Improves Customer Service

By using data extraction, you can automate the process of collecting customer information and putting it into your system. This allows you to get more information about what your customers are interested in, as well as where they're coming from and how they're interacting with your business.

You can then use this information to give them a better experience. For example, by showing products similar to ones they've already looked at or purchased.

Enables Informed Decision-Making Process

Data extraction enables informed decision-making. It can help identify trends and patterns in data and uncover new insights. The ability to extract data from various sources, such as spreadsheets and databases, makes it possible for companies to make better decisions about their business operations.

Helps get a Competitive Edge

Data extraction can help you get a competitive edge in your industry by helping you understand what your rivals are doing and how they're doing it. It's also critical for you to keep track of the information being shared about the company and its products. Data extraction can help you do this by keeping track of the information shared on social media sites or web pages.

Enables Scalability

Data extraction is a great way to scale your business. When you need to get more data than you can easily handle or if you need to ensure the data is accurate and consistent across multiple platforms, it can be helpful to use data extraction software. The software will also help get rid of worries related to data volumes.

Drives Business Intelligence

Data extraction helps drive business intelligence because it gives companies access to more data than ever before. With data extraction tools, businesses can take advantage of the information their systems have access to. That can be sales figures, customer demographics, or manufacturing processes. Businesses can then use them to make better decisions about their operations.

Improves Employee Motivation

When employees need to do manual tasks, they become disengaged and unmotivated. This can lead to high employee turnover, which can cost companies several dollars of lost productivity. Data extraction takes away these tedious tasks from employees and gives them much more meaningful work.

Considerations to Keep in Mind When Choosing a Data Extraction Solution

Here are the various things to keep in mind when investing in a data extraction solution:

Real-Time Extraction

Real-time extraction is a key consideration when choosing a data extraction solution. The solution must be able to process data as it's being created rather than just pulling information from a database or other source. It's essential to know how long it takes for your data to get extracted to determine if real-time extraction is possible with your current solution.

General Document Formats

Consider the format of your documents. If they're all in one format (like PDFs), it will make things easier when it comes time to choose a product. However, if they're all in different formats, such as Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, or emails, choosing something that can support multiple formats will make it easier for you.

Data Export

It is essential to remember that data extraction solutions aren't just about the application itself, but about how easy it is for users to export the data they've extracted. If you are using a solution that only allows you to export data into a proprietary format, it might be difficult for your users to take advantage of other tools they have at their disposal.

Enhance Data Quality

When choosing a data extraction solution, you want to ensure it will enhance your data quality. To do this, you need to ensure that the software can intelligently handle your data. It should be able to identify what is essential and what is not, and work with all sorts of data types.

Advanced Processing

When you choose a data extraction solution, it's vital to consider whether the software can handle more advanced processing. Can it handle multiple data sources? Is it capable of handling unstructured data? If you're looking for a tool that can process large amounts of data at once, find out if this is possible with the software solution before making your purchase.

User-Friendly Interface

The user-friendliness of the interface matters a lot. You need a program that has a simple and intuitive interface. It will help you navigate through it seamlessly and use it to extract the information you need.

A good way to test whether or not an interface is easy to navigate is by trying out the demo version of the program and seeing how easy it is for you to use. If there are any problems with using the demo version, it's unlikely that using the full version will be any easier.

Examples of Data Extraction

Here are the various examples of data extraction:

Web Scraping

Web scraping is the process of collecting data from a website or web page. It is possible through software code that mimics how a browser interacts with a website or web page. A web scraper can collect information from a website, such as text, images, and links. Web scraping also helps collect data displayed in an HTML table or list format.

Data Mining

Data mining allows you to extract patterns from large amounts of data. It helps find correlations between different pieces of information and is especially useful when you are trying to make sense of new data or predict future behaviour.

Data mining works by looking at large data sets and identifying patterns within that data set. You'll need an algorithm that will help you sort through the data, find patterns within it, and make predictions based on those patterns.

Data Warehousing

Data warehousing is a method of storing and organising data, typically in a large database. It helps companies make sense of their data and make decisions based on it. Data warehousing has two main functions: it helps companies store and organise their data for the future, and helps them analyse past data to determine how to best use it going forward.

Benefits of Data Extraction: Bottom Line

Data extraction gives you the power to manage massive amounts of information. This makes it incredibly useful when dealing with massive data sets because it eliminates the need to sift through numerous documents manually. Almost any data can get extracted using this process, including addresses, phone numbers, names, email addresses, and text.

Intelligent document processing platforms such as VisionERA can prove to be a big help for organisations relying on manual document processing functions. It is an industry and use case agnostic platform that can be modified as per requirements for different industries such as finance, healthcare, logistics, manufacturing, etc.

VisionERA is an IDP platform developed using advanced proprietary technologies such as artificial intelligence, deep learning, computer vision, natural language processing, etc. These technologies enable faster processing providing higher productivity, scalability, and flexibility.

It is an excellent collaboration between HI-AI (human intelligence and artificial intelligence) that enables businesses to experience advanced automation capabilities. If you are looking for a reliable document processing solution, look no further than VisionERA.

To learn more about VisionERA, click on the CTA below. To send us a query, you can use our contact us page!

Get Started with your Document Automation Journey

$0 Implementation cost | $0 monthly payments -> No Risk, No Headaches

Pay only for Satisfactory Results!

Sign up for Free Trial