Theme: Growth 
Industry Adoption: ⚫ ⚫ ⚫ ⚪ Fully Integrated 
Impact: ⚫ ⚫ ⚪ Significant 

The growth of outsourcing reflects the increasing reliance on external providers to manage logistics functions. This logistics trend is driven by cost reduction, efficiency gains, and access to specialised expertise. Outsourcing allows companies to lower operational complexity, convert fixed costs into variable costs, and improve financial flexibility. The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated this trend, highlighting the importance of partners capable of navigating supply chain challenges. By 2021, 63.5% of shippers had outsourced warehousing activities to third-party logistics providers. 

This trend spans physical logistics (e.g. warehousing, transport), administrative processes (e.g. inventory and customs management), and strategic planning (e.g. network and inventory planning). Data reflects that outsourcing adoption is fully integrated and is transitioning into an industry standard. While startup activity and innovation are stabilising, C-Suite mentions remain notable, adjusting from 30+ in 2022 to about 20 in 2024. Patent activity is low yet focussed, with fewer than 10 filed since 2019. Academic research remains steady, with approximately 150 publications contributing to the field, highlighting sustained academic interest in a fully integrated trend.

What are the opportunities? 

Outsourcing enhances efficiency, cost savings, and agility by leveraging specialised service providers. It allows companies to focus on core business operations and growth, improving resilience and reliability in supply chain management. 

What are the challenges? 

Integrating diverse third/fourth/fifth-party providers adds complexity, while dependency on external partners can lead to control loss. High costs of technological integration and partnership management further complicate adoption.

Sources: 

• Statista (2021). 
• Survey among 500+ global logistics decision makers across various industries, conducted by Statista for Maersk (Q4 2024). 
• In-depth interviews with global industry experts, academia, and futurists.
• Unstructured web sources with more than 10,000 search term permutations using AI. 
• Curated data from startup databases, patent databases, and analysis tools, as well as Semantic Scholar.