Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) is a subset of outsourcing that involves the contracting of the operations and responsibilities of a specific business process to a second-party service provider. Originally, this was associated with manufacturing firms, such as Coca-Cola that outsourced large segments of its supply chain.

Outsourcing is a business practice in which companies use external providers to carry out business processes that would otherwise be handled internally, or in-house. Outsourcing sometimes involves transferring employees and assets from one firm to another.