Why Data Extraction Automation Is Essential for Business Growth

The modern world relies on data. There’s a huge amount of data that runs through an organization with every process, regardless of the business size. From invoices and payroll to customer surveys and call logs, each business area has valuable insights that can drive better outcomes for your enterprise. Taking the data from these different sources, which are often unstructured, extracting useful information before cleaning it up, and finally analyzing it is essential for making key business decisions. Data extraction through different methods such as data scraping tools reveals enlightening metrics about data that can boost company growth.

Fortunately, thanks to modern technology, it’s relatively easy to process documents that are in the form of structured data. However, complete automation when extracting unstructured data sources is still an issue for organizations. It also makes up for a large and time-consuming part of back-office activities.

The Challenges of Manual Data Extraction

According to a study, over 40% of employees spend approximately a quarter of the week in performing manual repetitive tasks that can be automated. Most organizations still rely on manual data extraction to retrieve pertinent data from unstructured sources for business use.

However, the process is not only resource intensive but also has several downsides that can impact the business growth. Manual data extraction has a high error rate compared to automated tools. The error rate can be attributed to:

• Inadequate training of people involved in data entry
• Human error
• Misinterpretation of the data
• Incomprehensible information.

These issues can cause serious delays in various business processes, especially the ones dealing with high volumes of data on a daily basis.

Another key issue with manual data scraping is the cost and effort that goes into verifying the extracted data. Regular data quality checks are an essential step in the data extraction process. They prevent issues arising due to inaccurate data being sent forward for analysis. Quality verification with manual data process requires hiring additional personnel that spend hours ensuring the accuracy of the entered data by going over each file and checking for errors or inconsistencies. This ends up costing the organization both time and money. With data scraping tools that include automation, this can be done easily at a lower cost and in less time.

And finally, manual data extraction can divert employees from completing more value-adding tasks. This can be detrimental to an organization and keep it from achieving its strategic objectives that require timely delivery of specific data.

Free Savings Alert: Uncover Hidden Costs of Manual Extraction

See how much time and money your business can save by switching to automated data extraction with Astera ReportMiner. Get a personalized savings report now.

Get FREE Savings report

Automated Data Extraction Tools – A Better Alternative

Usually, organizations outsource the data extraction process when the source(s) are unstructured, believing that by delegating the task to third party organizations they can accelerate their data-to-insights journey. While that might be feasible, outsourcing data extraction can result in delays, slowing productivity.

Fortunately, rapid technological advancements have made it possible to automate the process through data extraction tools. Users can easily extract relevant information from various documents, clean and validate the data, and deliver it to its desired destination. Employees can easily analyze and use the extracted data timely decision making.

The automation capability of these tools ensure faster and error-free data extraction. You can build extraction logic for incoming documents and apply the logic to other unstructured documents with a similar layout. This allows the organization to dedicate their resources to meaningful tasks rather than manual, repetitive work that can cause delays and generate error-prone results.

Automated data extraction is rapidly becoming widely adopted in various industries whether it’s for more accurate insights, faster data access, or reducing data processing costs. With features like OCR (Optical Character Recognition) and table extraction offered by advanced automated data extraction tools businesses can identify and extract data from unstructured documents with high accuracy and minimal manual power.

Industry-Wise Applications of Automated Data Extraction Tools

A good example of an industry that could benefit from data extraction automation is logistics. Logistic service providers deal with a lot of incoming data. From invoices and purchase orders to customer information, people need to process these documents promptly. Any delay or error can lead to serious issues for the service providers.

By using data extraction tools to automate the process, logistic service providers can create rule-based templates. These templates easily identify key fields in different unstructured documents, such as PDF files, text files, etc. This allows the software to collect required information from the documents based on the template created. Employees can easily extract information from all incoming documents with the same layout. The user can do this without any coding or recalibration of the software.

The travel agency industry is another prime example of businesses that can benefit from automated data extraction. Most businesses within this sector deal with extensive information onslaught from various sources, including internal sources or stakeholders connected with the business. For example, flight booking information, visa processing, cancellations, boarding information, and flight logs among others.

Manually handling the data extraction process can lead to several operational issues such as data backlog, information delays, etc. These issues end up costing the business a lot of money, wasted resources, and a poor customer experience. Automating the entire extraction process can boost productivity and increase cost-efficiency within the organization.

Is Automated Data Extraction the Right Choice for Your Business?

There is no denying the benefits of opting for automated data extraction. However, it is equally important to find the right automated data extraction software that works well for your business needs. With Astera ReportMiner, you can automate the data extraction process in a no-code interface and gain useful insights from your unstructured documents in no time.

Astera ReportMiner offers unique functionalities such as table extraction, reusable templates, OCR, and built-in data quality and cleansing features. With a user-friendly interface, the no-code data extraction tool simplifies template-based data extraction from numerous unstructured document formats, including TXT, XLS, COBOL, PDF, RTF, and more.

Ready to Extract PDF Data in Minutes? Get Started with ReportMiner

Experience the unmatched speed and precision of Astera ReportMiner. Sign up for a free trial and see how quickly you can process your PDF data.

Start your FREE Trial

To learn more about how Astera ReportMiner can help your business automate the data extraction process, download a 14-day free trial today. Test out all the features and gain faster insights from data trapped within your incoming documents to boost your business growth.