The 10 best examples of outsourcing

In this article, we explore the most common examples of outsourcing, the types of business functions companies delegate to external partners, and the practical benefits organizations gain from outsourcing as a long-term business strategy.

What is outsourcing?

Outsourcing is a business practice of hiring an outside company or individual contractor to carry out tasks and projects that were previously done in-house. Companies choose to outsource to reduce costs and fill talent gaps.

The Deloitte data suggests these five main goals of companies that use outsourcing.

ource: delloite.com

Businesses can outsource services onshore (within their home country), nearshore (to a neighboring country), or offshore (to countries located in different time zones and even continents). Offshore outsourcing is the one arrangement producing the most significant cost savings.

Basics of outsourcing:

• Agreement on the transfer of certain scope of work
• The term of the contract must be at least a year (long-term cooperation)
• Only secondary functions can be transferred to the outsourcer
• The possibility to relegate some business processes

Advertising, office and warehouse cleaning, and website development are the best examples of outsourcing. Most business owners delegate authority to outsourced specialists when it comes to bookkeeping, maintenance, and recruitment. This helps enterprises to focus most of their resources on the main activity.

Outsourcing examples

1. IT Services

IT outsourcing means that a business transfers a part of IT-related tasks to a third-party contractor to save costs. Basically, this means having those tasks done by others while controlling all the processes fully.

The most common outsourced IT tasks are:

• Website development
• Application development
• Cybersecurity tasks
• Maintenance and tech support
• IT infrastructure

Getting started with IT outsourcing is easy. Just find a software development outsourcing company (reviews platforms like Clutch are a perfect place for that), check reviews, and get in touch.

The examples of outsourcing in IT are everywhere:

• Starbucks outsources cybersecurity tasks
• Slack uses third-party vendors for its app design
• WhatsApp has outside contractors for iOS app development

Although the companies on this list are quite big, IT outsourcing is affordable for small businesses. After all, the purpose of this business strategy is to get high-quality work for lower budgets.

2. Customer service

Customer service outsourcing means a company uses outsourcing services to help out with answering phone calls, live chat, email, or social media messaging support.

Benefits of hiring external support providers:

• Availability. You can hire support agents in the time zones of your choice to make sure that your business is more available to customers
• Flexibility. More support agents means that a company can handle more service requests and even after-hours support
• Professionalism. You can get access to highly trained and experienced customer support agents from all around the globe

Customer service is a great example of outsourcing also because it’s easily affordable for most businesses.

3. Accounting

Outsourcing in accounting involves the transferring of an organization’s functions and bookkeeping. Its financial side is the most complicated aspect of business processes.

The partnership between the enterprise and outsourcer depends on the volume and nature of the required services. The goal is the ability to manage several business processes at the same time. The leader needs to have knowledge and experience in this sphere.

Small firms need easily and narrowly focused accounting services to transfer these functions to a third-party company. It allows businesses to save on installing and updating accounting software, staff salaries, and taxes.

4. Legal services

Outsourcing legal services means using both local and foreign lawyers and law professionals to perform tasks such as document reviews, legal compliance, non-substantial court appearances, and others.

Law offices provide outsourcing services in different aspects of business legal support. They can help you in labor, corporate, and tax law, as well as provide legal support in court. International law companies can help you with foreign economic activity and exchange regulation.

5. HR (talent acquisition)

HR or talent acquisition outsourcing happens when a company hires an outside contractor to manage some or all of its HR processes. Those processes include recruiting, payroll processing, managing employee perks, and more.

Let’s take talent acquisition for example.

In this case, an external HR professional will take care of:

• Creating and posting job ads
• Finding qualified candidates online
• Contacting candidates and setting up interviews
• Taking part in interviews together with in-house HR professionals

Many HR outsourcing companies also do a lot of networking, so they can find a qualified candidate quickly. As a result, companies save tons of time and get the employees they need.

Data shows that outsourcing continues to grow as a strategic business practice. In fact, the global HR outsourcing market is expected to surpass $45 billion by 2027, driven by demand for scalable recruitment, payroll, and workforce management services.

6. Manufacturing

This type of outsourcing is actively used by huge enterprises that have large production capacities. For instance, all the automotive industry’s global brands successfully transfer various functions to highly specialized firms.

Outsourcing in production allows the enterprise to focus most of its resources on creating and improving quality services or products. It is crucial because of new technologies that appear, changes in priorities in the sales market, and conditions of extreme competition.

H&M, one of the biggest fashion retailers in the world, gives us an example of outsourcing manufacturing. The company does not own its production facilities—it rents them in 50+ countries.

Here are the top 10 countries with the most suppliers (blue in the image) and factories (black) of the company.

Source: hmgroup.com

7. Logistics

Many years ago, enterprises had to invest a lot of money into preparing and maintaining large staff responsible for coordinating transport and warehouse processes. Nowadays, you don’t need to maintain a special transport department. The only thing you need to do is to contact a logistics company.

And many companies continue to choose this model. The logistics outsourcing market is projected to be valued at USD 1.4 trillion in 2026, reflecting sustained demand for third-party transportation, warehousing, and fulfillment services.

Logistics outsourcing companies have the opportunity to deliver your goods anywhere in the world. You can use the services of railway, car, ship, and air logistics. This type of outsourcing delegates most transport operations to other companies. It significantly reduces costs and simplifies business process management.

Logistic companies can provide not only transportation services but stock storage too. You don’t have to search and rent warehouses and worry about the safety of your products.

Choosing the best logistics operator requires paying attention to their reviews, service prices, and execution rate. The efficiency of interaction between customers and logistics companies depends on many factors. You have to consider product features, the amount of freight traffic, and delivery frequency.

8. Marketing

Outsourcing marketing is a process of hiring third-party employees or agencies to do or oversee marketing activities. Marketing is one of the most common examples of outsourcing because businesses will always want to promote themselves in professional and unique ways.

Examples of outsourced marketing activities:

• Content writing
• Managing social media accounts
• Creating advertising campaigns
• Carrying out market research
• Doing email marketing
• Making the entire marketing strategy
• Influencer marketing

Outsourcing email marketing, for example, can help a company ensure that emails they send are consistent, relevant, personalized, and comply with spam laws. In turn, that helps to build good customer relationships and get sales.

9. Cleaning services

Question:

Have you ever seen business centers located in skyscrapers? Then you have probably seen window washers hanging in the air and cleaning hundreds of windows. That is one of the best examples of cleaning service outsourcing.

But of course, the range of services that can be outsourced is much wider:

Source: TOH

Owners of small shops, supermarkets, huge business centers, beauty salons, and pharmacies are clients of cleaning outsourcing companies since they are convenient and professional.

Cleaning firms perform many functions: from searching and training personnel to organizing and controlling the work process.

10. Business development and sales

Why outsource something as important as business development and sales? Well, with so many projects on their plate, business owners find it tough to keep their companies moving in the right direction (and their sales pipelines full).

In the case of sales outsourcing, making this decision makes sense when you want to build your sales pipeline faster. For example, maybe you want a highly trained professional(s) to put your product in front of more clients or reach new markets.

Outsourcing sales also includes lead generation, research of new markets, and contacting clients and meeting with them. That’s why this outsourcing example is especially helpful for companies with small sales teams.

Conclusion

IT outsourcing and software development outsourcing have become core strategies for companies seeking to build and scale digital products efficiently. By outsourcing software development, IT operations, and technical support functions, businesses can reduce operational overhead while gaining access to specialized expertise and global talent.

When approached as a long-term partnership, software outsourcing enables organizations to accelerate development timelines, maintain product quality, and adapt quickly to changing technical and market requirements. This model is used by startups and enterprises alike to support web development, mobile app development, and complex software engineering initiatives without expanding internal teams.

At Globaldev, we help companies leverage IT outsourcing as a strategic growth tool — supporting custom software development, product scaling, and long-term technical execution through transparent processes and reliable delivery models. If you’re evaluating software development outsourcing options, understanding the right engagement model is the first step toward sustainable results.