Strategic outsourcing has become one of the premier tools that upper-level management uses to shape and streamline its businesses to meet the growing competitive pressures of recent years. In May to August 2003, CSC studied this trend toward increased outsourcing in Europe by surveying board-level executives from the top 250 European-owned companies. This report is based on that survey.

This approach has the advantage of giving a clear understanding of the perspectives of European business leaders at a specific point in time. Other European strategic outsourcing studies are based on composite data, compiled across the different markets in Europe in different ways at different times.

This is the first report to give a ‘snapshot view’ of the strategic outsourcing activities of Europe’s biggest companies.