The survey found that completely outsourcing data collection is the least popular method while a hybrid option of combining internal web scraping practices and outsourcing was more popular (38%). The findings demonstrate that web scraping still remains a complicated and intricate practice among organizations, which needs close oversight, particularly in heavily regulated industries such as the financial services sector.

Aleksandras Šulženko, Product Owner at Oxylabs said: “Such a low preference for outsourcing is a little surprising but it’s clear that better trust in web scraping has to be developed. We know that web scraping has become an essential part of financial services, yet so few companies trust third-party services.

“The findings indicate a hidden issue with how web scraping is understood and what goals it can achieve, bringing those third-party companies back to the drawing board. Outsourcers need to better communicate how their services work and how their methods are secure and compliant, which is one of a number of challenges the industry is facing at the moment.”

Among the hurdles experienced by organizations when implementing web scraping activities, ensuring high-quality data tops the list (cited by 42% of respondents), followed closely by managing and processing large datasets at 41%. Other challenges, such as finding the most efficient tools, ensuring a consistent data flow, getting real-time data, or finding reliable partners to outsource to, are equally distributed and similarly important for decision-makers in financial services.

Šulženko continued: “In the finance industry, the quality of data directly defines the quality of business decisions as even small deviations might lead to incorrect conclusions. As a result, organizations put more trust into their internal teams as they can put the necessary checkpoints in place at every stage of the data management process.

“If organizations are to begin putting their trust in third parties, these parties need to communicate how they can tailor collection and analysis more efficiently than an internal team as well as how they can tackle the issues many face when implementing web scraping. For example, outsourcing to a third-party web scraping solutions provider is an easy option that requires minimal start-up costs and the data acquired can be integrated almost immediately.”

Understanding that data must be treated sensitively, the finance industry takes careful measures to stay in line with regulations. Almost all surveyed companies (99%) have a data compliance function – be it internal, external or both. This could be explained by the specifics of the industry, where any possible risk could lead to major financial consequences, coupled with the fact that financial data is inherently confidential.

“Web scraping produces a significant amount of value not only to financial organizations but all companies, especially if that information can be utilized effectively. While a third-party web scraping solutions provider is the easier and cheaper option for organizations, it seems the majority prefer to look internally and will continue to do so until the challenges around web scraping are addressed,” concluded Šulženko.

To download your copy of the Oxylabs Alternative Data Unlocks Key Decisions in the UK & US Finance Industries white paper, please visit HERE.

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Privacy in Data Collection

Despite this high level of data collection, there are many privacy regulations that sites must take into consideration when employing these technologies. ePrivacy Directive, a European data protection supervisor, governs the user experience online, cookie usage, and general online tracking. This governing body secures the user’s right to privacy, working hand in hand with General Data Protection and Regulation (GDPR) to give users different data rights and powers. This includes the right to be informed, have access, erasure, object, and many more that gives the user ultimate control on the transfer and sharing of their data.

Specific US states grant users’ rights related to the processing and sharing of their personal information and data. These policies include the Consumer Privacy Act in California, the Privacy Act in Colorado, and the Consumer Data Protection Act in Virginia.

Because of these privacy regulations, there are many challenges that are presented to businesses that rely on information from their users. When too many users refuse to consent to data collection, it becomes harder to gather sufficient data. Therefore, many analytics are considered useless to the company. Heavy fines that businesses may be issued if they do not comply with privacy regulations. Companies like Amazon and Google have taken large financial hits due to various violations.

Adapting Your Data Collection Strategy

There is a new approach to compliance to online privacy laws. But, still while allowing businesses to make the most of the data that they do have access to. This measurement methodology includes collecting data without cookies to maintain anonymity of the user. Also, optimizing proportions of named users by encouraging the creation of a log-in,. Lastly, developing new cookieless measurement capabilities for online platforms. This new privacy-centric method helps marketers in a variety of ways. The most notable way allows for the testing and measurement of the effectiveness of privacy-safe targeting strategies in a more durable way. Given the ever-changing data collection methods within the online community, it is clear that businesses need to invest in solutions that will protect user privacy without sacrificing data quality.

Using these new tactics, it is now possible to harness the true versatility of data in the best way possible. Learn more about how post-cookie tracking can upgrade your analytics strategy below:

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Unlike many entrants to the smart products space, Berdugo saw the potential for the sector as early as 2013, when Wellbots was founded. Smart products are entering more areas of daily life, not only in personal life, but also in the professional world. As a leading retailer of numerous smart products, Wellbots has to stay on top of market trends. Wellbots offers large discounts to schools, universities, hospitals and other corporate clients.

Grit Daily had the opportunity to ask Berdugo about the success of Wellbots, as well as where he sees the space going in the future.

GD: You were an early mover in the smart products space. Why did you see potential in smart products so early?

Philippe: Growing up, I always had an interest in technology and the most innovative products on the market. It was hard to ignore how popular new forms of technology were at the beginning of the last decade. Smartphones were just starting to become a common consumer item, and I saw that the same kind of smart technology could be applied to numerous other everyday items. The founding of Wellbots made sense to me, as I thought there would be a huge opportunity for any company that could make connections in the smart products sector, and offer competitive prices on great new products. As I grew Wellbots, I realized the company was ideally positioned to issue a ranking of the best 25 smart products on the market. It has since become the Annual Wellbots Ranking and includes the best robot vacuums, electric scooters, smartwatches, drones, air purifiers and more.

GD: How do you see the role of data in the smart economy?

Philippe: Data is at the center of the modern economy. It is a highly-coveted skill and asset to be able to leverage data to make business decisions. Companies large and small are fighting to get more data on their (potential) customers’ behaviors and interests. It allows companies to be much smarter at marketing their products, reaching out to the right people to grow their business. At the same time, data collection has become a growing concern for many because of its impact on privacy.

In addition, smart products are now able to connect and communicate with other products to make our lives easier. That is what has been coined the Internet-of-Things, which heavily relies on data and is expected to be one of the fastest-growing industries in the coming decade.

GD: Can you tell us more about how Wellbots has been such a success in a competitive marketplace?

Philippe: At Wellbots, we curate the best products in each category of smart products. We pride ourselves on only selling the best. We are not generalists, we are experts in the space. The Wellbots Brand Partnership team carefully vets the best products such as drones, robotic pool cleaners, connected toys, portable power stations, electric bikes and more. There is a thorough selection process for a brand to make it to Wellbots.

Our team knows all the products we sell: customers call us and live chat with us every day. We are known for our white-glove customer service and offering innovative & pioneering features such as:

Pay with crypto

The Wellbots VIP Program

Free Shipping on Everything

2% Cashback Loyalty Program

Extended 2 or 3-year warranties

The Special Wellbots Bundles

GD: Can you tell us a little more about the bulk buying program that Wellbots offers?

Philippe: The bulk buying program at Wellbots offers discounted quotes to business customers placing large orders. The B2B team members are always available to answer any questions business customers may have: our team has been carefully trained and educated on the technicalities and functionalities of all the products we sell. Our goal is to make the process as seamless, enjoyable and efficient as possible.

Some of our business customers include local police departments, fire stations, coast line guards and government agencies, private/corporate campuses and buildings, hotels, amusement parks, hospitals, universities among others.

Philippe Berdugo graduated from ESSEC Business School in France and also the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College. Wellbots offers its products in both the USA and France, and was featured by the Financial Times of London in 2021 on its list of the 500 Fastest-Growing Companies in the Americas. It ranked #7 in the ecommerce section of the 500 companies, as at #122 across the entire group. Berdugo is also a co-founder of Berd Industries, an investment firm that focuses on real estate and a director at TP NYC, which is a real estate investment firm.

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First, what is considered non-consumer data? “I think of non-consumer data to be data that isn’t about any specific person,” said Jordan. “It could still be related to consumer behaviors or consumer trends, but it’s not ‘this person watched this TV ad at this specific time.'” Instead, it’s a historical analysis of other matters that affect businesses beyond the consumer. Here are some examples.

Pricing Data

One of the companies Narrative works with actually collects pricing data on millions of products sold online. And they keep that pricing data up to date daily. So if you’re a company that sells products in the real world, in a physical store, you want to make sure that you’re pricing your products competitively vis-à-vis Walmart, Amazon, or any other online retailers. 

“We have a bunch of companies that are effectively buying and pricing data about particular products or product categories, and it’s informing how they’re going to market, merchandise, and price their products in their brick and mortar retail stores,” said Jordan. “Arguably, if you have a business that makes money by selling things, making sure that you’re pricing it correctly is maybe the most crucial decision that you can get right. More and more companies are using data to do that more effectively. “

Weather Data

The weather is something we’re all affected by. And Narrative is seeing more and more companies use weather data to inform their strategy. For example, in agriculture technology, weather data can inform a company when it should harvest or cover up its crops because there will be frost. Or, they can analyze how the weather might impact consumer behaviors. So, more and more people are using that to make business decisions.

“I think it’s so omnipresent, and we all look at the weather so much every day that we don’t think of it as data,” said Jordan. “We think of it as I looked at my phone, and it was going to be 35 degrees today, so I put on a coat. Many organizations use that to make strategic, both short-term and long-term, decisions. And they very much think of it as data.”

Transaction Data

From an entrepreneurship and funding perspective, financial transactions are interesting pieces of data. With the blockchain, every transaction, everything that’s ever happened across cryptocurrencies is essentially preserved in this ledger. Now, more companies are using that to understand global commerce. 

“If you look at public markets, both commodities and equities, a lot of folks are using that data to understand, from both a macro and microeconomic perspective, the health of the economy,” said Jordan. “I think one of the interesting things we’ve seen over the last couple of years is companies like Robinhood who were opening up financial markets to folks that maybe weren’t historically serviced by the large trading houses.”

Yes, they offer this free product to buy and sell stocks and make all of their money because they take all of that transaction data. And they’ll front-run the information about who’s buying what at what price to high-frequency traders and hedge funds. So in many ways, they’re creating a product that allows people to enter an equity market where maybe historically they weren’t able to. But, the people that are using that product are actually being monetized. 

“Again, it’s not data about the consumer per se,” said Jordan. “It’s not their demographics or their specific behaviors. It’s more financial market data that are then being traded as an asset and how Robinhood makes the majority of their money.”

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Unfortunately, and perhaps unsurprisingly, we are usually only presented with one side of a complex and fascinating story. The truth is that with the help of bots, tasks that used to take businesses weeks to complete can now be executed in a matter of seconds. By automating mundane, repetitive work, bots are freeing up time for creative, strategic thinking across a whole host of industries.

Robotic process automation

Robotic process automation (RPA), a market that is projected to reach $1.89 billion in revenues in 2021, is just one area where bots are proving invaluable. With RPA, businesses can automate repetitive tasks – like data entry, data extraction, and invoice processing – rather than relying on a human workforce to complete them. As such, RPA gives businesses unmatched scalability. A bot can, after all, perform the same process 10, 100 or even 10,000 times per day without issue. Throughout the pandemic, bots have enabled organizations to react quickly to the demand irregularities and supply chain bottlenecks that go hand in hand with economic uncertainty.

As businesses adjust to new ways of working, cost-saving remains a top priority – another benefit of RPA. For instance, Gartner estimates that using software robots could save financial services organizations up to 80% on processing costs. Plus, robots work with an unmatched level of precision.

What does this mean for employees? Rather than merely “stealing jobs”, bots typically free up time for problem-solving and building personal relationships. In a Forrester employee survey, 66% of respondents said RPA enabled them to have more human interactions, and 60% said RPA helped them to focus on meaningful, strategic tasks.

Data collection bots – fueling the real-time economy

Perhaps more than any other area, online data collection has been revolutionized by bots. The world’s largest database is the public internet and there’s no doubt that data fuels the digital economy. Today, the largest brands in e-commerce, finance, security, and more use up-to-the-minute data collected by bots to train algorithms and make smart decisions in near real-time.

Consider this example from the financial services sector. It’s becoming more commonplace for banks and financial institutions to collect publicly available alternative data to inform ESG (environmental, social and governance) investment decisions, which are designed to maximize both financial returns and social good. This data typically includes measurable metrics from areas such as energy use, emissions, discrimination lawsuits, board diversity, etc. In fact, recent research found that 95% of financial services organizations have relied on alternative data in the past year alone. As ESG investing becomes an increasingly established practice worldwide, this trend seems set to continue.

Bots – how to remain on the responsible side of the road

“At bottom, robotics is about us. It is the discipline of emulating our lives, of wondering how we work.” This thought, from Rod Grupen, renowned Professor of Robotics at the University of Massachusetts, perfectly encapsulates how we should be thinking about the role of bots in today’s society. Bots work on instructions given by humans, automating our actions, not our behavior. As such, it’s up to businesses to use them responsibly. Hearteningly, a recent survey of 4,000 decision-makers across the financial services and technology sectors found that the vast majority of organizations have clear guidelines in place to moderate bot use. In the US, 48% of organizations surveyed said they have guidelines in place to moderate all usage of bots, while another 48% said they have guidelines relating to some uses. In the UK, these figures are 57% and 40% respectively.

Like many fast-moving technological disciplines, the bot space is still largely unregulated. Though regulation would no doubt help to ensure that businesses use bots responsibly, it seems appetite for regulatory change is limited. The same survey found that a slim majority of respondents were satisfied with the current level of regulation related to enterprise bot use – 47% of US organizations and 60% in the UK. Meanwhile, 45% of US organizations and 33% of UK organizations actively wanted to see increased external regulation of bots.

Ultimately, with 95% of businesses planning to expand their bot usage in the next two years, it’s inevitable that they are here to stay. Personally, I’m excited by the potential of bots to drive forward innovation, as well as improving decision-making and employee experience – as long as organizations commit to using them responsibly.

The post With Enterprise Bot Use Booming, It’s Time for Bots to Improve Their Reputation appeared first on Grit Daily News.

The funding round was led by New Enterprise Associates (NEA) with participation from existing investors Greycroft, AV8, and Eniac, and founders from PagerDuty, Sendbird, LogDNA, Scopely, and TestFlight. Embrace has now raised a total of $57 million in funding, which will allow it to accelerate the expansion of its team and suite of products. Aaron Jacobson, Partner at NEA, referred to the firm’s participation by stating:

“We see Embrace as the next evolution in a line of transformative data-focused companies in which we have invested, including Databricks, Tableau, and DataRobot. With nearly all companies moving to digital-first engagement with customers, mobile has become a business-critical initiative. We believe Embrace is poised for explosive growth, and we’re thrilled to partner with Eric and the team to capture the massive opportunity of mobile.”

Embrace was founded in 2016 to provide enterprises with observability and data platforms specifically designed for the mobile experience, allowing them to make informed decisions based on actionable data. The increasing demand for the startup’s solutions has allowed it to grow rapidly over the past years, increasing its employee count by 400% since 2019 while serving more than 100 organizations worldwide. Eric Futoran, CEO at Embrace, said about the startup’s mission:

“For businesses competing in the modern mobile ecosystem, continually delivering great mobile experiences while innovating rapidly is incredibly difficult. Mobile has so many variables to contend with that companies cannot afford to make decisions on guesswork. With Embrace, for the first time, companies can make truly informed decisions based on comprehensive datasets that work for their needs.”

With mobile devices accounting for more than 50% of all web traffic, companies around the world are paying special attention to improving the mobile experience for their users as data shows that a better mobile experience translates to better conversion rates. Embrace is taking advantage of this growing trend to provide its users with data that allows them to improve the mobile performance of their platforms, allowing them to increase their revenue and customer satisfaction.

The post Embrace Secures $45 mln In Funding to Change How Enterprises Approach Mobile Platforms appeared first on Grit Daily News.

The round was supported by important Hollywood and Tech personalities like Ashton Kutcher, actor and Partner at Sound Ventures; Michael Ovitz, co-founder at CAA and former President at The Walt Disney Company; Jack Dorsey, co-founder and CEO at Twitter and Square; and Bill Ackman, CEO at Pershing Square Capital Management. Ramtin Naimi, a Partner at Abstract Ventures, referred to the firm’s participation in the round by stating:

“While the media and entertainment industry is going through incredible growth, the increasing complexity of the various data streams demands modernization of back-office operations. MOLTEN’s cloud technology is the platform we need now to connect people, data and processes within media organizations. We are excited to invest in this business and support its mission to simplify processes and lower operating costs for the media industry.”

Founded in 2018 by Arjun Mendhi, MOLTEN offers a cloud-based platform to improve how media companies license, distribute, and account for different revenue streams at a time when content consumption has completely changed but legacy tools have failed to adapt. By aggregating disparate data pipelines, the cloud-based solution makes it easy for organizations to work with their data, allowing the automation of processes without coding being needed. Mendhi said in this regard:

“We exist to empower media rights-holders, such as production, distribution, and streaming organizations. They use the MOLTEN platform to transform their businesses. Some can, for the first time, connect rights, content, and financial data to avail new revenue opportunities. While others can automate various internal tasks, and go from months of work to seconds of processing and reduce costs significantly.”

With an increasing number of streaming services and technologies like NFTs transforming how people consume content, the media industry has been in a race to adapt to one of the most innovative ecosystems. MOLTEN has already helped customers all around the globe to manage more than 200 million rights, representing hundreds of terabytes of data.

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The round was led by Baseline Ventures, a firm focused on helping seed-stage startups get off the ground. As a result of the round, Baseline will be joining other investors like Lewis Wilks of Bright Peaks Capital and Jon Aborn of Starpoint Capital in the startup’s Board of Directors. Steve Anderson, Founder of Baseline Ventures, referred to the potential the firm saw in the startup by stating:

“NCS provides a comprehensive platform to government regulatory agencies and financial institutions that delivers actionable data on high-risk industries. This data facilitates regulatory enforcement and provides a high level of confidence that the payments and products that flow through the industry are legal. As more states legalize the medical and recreational use of cannabis, NCS will support reporting and regulatory requirements to ensure that the industry is operating appropriately under the legal guidelines and that citizens are receiving the benefits that were promised to them.”

Since its founding in 2016, NCS Analytics has been working to empower decision-makers by providing them with real-time insights by analyzing data obtained from diverse data streams. Governments and financial institutions have been taking advantage of the actionable intelligence provided by the startup’s solution to prevent fraud and reduce risk exposure. Adam Crabtree, Founder and CEO of NCS, said in this regard:

“Since its inception, the team at NCS has been dedicated to delivering our financial and government clients the clear and transparent information they require, and this funding is a testament to that work. This investment is going to give us the resources we need to further the development of our platform and expand our customer base.”

According to a report by PwC, more than $42 billion were lost to financial fraud in 2020, with only a bit over half of the companies who suffered from it conducting investigations into the incidents. By providing clear and actionable insights, NCS Analytics’ solution can help prevent fraud by allowing them to adopt security improvements. Now, the startup will be focusing its efforts on expanding its businesses and solution to better address the growing issue that is financial fraud.

The post NCS Analytics Closes $11 mln Series A Round To Keep Up With Increasing Demand For Data Analytics In The Financial Sector appeared first on Grit Daily News.

The funding round was led by LG Technology Ventures with participation from Euclidean Capital, the National Bank of Canada’s corporate venture capital arm NAventures, Intel Capital, Hearst Ventures, and Team8. The new capital brings the total funding raised by the startup to $44 million. Taejoon Park, Managing Director at LG Technology Ventures, said about the firm’s participation:

“As privacy challenges mount in our data-driven world, Duality has established itself as a market leader in the swiftly developing privacy tech space. Demand for collaborative and secure computing techniques is skyrocketing – including privacy-preserving AI and Machine Learning analytics – and will continue to do so as businesses look to unlock their treasure chests of data while staying on the right side of increasingly complex privacy regulations. Duality is ideally positioned to lead the applications of privacy-enhanced computing in numerous industries through this period of rapid change, and I am excited to see the company expand its highly innovative solutions to even more fields.”

The startup was founded in 2016 by world-renowned cryptographers and data scientists with the mission to create a new standard for privacy-preserving data collaboration. Ever since, the startup has been doing so with the development of its Duality SecurePlus suite, which allows organizations to collaborate using sensitive data while also complying with data privacy regulations. Dr. Alon Kaufman, CEO and Co-Founder of Duality Technologies, said about this mission:

“The amount of data businesses possess has been multiplying exponentially, yet the breadth and depth of insights they can extract from it have not expanded at the same rate, mainly due to data silos caused by growing data privacy regulations and business barriers. Duality’s collaborative, secure computing solutions offer a way out of this impasse by making data usable while keeping it protected.”

With recent reports finding that privacy-enhancing computation is one of the biggest technology trends of this year, Duality Technologies is getting ready to become one of the leaders in the industry.

The post Duality Technologies Secures $30 mln In Funding To Facilitate Secure Data Collaboration appeared first on Grit Daily News.

The seed funding round was led by Toronto-based Portage Ventures and counted with participation from important firms like BoxGroup and Sound Ventures. The new capital will allow Rose Technology to expand its platform to address the issues organizations and individuals face when dealing with vast amounts of data. Nick Hungerford, Venture Partner at Portage Ventures, referred to the firm’s participation by stating:

“Rose has created a remarkable solution to a problem that plagues the financial services industry: data management. The cost of finding that one critical piece of data, recording it and making it safely available to others is high in both human and financial capital. Multiply that by the millions of times this needs to be done in any given organization each day and you get a sense for the scale of the opportunity for Rose, and for Rose customers. We are excited to be supporting Alex and his team to bring their product to market and make life easier, cheaper and faster for the millions of researchers and analysts who will shave hours from mundane work which can instead be spent on driving revenue and growth,”

The startup was founded by Alexander Campbell, a prolific investor with more than 14 years of experience in the financial industry. A graduate of Oxford and Stanford University, he has held leadership positions in firms like Bridgewater Associates, Thrive, and Lehman Bros, which provided him with insights on the growing issue data management represents for today’s enterprises and researchers.

Despite data becoming an increasingly important resource in today’s world, existing data management solutions have failed to meet the needs of enterprises and researchers, especially those in the financial sector. Rose has developed an integrated, mutually reinforcing data workspace, analytics engine, and marketplace platform that aims to meet these demands. Campbell said about Rose’s mission:

“We built Rose to solve a $100 billion problem: modernizing data processes. Specifically, Rose helps eliminate the inefficiencies, opacity, and cost that impedes the performance of financial services companies, startups, and growth companies.”

The digital economy has grown at an unprecedented rate over the past decade, forcing organizations to adapt their traditional strategies to deal with an increasing amount of data to drive their decisions, creating a demand for solutions like the one developed by Rose. The data management startup believes its approach will not only revolutionize how data is found, organized, and shared, but also increase collaboration across teams and reduce human error in the process.

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