Owners turn to business process outsourcing as a viable option instead of hiring in-house employees. The transition to the new normal even triggered the rapid change into remote work, which won’t always be viable with in-house workers alone.
With this, different institutions rank and name the top and emerging countries for outsourcing as a guide for businesses.
Despite the projection on the rise of disruptive outsourcing, companies are still more optimistic about the power of delegating tasks to the human workforce than their AI counterparts. Even BPOs leverage automation in making their workload more efficient.
Nevertheless, the next few years will be a more interesting time for a globalized economy. Check out some of the useful outsourcing statistics and reports that project the future of the industry in this comprehensive guide.
Global outsourcing statistics
On the verge of disruptive outsourcing and robotic process automation (RPA), companies still turn to the outsourcing and shared services (OSS) industry, with another emerging country to consider.
As reported by Deloitte and a news article in the Arabian Gazette, it gained popularity in the Middle East, particularly Dubai, and is projected to increase to $6.8 billion by 2023.
The 2019 Kearney report highlighted the importance of automation and cybersecurity as some of the factors the countries consider in choosing a BPO company, aside from its location.
This shift affected more repetitive jobs in low-cost countries, replacing these with highly-skilled ones to attend to the increasing demand for automation.
As per Gartner, more than 80% of logistics leaders planned to increase their outsourcing budget by more than 5% by 2020. One of the reasons for this is that outsourcing their logistics helped them a lot by meeting or exceeding the end-to-end (E2E) supply chain and overall business objectives.
The Everest Group, meanwhile, saw a 9-11% growth in the life and pension insurance BPO industry since end-to-end third-party administration grows. The industry has already seen a consistent yearly growth of 9-10% since 2014.
Outsourcing statistics in the past 18 months
The new normal made companies understand the need to outsource services more. Below are some of the updated offshore outsourcing statistics and reports to date.
As the pandemic accelerated global businesses, companies have increased their competition into transferring to digitalized operations.
The US has the most percentage of outsourced services in the world, with almost 68% of companies delegating their services. The UK, meanwhile, has around 48% of companies outsourcing offshore with talent shortage as the main factor.
The Healthcare industry is one of the most outsourced industries to date, with the increased need for remote and telehealth services.
Deloitte projects that the worldwide market will reach $10 trillion by 2022. With this, offshore and remote services are projected to reach $19.5 billion by 2025.
In terms of IT services, companies will continue to utilize cloud computing which is expected to reach “a monumental $760 billion” by 2027.
Meanwhile, cybersecurity remains to be one of the leading concerns of companies, especially when remote working. A reported rise in cybersecurity threats and data breaches has been reported in 2020 alone, making companies more worried about their data privacy and security.
With this, BPOs continue to work on strengthening their data security as BPOs and their clients alike make their long-term remote work strategy.
Top countries for outsourcing services
| Top countries for outsourcing |
Most outsourced services |
| India |
IT and software development |
| Philippines |
Customer service, back office |
| United States |
Tech support, IT-related services |
| Ukraine |
IT outsourcing |
| Poland |
IT and software development |
| Brazil |
IT outsourcing |
| South Africa |
Contact center, IT outsourcing |
| Malaysia |
IT and software development |
Yearly, different research institutions list the top countries for outsourcing services. They usually base this on aspects such as workforce population, literacy rate, and access to the latest technology.
The following is an in-depth view of the top countries for outsourcing, the reason companies choose to outsource to them, and their specializations.
Source: https://www.outsourceaccelerator.com/
