For organizations in the finance industry, having timely access to relevant data makes the difference between success and failure. But many are still hanging on to “archaic manual data collection processes”, curbing their full potential.
This is according to a new report published by proxy company Oxylabs, which states that more than half (52 percent) of finance companies in the UK gather data manually, making it “impossible” to make informed and timely decisions. The report also states that more than a third (37 percent) of companies found it challenging to access data in real-time.
Among companies that do use an automated Extract, Transform, Load (ETL) framework, more than half (52 percent) consider it a “critical asset”.
One of the main roadblocks standing in the way of the wider adoption of automated tools for data harvesting is the lack of in-house skills. For more than a third (35 percent) finding talent is an “ongoing issue”, while 36 percent found it challenging to find reliable partners to outsource web scraping.
“Data is only as good as the actions taken from the signals it creates,” said Julius Černiauskas, Chief Executive Officer at Oxylabs.
“It’s not enough to analyze data and predict insights that may or may not be profitable. These insights and their grounding must fall into the hands of the right people at the right time. Proper data governance strategy execution ensures that no information is wasted.”