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Hire NLP ExpertsBusinesses today are facing fierce competition, not just because of the increasingly challenging global economy, but especially because of the rapidly digitising business landscape. This is why ‘offshore natural language processing services’ are now a buzzword in nearly every sector.
Outsourced natural language processing services have really stood out in recent years as they leverage cutting-edge technology like AI and NLP to come up with some very creative, intelligent, responsive, and cost-effective digital business solutions.
The power and prowess of AI alone, in fact, extends from simply automating tasks to make businesses more productive and resource-efficient to driving more data-driven decisions with lower risk involved, to enhancing customer and even employee experiences.
Likewise, NLP, which is a subset of AI, is all about helping machines understand, interpret, and make sense of human language the same way a person would – but more importantly, in a valuable way, so that the business in question can benefit. AI and NLP combined could potentially revolutionise the way businesses operate, no matter what their scale or industry.
However, both AI and NLP can be complex to develop and implement, which is why many organisations are saving time, resources, and costs, by working with outsourced natural language processing services, which allow businesses of all scales to tap into a diverse and academically rich global talent pool offering specialised skills to help businesses benefit from every possible NLP use case – while also helping them maintain better cost-efficiencies. It’s a very practical solution too as offshore natural language processing services can be provided on a 24/7 basis.
Now, with that said, there may be some challenges to this approach. For instance, Quality Control issues, concerns around data security, cultural differences and communications barriers, etc. are just some of the challenges businesses sometimes face when working with offshore natural language processing services.
Nevertheless, we shall dive deep into the unique advantages and some of the challenges that come with working with offshore NLP development. We shall explore how businesses can manage their offshore teams strategically, leveraging all the services they have to offer in a cost-effective manner, while also managing expectations and challenges (if any) accordingly.
Offshore natural language processing services oversee a contract or ‘partnership’, if you will, where businesses team up with NLP developers from different countries to work on unique use case applications or projects. The arrangement allows businesses to access a wide and varied range of technical expertise which may not be immediately accessible, readily available, or even affordable in their region of operation.
Now that we know what outsourced natural language processing services generally are, we should try to understand some of the reasons businesses need them and the ways they could potentially benefit from them in a huge way:
It’s fair to say that cost-effectiveness is probably one of the most common reasons that businesses across the world choose to outsource natural language processing services. After all, outsourced software/NLP developers offer services at fantastic rates, compared to what a business might get by hiring locally-based developers only. This effectively gives businesses the freedom to really stretch their budget and get a lot more value from their NLP investment.
Better scalability comes with the territory when businesses decide to outsource natural language processing services, as it allows them to easily scale their operations up/down depending on their ongoing needs – and without the difficult task of hiring people or letting them go.
With a diverse and global talent pool at their fingertips, business gain access to the specialised skills and expertise of highly experienced developers, all of whom offer the exact skill sets they need to accomplish AI and NLP-related business objectives.
And, finally, a 24/7 service model in most cases ensures that NLP developers across different time zones are always available to assist you in all aspects of your projects, which means a faster completion time.
From the above reasons alone, it is clear that businesses across all industries stand to benefit from offshore natural language processing services – the demand for which has risen significantly due to the rise of cutting-edge technologies like NLP and AI.
AI, for example, has now enabled businesses to automate a number of tasks, make better decisions, and enhance user experiences across the board. Similarly, NLP has facilitated specific business systems in understanding and processing human language, helping to uncover deep and meaningful insights from unstructured data, which can then be used to improve marketing, customer service, or even future data analytics.
It’s clear that NLP and AI will increasingly become more critical to business success, and this is one of the key reasons that demand for skilled offshore NLP and AI developers has shot up in recent years. The synergy between outsourced natural language processing services and emerging technologies, including machine learning, deep learning or natural language understanding, for example, is a very powerful driver indeed of the continued popularity we are seeing in offshore natural language processing services.
Any business looking to outsource natural language processing services must consider some of the unique advantages (pros) and challenges (cons) that come with offshore NLP services.
Let’s start with the advantages:
Offshore natural language processing services can take your AI and NLP innovation to the next level. By working with offshore developers who come from diverse cultural and professional backgrounds, you can get a fresh perspective and some incredibly novel ideas on how NLP or AI can change the way you work. The diverse skill sets coupled with the diversity in perspectives and thought can help you develop highly innovative NLP and AI solutions, bringing you one step or even a few steps closer to your growth goals.
Offshore natural language processing services are typically dispersed across different time zones, which means you can run operations on a 24/7 basis. This is a key advantage to consider because where your competitors are taking the weekend off, letting their employees take a breather, you are relying on a skilled team around the clock who can bring your AI and NLP solutions to market a lot quicker than your competitors.
Businesses which outsource natural language processing services immediately gain access to a wide and diverse pool of talent. This is a key competitive advantage as well because owing to the specialised nature of NLP and AI, finding the right talent locally can be a very cumbersome, time-consuming and expensive option.
With offshore developers from around the world working with you, you can quickly find the specific set of skills and expertise that you need to complete your projects on time.
Another opportunity in offshore natural language processing services lies in the sheer amount of flexibility and scalability you get. You can even adjust the size or ‘strength’ of your offshore team according to the ongoing needs of your business. Whether your goal is to get ready for a big project or to scale down during tough economic conditions, you will always be in a position to maintain optimum operational efficiency, where your resources are never over or under-utilised.
We’ve already touched upon how outsourced natural language processing services can help you improve cost-efficiencies; this is a no-brainer because outsourcing AI or NLP-related tasks to regions with lower skills costs will help you cut down your own operational expenses. These savings can be used to improve your core business operations or fuel innovation and R&D.
There are, however, some challenges to consider too:
Maintaining quality control and assurance can be a challenge when working with some offshore natural language processing services. It’s up to you to ensure that the lines of communication are clear and transparent enough to relay everything clearly to your offshore team fully understands in terms of the project requirements, demands, and expectations. You must also ensure that they follow the same quality standards as you do.
This means following up with regular product testing, progress reports, and collaborations to ensure that your offshore team does no miss the mark. Naturally, not every offshore team will require regular collaboration or reporting, although as a standard practice, you’d want to do this frequently to ensure that everything is going as expected.
This can be a nagging challenge, depending on how flexible you may be with your own work timings or hours of operation. On the one hand, working with a team from a different time zone may prove to be an advantage and actually cut down the project completion timeframe; on the other, it can also pose communication and logistical challenges.
For example, getting prompt responses to queries or scheduling meetings can be difficult because of the time difference.
Ensuring the highest data security standards is very important when working with an outsourced natural language processing services provider. Businesses can play their part to protect data by having strict security measures in place, including secure data transfer protocols, implementing the latest encryption methods, and having stricter access controls, for example. Regular security audits are a must when working with an outsourced NLP and AI provider, as is ensuring that they adhere to the highest standards for data security to keep risks down to a minimum.
Some offshore natural language processing services may have the highest data security safeguarding standards in place, while others may not. Either way, you may have to do some digging beforehand to ensure that they are following your data security protocols, as well as adhering to a very high standard of their own.
At times, you may be faced with challenging circumstances while trying to establish clear lines of communication, either due to language or cultural barriers.
While regular meetings, including email exchanges, video conferences, and the use of project management tools will certainly help to establish clear and effective dialogue between both parties, any prominent language and/or cultural barriers will make it difficult to communicate – unless you always have a translator on board or someone who is familiar with the cultural norms and terms, phrases, and language used by the offshore natural language processing services provider.
With the above benefits and potential challenges in mind, is it better to just hire an in-house NLP and AI developer and absorb the often high costs or should you offshore natural language processing services?
Well, let’s dig in a bit deeper to answer that question:
Businesses and organisations of all scales and across nearly every sector are becoming increasingly reliant on regular data analysis and data mining to make well-informed decisions. Today, you’ll hardly see any forward-thinking business not incorporating NLP-based data analysis into their model.
The truth is NLP has become a very critical tool for day-to-day decision making – the vast amounts of unstructured data businesses receive on a daily basis can help to extract insights that will, ultimately, help them reduce risk, serve their customers as well as employees better, and become more competitive.
With that said, NLP is a highly nuanced, complex, and time-consuming process. Finding the right in-house developer who can fulfil all your NLP requirements can be very challenging, and you won’t even know straight away if they will be able to “deliver the goods” or not, despite a very lucrative salary.
Fortunately, businesses can reap all the benefits of NLP by automating it through an outsourced natural language processing services provider. And, it makes sense to outsource this function because it can save you lots of time and money – two things businesses are always trying to save and can’t seem to have enough of, especially with globally challenging economies and even more cut-throat competition.
By signing up with offshore natural language processing services, you can effectively eliminate the need to do all the hiring and training you would normally do with an in-house NLP developer – that’s a lot of time, energy, and money saved on the hiring and training aspect alone. So, at the end of the day, you’re looking at marginally reduced overhead costs, allowing you to redirect those resources into other areas of interest. Additionally, outsourcing NLP and AI development completely does away with the need to invest in expensive hardware, software, and equipment needed to maintain your NLP system – further cutting down costs.
When you outsource NLP to an experienced provider with a demonstrable track record, you are not just hiring the service, but a world of knowledge and expertise. An experienced NLP specialists not only brings specialised knowledge to the table but also keeps you up-to-date on the latest NLP developments and practices, as well as provide tailored solutions to help you benefit the most from your day-to-day data analysis or data processing.
Any developments in the field of NLP can make you more competitive as your outsourced natural language processing services provider will always be on top of the latest trends and technologies in NLP, AI, ML, and more.
All in all, offshore natural language processing services hold massive potential for organisations who want to leverage powerful technologies like NLP to stay ahead of the competitive curve. The opportunities to be had, such as 24/7 non-stop operations, access to a global talent pool, unmatched flexibility and scalability, are hard to ignore, especially when the goal of every business is to cut costs and save time.
All the while, we will say that it’s important to understand (and also learn to navigate) some of the inherent challenges that may come with outsourcing natural language processing services – such as cultural differences, communication and/or language barriers, data security and privacy issues, quality control issues, having to work across different time zones, etc. Not all outsourced NLP service providers you work with may pose these challenges, but if they do, then you can certainly implement your own practices to turn the challenges into stepping stones for ensuring unparalleled success.
As the demand for technologies like NLP continue to increase rapidly, and the global talent pool of NLP developers and specialists increases, it will not be surprising to see more and more businesses signing up for offshore natural language processing services. It’s a very exciting landscape, so to speak, with practically limitless potential. Organisations that are proactive in harnessing these opportunities while managing the challenges, will indefinitely make massive gains in what we can probably call the golden era of digital transformation.
Outsourced natural language processing services or not only gaining momentum at a blinding pace but also proving to be a strategic choice for businesses who want to stay well ahead of the competition in a fiercely challenging and evolving digital landscape. The decision to work with an offshore natural language processing services provider – with a clear understanding of the benefits and opportunities as well as the challenges – can result in new revenue streams, better customer, employee, and stakeholder satisfaction, and persistent growth going well into the future.
We’ve covered a great deal in this article on outsourced natural language processing services – from the way NLP has become a mainstay in organisations of all scales and sectors, to the unique benefits, and especially some of the challenges businesses face when working with an outsourced NLP partner.
To sum it all up, offshore NLP services is a highly feasible, practical, and cost-effective option for not only large enterprises, but particularly SMEs. Just to quickly recap the strategic benefits:
Cost-savings is probably one of the biggest benefits of working with an offshore natural language processing services provider, eliminating the need for companies to hire and retain prohibitively expensive in-house NLP staff. Businesses today are cutting costs and overheads however they can, acquiring highly qualified outsourced NLP experts at a fraction of the cost, as most of these specialists work out of countries with relatively lower labour costs. With more resources to spare, organisations can focus on other areas of the business, improving core areas and cost-effectiveness.
Access a much larger and wider talent pool; it’s also worth revisiting the fact that by working with an outsourced NLP partner, you no longer have to be restricted to a single kind of talent pool in your region. You immediately gain access to a wide and varied global pool of NLP and AI specialists, each with their own specialised knowledge, skill sets, and experiences. By working with a much larger talent pool, you always have the desired expertise on your fingertips for any given NLP project – with the added advantage of working with teams who come from highly diverse backgrounds, thus, driving problem-solving and innovation forward.
Higher scalability; another benefit we want to quickly reiterate is the ability for companies to quickly scale their NLP and/or AI projects through the help of outsourced natural language processing services, allowing you to scale up/down according to the demands of the project. This level of adaptability, scalability, and flexibility is particularly useful in sectors where workloads vary or where businesses have seasonal needs. Therefore, those businesses can effortlessly scale their NLP capacity, ensuring optimal cost-effectiveness and resource utilisation.
Focus better on your core areas or competencies. An in-house NLP/AI team will always require extra time, effort, resources, and knowledge to scale properly and align themselves with the business’s vision or requirements. This kind of allocation can put a heavy drain on a business’s resources, but by outsourcing all NLP related projects, your in-house teams can concentrate far better on their core competencies. This ultimately means streamlining your processes more, increasing productivity, and driving more innovation, especially if you’re in a specialised industry.
Fast Data Science is always on hand to provide tailored consultation and solutions around your NLP, AI, and ML needs. We’re only a phone call away: +44 20 3488 5740.
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Offshore natural language processing services; outsource natural language processing services
Meta description: Good idea to offshore natural language processing services?
Is it a good idea to offshore natural language processing services? What do you hope to gain from it? We explore the unique pros (and cons) in this in-depth piece.
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In natural language processing, we have the concept of word vector embeddings and sentence embeddings. This is a vector, typically hundreds of numbers, which represents the meaning of a word or sentence.
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