"acquiring a product or service rather than producing it yours"

"the contracting out of a company's non core, nonrevenue-producing activities to specialists"

"transfer or delegation to an external service provider the operation and day-to-day management of a business process".

All these of course are perfectly valid. They all amount to pretty much the same thing: the passing of service provision or production to another party (internal or external).

Note that this is NOT the same as passing responsibility!



CANDIDATES

There is almost a never ending list of services and tasks that could be outsourced. Some are fairly rare, but others, such as IT and Human Resources, as now exceeding common indeed.

Specialist firms and products have arisen to assist this activity, as outsourcing has become an industry in its own right.