Cost savings: The lowering of the overall cost of the service to the business. This will involve reducing the scope, defining quality levels, re-pricing, re-negotiation, cost re-structuring. Access to lower cost economies through offshoring called "labor arbitrage" generated by the wage gap between industrialized and developing nations.

Cost restructuring: Operating leverage is a measure that compares fixed costs to variable costs. Outsourcing changes the balance of this ratio by offering a move from variable to fixed cost and also by making variable costs more predictable

Improve quality: Achieve a step change in quality through contracting out the service with a new service level agreement

Knowledge: Access to intellectual property and wider experience and knowledge

Contract: Services will be provided to a legally binding contract with financial penalties and legal redress. This is not the case with internal services.

Operational expertise: Access to operational best practice that would be too difficult or time consuming to develop in-house

Staffing issues: Access to a larger talent pool and a sustainable source of skills

Capacity management: An improved method of capacity management of services and technology where the risk in providing the excess capacity is borne by the supplier

Catalyst for change: An organization can use an outsourcing agreement as a catalyst for major step change that can not be achieved alone. The outsourcer becomes a Change agent in the process.

Reduce time to market: The acceleration of the development or production of a product through the additional capability brought by the supplier.

Commodification: The trend of standardizing business processes, IT Services and application services enabling businesses to intelligently buy at the right price. Allows a wide range of businesses access to services previously only available to large corporations.

Risk management: An approach to risk management for some types of risks is to partner with an outsourcer who is better able to provide the mitigation.