Final answer:
Business process outsourcing is when a company hires an external firm to manage non-core business tasks, often to reduce costs and improve efficiency, with countries like India and the Philippines being key players in the market.
Step-by-step explanation:
The statement that best describes business process outsourcing (BPO) is that a company focuses on its core business processes and contracts with another firm to perform other processes. BPO involves hiring outside contractors, sometimes in other countries, to carry out tasks that a company once performed internally, such as accounting, payroll, and customer service.
With the advent of globalization and the development of high-speed communication links, BPO has become a significant way for companies to reduce costs by taking advantage of lower labor costs in countries where English is widely spoken and an adequate skilled labor force is available, such as India and the Philippines. The growth of BPO has resulted in job shifts across countries, allowing corporations to remain competitive in the global market.