Manual Data Collection? Not Anymore.

Ever been stuck doing a repetitive task and thought, “There has to be a better way to do this”? That was exactly the situation here. A growing business needed to make a strategic marketing decision — but first, it needed data. A lot of data.

The Challenge

A marketing team needed to make smart, data-driven decisions for thousands of franchise locations. Competitive pressure was rising, and investment decisions needed to be precise. But identifying where competition was strongest meant combing through thousands of web pages to gather location data from two major competitors—no small task.

The Old Way

Previously, the team tackled this with brute force, assigning eight people to manually click through websites and copy/paste data into spreadsheets. The project took over 100 hours and cost around $4,000 in labor alone.

Let’s be honest — most teams would do the same. It’s the clearest path, even if it's not the most efficient.

The Smarter Way

That’s where we came in — to help rethink the routine. Instead of repeating the same time-consuming process, we introduced a custom-built web scraper to handle all the clicking, copying, and pasting. No coffee breaks, no burnout, just clean data delivered faster.

The first site used a series of nested links — state, city, then addresses. The bot navigated the entire structure and extracted over 27,000 locations in just 9 hours. The second site was similar but a little more complex, requiring tweaks to the script. That scraper pulled in 8,000+ more locations in only 2 hours.

The Results

In just a fraction of the time and cost of the manual approach, the team ended up with 35,000+ structured, accurate data points — ready to fuel strategy the very next day. The bots ran quietly in the background while internal teams stayed focused on work that actually moves the needle.

The Takeaway

Manual tasks don’t have to eat up valuable time and budget. Smart automation frees up teams to do what they do best — create, connect, and grow the business.

Got a repetitive task that’s draining your team's energy? Let’s uncover where automation can bring speed, accuracy, and peace of mind to your workflow.