2021: the annual assessment of outsourcing around the world?

Pandemic, economic fluctuations, remote working, lockdowns… outsourcing has been through a complex year. Despite everything, companies continue to trust this strategy.

(Source of this article: https://fortunly.com/statistics/outsourcing-statistics/#gref )

Key outsourcing statistics in 2021

Almost 54% of companies worldwide have implemented an outsourcing strategy to connect with customers;
Globally, companies spent $75.2 billion on security outsourcing last year;
78% of companies worldwide have a positive opinion of their outsourcing providers;
71% of financial services executives outsource or relocate some of their services.

Figures to remember about outsourcing in 2021

The size of the global outsourcing market had reached $92.5 billion before the pandemic.

Global outsourcing revenues have been on an unstable trajectory since 2012. They peaked at $104.6 billion in 2014 and fell back to $88.9 billion the following year. Statistics as of 2021 show that the upward and downward trend in incomes is still going on, and due to COVID-19, these figures have not yet stabilised.

More than 93% of companies are considering or have already adopted cloud services to improve outsourcing. The move to cloud technology will help companies of all kinds become more capable and responsive while allowing them to rapidly expand their offerings in existing and new markets.

The figures show that a third of companies are willing to accept an increase in operating costs if they have access to the cloud in return. Concretely, for a large number of companies, the main motivation for this strategy is not to reduce costs by cutting jobs, but to be more competitive and increase their capacity to innovate.

Data security is a major concern for 68% of outsourcing companies considering moving to cloud technology.

As cloud technology continues to disrupt the outsourcing industry, some of the main concerns of companies are related to information security and compliance with the law.

However, the statistics for IT indicate an additional concern that has to do with performance: 45% of outsourcing providers are concerned that a cloud-based service is not stable or reliable enough. Some 35% of respondents are concerned about the fear of losing intellectual property.

More than 44% of business leaders say they are now more likely to use subcontractors than they were just five years ago.

The sector turning to outsourcing the fastest is IT. About 64% of the outsourced offshore technology functions are related to the development of software applications.

About 51% of technology managers outsource application and software maintenance, and 40% outsource their data centres.

Cost reduction is a major motivation for IT outsourcing.

Freeing up resources to focus on the core business: this is the most cited reason when deciding to outsource for 49% of IT functions, followed by cost reduction. About 45% of companies that outsource IT functions report that their IT outsourcing projects are intended to reduce costs. About 46% say that this strategy allows them to access skills that are unavailable internally.

71% of financial services executives outsource or relocate some of their services.

Financial companies are among those that outsource the most. About 70% of retail and transport companies do the same, while the first place remains reserved for pharmaceutical companies, of which about 82% outsource services.

83% of companies and financial institutions are implementing or planning to implement robotic process automation. The trend towards automation is accelerating, as these figures show. The automation of robotic processes is often the first step in digitalization and most financial companies have already implemented it.

In addition, 81% of financial companies are satisfied with their robots, practically guaranteeing them continuous growth. This trend is currently more visible in the human resources and invoice processing sectors, in which robots are increasingly replacing people.

Despite, or perhaps because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the percentage of their IT departments’ budget spent on outsourcing has continued to increase, from 12.7% in 2019 to 13.6% in 2020.

Year after year, statistics show a growing gap between large and small companies outsourcing jobs.

IT security and data centre operations saw the biggest reductions in outsourcing three years ago, down 6 percent from a year earlier. The decline was caused mainly by small and medium-sized enterprises that switched to cloud technology, eliminating the need to outsource the maintenance of internal IT infrastructure.

A recent study has shown that the pandemic and the shift to remote working have not negatively affected global IT outsourcing. On the contrary, outsourcing expenses have increased to reach 13.6% of the average IT budget in 2020.

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