Data Mining and Financial Data Analysis

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.

Source : http://ezinearticles.com/?Data-Mining-and-Financial-Data-Analysis&id=2752017

Data Extraction Services For Better Outputs in Your Business

Data Extraction Services For Better Outputs in Your Business

Data Extraction can be defined as the process of retrieving data from an unstructured source in order to process it further or store it. It is very useful for large organizations who deal with large amount of data on a daily basis that need to be processed into meaningful information and stored for later use. The data extraction is a systematic way to extract and structure data from scattered and semi-structured electronic documents, as found on the web and in various data warehouses.

In today's highly competitive business world, vital business information such as customer statistics, competitor's operational figures and inter-company sales figures play an important role in making strategic decisions. By signing on this service provider, you will be get access to critivcal data from various sources like websites, databases, images and documents.

It can help you take strategic business decisions that can shape your business' goals. Whether you need customer information, nuggets into your competitor's operations and figure out your organization's performance, it is highly critical to have data at your fingertips as and when you want it. Your company may be crippled with tons of data and it may prove a headache to control and convert the data into useful information. Data extraction services enable you get data quickly and in the right format.

Few areas where Data Extraction can help you are:

    Capturing financial data
    Generating better sales leads
    Conducting market research, survey and analysis
    Conducting product research and analysis
    Track, extract and harvest product pricing data
    Searching for specific job postings
    Duplicating an online database
    Acquiring real estate data
    Processing auction information
    Searching online newspapers for latest pricing information
    Extracting and summarize news stories from online news sources

Outsourcing companies provide custom made data extraction services to the client's requirements. The different types of data extraction services;

    Web extraction
    Database extraction

Outsourcing is the beneficial option for large organizations seeking to manage large information. Outsourcing this services helps businesses in managing their data effectively, which in turn enables business to experience an increase in profits. By outsourcing, you can certainly increase your competitive edge and save costs too!

This article is courtesy of Web Scraping Expert - an executive at Outsourcing Web Research offer high quality and time bound comprehensive range of data extraction services at affordable rates. For more info please visit us at: http://www.webscrapingexpert.com/ or directly send your requirements at: info@webscrapingexpert.com

Source:http://ezinearticles.com/?Data-Extraction-Services-For-Better-Outputs-in-Your-Business&id=2760257

Increasing Accessibility by Scraping Information From PDF

Increasing Accessibility by Scraping Information From PDF

You may have heard about data scraping which is a method that is being used by computer programs in extracting data from an output that comes from another program. To put it simply, this is a process which involves the automatic sorting of information that can be found on different resources including the internet which is inside an html file, PDF or any other documents. In addition to that, there is the collection of pertinent information. These pieces of information will be contained into the databases or spreadsheets so that the users can retrieve them later.

Most of the websites today have text that can be accessed and written easily in the source code. However, there are now other businesses nowadays that choose to make use of Adobe PDF files or Portable Document Format. This is a type of file that can be viewed by simply using the free software known as the Adobe Acrobat. Almost any operating system supports the said software. There are many advantages when you choose to utilize PDF files. Among them is that the document that you have looks exactly the same even if you put it in another computer so that you can view it. Therefore, this makes it ideal for business documents or even specification sheets. Of course there are disadvantages as well. One of which is that the text that is contained in the file is converted into an image. In this case, it is often that you may have problems with this when it comes to the copying and pasting.

This is why there are some that start scraping information from PDF. This is often called PDF scraping in which this is the process that is just like data scraping only that you will be getting information that is contained in your PDF files. In order for you to begin scraping information from PDF, you must choose and exploit a tool that is specifically designed for this process. However, you will find that it is not easy to locate the right tool that will enable you to perform PDF scraping effectively. This is because most of the tools today have problems in obtaining exactly the same data that you want without personalizing them.

Nevertheless, if you search well enough, you will be able to encounter the program that you are looking for. There is no need for you to have programming language knowledge in order for you to use them. You can easily specify your own preferences and the software will do the rest of the work for you. There are also companies out there that you can contact and they will perform the task since they have the right tools that they can use. If you choose to do things manually, you will find that this is indeed tedious and complicated whereas if you compare this to having professionals do the job for you, they will be able to finish it in no time at all. Scraping information from PDF is a process where you collect the information that can be found on the internet and this does not infringe copyright laws.

Source:http://ezinearticles.com/?Increasing-Accessibility-by-Scraping-Information-From-PDF&id=4593863

Assuring Scraping Success with Proxy Data Scraping

Assuring Scraping Success with Proxy Data Scraping


Have you ever heard of "Data Scraping?" Data Scraping is the process of collecting useful data that has been placed in

the public domain of the internet (private areas too if conditions are met) and storing it in databases or spreadsheets

for later use in various applications. Data Scraping technology is not new and many a successful businessman has

made his fortune by taking advantage of data scraping technology.

Sometimes website owners may not derive much pleasure from automated harvesting of their data. Webmasters

have learned to disallow web scrapers access to their websites by using tools or methods that block certain ip

addresses from retrieving website content. Data scrapers are left with the choice to either target a different website,

or to move the harvesting script from computer to computer using a different IP address each time and extract as

much data as possible until all of the scraper's computers are eventually blocked.

Thankfully there is a modern solution to this problem. Proxy Data Scraping technology solves the problem by using

proxy IP addresses. Every time your data scraping program executes an extraction from a website, the website thinks

it is coming from a different IP address. To the website owner, proxy data scraping simply looks like a short period of

increased traffic from all around the world. They have very limited and tedious ways of blocking such a script but

more importantly -- most of the time, they simply won't know they are being scraped.

You may now be asking yourself, "Where can I get Proxy Data Scraping Technology for my project?" The "do-it-

yourself" solution is, rather unfortunately, not simple at all. Setting up a proxy data scraping network takes a lot of

time and requires that you either own a bunch of IP addresses and suitable servers to be used as proxies, not to

mention the IT guru you need to get everything configured properly. You could consider renting proxy servers from

select hosting providers, but that option tends to be quite pricey but arguably better than the alternative: dangerous

and unreliable (but free) public proxy servers.

There are literally thousands of free proxy servers located around the globe that are simple enough to use. The trick

however is finding them. Many sites list hundreds of servers, but locating one that is working, open, and supports the

type of protocols you need can be a lesson in persistence, trial, and error. However if you do succeed in discovering a

pool of working public proxies, there are still inherent dangers of using them. First off, you don't know who the server

belongs to or what activities are going on elsewhere on the server. Sending sensitive requests or data through a public

proxy is a bad idea. It is fairly easy for a proxy server to capture any information you send through it or that it sends

back to you. If you choose the public proxy method, make sure you never send any transaction through that might

compromise you or anyone else in case disreputable people are made aware of the data.

A less risky scenario for proxy data scraping is to rent a rotating proxy connection that cycles through a large number

of private IP addresses. There are several of these companies available that claim to delete all web traffic logs which

allows you to anonymously harvest the web with minimal threat of reprisal. Companies such as offer large scale

anonymous proxy solutions, but often carry a fairly hefty setup fee to get you going.

Source:http://ezinearticles.com/?Assuring-Scraping-Success-with-Proxy-Data-Scraping&id=248993

Tapping The Mining Services Goldmine

Tapping The Mining Services Goldmine

In Australia, resources booms tend to come and go. In a recent speech, Reserve Bank Deputy Governor Ric Battellino identified five major booms over the last two hundred years - from the gold rush of the 1850s, to our current minerals and energy boom.

Many have argued that the current boom is different from anything we've experienced before, with the modernisation of the Chinese and Indian economies likely to keep demand high for decades. That's led some analysts to talk of a resources supercycle. And yet a supercycle is still a cycle.

By definition, cycles are uneven, with commodity prices ebbing and flowing in response to demand, economic conditions and market sentiment. And the share prices of resources companies tend to move with them.

Which raises the question: what's the best way for investors to tap into the potential of the mining boom, without the heart-stopping volatility that mining stocks sometimes deliver?
Invest in the store that sells the spade

Legend has it that the people who really profited from Australia's gold rush weren't the miners who flocked to the fields, but the store-owners who sold them their spades and pans. You can put the same principle to work today by investing in mining services and engineering companies.

Here are five reasons to consider giving mining services companies a place in your portfolio:

1. Growing demand

In November, the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics reported that mining and energy companies plan to invest a record $132.9bn in new projects, a 58% increase from the previous year. That includes 72 projects at an advanced stage of development, such as the $43bn Gorgon LNG project and the $20bn Olympic dam expansion. The mining services sector is poised to benefit from all of them.

The sector also stands to benefit from Australia's worsening skills shortage, with more companies looking to contractors to provide essential services in remote locations.

2. Less volatility

Resource stocks tend to fluctuate with commodity prices, which are subject to international economic forces and market sentiment beyond the control of any individual company. As a result, they are among the most volatile companies on the Australian sharemarket. But mining services stocks, while still exposed to the commodities cycle, tend to be more stable.

3. More predictable cash flow

One reason for the comparative volatility of commodity companies is that their cash flow can be very variable. In the development phase, they need to make significant capital expenditure, often leading to negative cash flows. And while they enjoy healthy revenues in the production phase, that revenue may diminish as a resource is exhausted, unless they make further investments in exploration and development.
In contrast, mining services companies require comparatively little capital investment, with more predictable cash flows over the long-term.

4. Higher dividends

Predictable cash flows and lower capital expenditures often allow services companies to pay out more of their earnings as dividends, making them more appealing for income-oriented investors.

5. No need to pick winners

Many miners are highly leveraged to demand for a single commodity, whether it's gold, coal, copper or iron ore. Some are reliant on a single mine or field. Whereas services companies generally have a more diversified customer base.

Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?Tapping-The-Mining-Services-Goldmine&id=5924837

How Web Scraping Affects your Revenue Growth

How Web Scraping Affects your Revenue Growth

Web scraping is an indispensable resource when it comes to gaining an edge in the competition with the help of business intelligence. As more and more data gets created on the world wide web, the complexity of extracting it intensifies. Web scraping is a technology that demands an extensive tech stack, high end resources and technically skilled labour. Given this resource hungry nature, many businesses prefer outsourcing it to doing the scraping in-house. Here is a brief walk-through of web scraping so that you can get a grip on the whole process and understand how it could affect your revenue growth as a business.

Business intelligence

The competition among online businesses is at its peak. This has more to do with the ready availability of insightful data. When data acquisition at this scale wasn’t possible in the past, businesses made hit-or-miss decisions upon instincts. Now that every activity can be recorded, extracted as data and analysed to arrive at the best business decisions, companies are making the most of it to boost their revenue. This includes monitoring the activity of competitors on social media, price intelligence, sentiment analysis, gathering data for market research and much more. The use cases of web scraping in business is almost infinite. Business intelligence is extremely helpful for the survival of companies in a market that fluctuates often. Implementing a business intelligence strategy powered by web scraping can definitely give a boost to your revenue growth.
Cost centres involved in in-house Web Scraping

Web scraping, despite being a robust solution for extracting data from the web, is not going to be an easy path if your company is not technically rich already. It involves setting up resources like a tech stack and servers that can run the web crawler by a technically skilled team. Following are the primary cost centres involved in the web scraping process.

1. High end servers

Web scraping is a resource intensive process. Considering the importance of uptime here, the crawlers cannot be run on average performance machines. To have the optimum uptime and avoid crashes, the crawler has to be run on high performing servers located in different parts of the world. The quality of servers is crucial to the consistency of the process. Not to mention, these high end servers makeup for a significant amount of the cost involved in web scraping.

2. Technically skilled labour

Scanning through the source code to identify appropriate tags that hold the required data points and creating a program that can automatically fetch these data points from similar pages’ at large scale requires deep programming skills. It goes without saying that employing skilled people would incur cost that could take a hit on your revenue. Ideally, you will need a team of at least 10 to run a web scraping setup in-house.       

3. An extensive tech stack

Although most of the software being used for web scraping are open source, you will find yourself investing in paid software to make certain things easier or faster. Dealing with open source software might not be as user friendly as the paid ones. In any case, having a tech stack with a lot of options is a necessary aspect of web scraping that would incur additional cost.   

4. Maintenance

Building and running the web scraping setup is only half of the story. Since websites undergo changes often, there is a possibility of the crawler setup breaking from time to time. To avoid or solve this at the earliest, a monitoring system that involves both machines and humans is necessary. Monitoring and maintenance contribute to a considerable cost in the web scraping process.
Data as a service

If data for business is your requirement, a better way to acquire it would be to depend on a company that can deliver it via the data as a service route. Web scraping companies have already set up high-end resources required to run the web crawlers that you can utilize to avail web scraping at a much lower cost than what you would incur by doing it on your own. With this, you can also save yourself from the complications and maintenance headache associated with web scraping. Moreover, with a web scraping service, you can enjoy a much higher return on investment owing to the lowered cost of data acquisition. You can use our ROI calculator to compare between the cost of going with an in-house web scraping setup and a hosted solution.

Source: https://www.promptcloud.com/blog/web-scraping-affects-revenue-growth

How to use Web Content Extractor(WCE) as Email Scraper?

How to use Web Content Extractor(WCE) as Email Scraper?

Web Content Extractor is a great web scraping software developed by Newprosoft Team. The software has easy to use project wizard to create a scraping configuration and scrape data from websites.

One day I came to see the Visual Email Extractor which is also product of Newprosoft and similar to Web Content Extractor but it’s primary use is to scrape email addresses by crawling websites you feed to the scraper. I had noticed that with the little modification in Web Content Extractor project configuration you can use it same as Visual Email Extractor to extract email addresses.

In this post I will show you what configuration makes the Web Content Extractor to extract email addresses. I still recommend Visual Email Extractor as it has lot more features then extracting email using WCE.

Here are the configuration that makes WCE to Extract Emails.

Step 1 : Open Web Content Extractor and Create New Project and Click on Next.

Step 2:  Under Crawling Rules -> Advanced Rules Tab do the following settings

Crawling Level 1 Settings

Follow Links if link text equals:
*contact*; *feedback*; *support*; *about*

for 'Follow Links if link text equals' text box enter following values:
contact; feedback; support; about

for 'Do not Follow links if URL contains' text box enter following values:

google.; yahoo.; bing; msn.; altavista.; myspace.com; youtube.com; googleusercontent.com; =http; .jpg; .gif; .png; .bmp; .exe; .zip; .pdf;

Set 'Maximum Crawling Deapth' to 2

set 'Crawling Order' to Deapth First Crawling

Tick mark below below check boxes:

->Follow all internal links

  Crawling Level 2  Settings

set 'Follow links if link text equals' to below value

*contact*; *feedback*; *support*; *about*

set 'Follow links if url contains' text box to below value

contact; feedback; support; about

set 'DO NOT follow links if url contains' text box to below value

=http

Step 3 After doing above settings now click on Next  -> in Extraction Pattern window -> Click on Define ->  in Web Page Address (URL) give any URL where email is given.  and click on  + sign right of Date Fields to define scraping pattern.

Now inside HTML Structure selects HTML check box or Body check box which means for each page it will take whole page content to parse data.

Now last settings to extract emails from page using regular expression based email extraction function.  Open Predefined Script window and select ‘Extract_Email_Addresses‘ and click on OK. and if you have used page that contains email then in Script Result’ you will be able to see the harvested email.

Hope this will help you to use your Web Content Extractor as a Email Scraper.. Share your view in comment.

Source: http://webdata-scraping.com/use-web-content-extractor-as-email-scraper/