Outsourcing is the practice of obtaining from an independent supplier a product or service that a company has previously provided for itself  Vernon, Inc
, a small manufacturing company that has in recent years experienced a decline in its profits, plans to boost its profits by outsourcing those parts of its business that independent suppliers can provide at lower cost than Vernon can itself
Attending to certain tasks that Vernon performs relatively inefficiently has taken up much of the time and effort of top managers whose time would have been better spent attending to Vernon's core business.