Other considerations related to IT work, such as security, are driving insourcing as well, Gott said.

Insourcing and outsourcing decisions can go either way, depending on individual companies and their circumstances, said David Rutchik, a partner at consulting firm Pace Harmon. To the extent that companies are insourcing, it may reflect disappointment with the results of their outsourcing deals, "mostly with the transformation they frequently don't get," Rutchik said. "In some cases, they've decided if they want to be more transformative, they've looked at things like building captives—offshore outsourcing centers, but internal to the company."

But businesses may move work back inside the company "only as a precursor to going back out again," noted Rutchik, pictured at left. "They bring it back in, stabilize it, keep some of the pieces that shouldn't have been out, and outsource some of the more commodity pieces." As they reassess their outsourcing strategy, companies may decide to keep in-house work that is "more strategic or differentiating, or more market facing," he said.

Trends in this area also reflect economic cycles, Rutchik said, noting that during the financial crisis, a lot of companies sold captive centers to outsourcing providers. "As the economy gets better, things start to move back in the other direction," he said.

Salil Dani, practice director of the global sourcing team at Everest Group, said that he is seeing insourcing only among companies with the largest outsourcing operations.

He noted other signs of dissatisfaction with outsourcing providers, though, including shorter deal durations and more companies changing providers. In 2013, more than half of companies switched providers at the end of contracts, and the trend is similar this year, he said.

Meanwhile, the growth of business process outsourcing is picking up steam. "What we are increasingly witnessing is more growth in outsourcing and also offshoring of the business process segments than what we have seen in the last few years," Dani said. "The overall market is growing at 8% or 9% a year" in terms of head count, up from growth of just 5.7% two years ago.

Going forward, the old division between work that's done onshore and work sent offshore may become less important given other changes that are occurring, including a pick-up in the use of automation and more reliance on freelancers.

"Automation is on the cusp of starting to become an interesting and important factor where you can improve overall productivity by replacing human labor with capital," Gott said. He cited finance processes as an area "ripe for automation, where some jobs may actually be no-shored, [where] you replace humans in routine tasks with machines."

Dani also cited the increasing use of automation, which he said is taking hold most rapidly in areas like HR outsourcing.

"This is potentially a game changer," he said. "People used offshore because of the labor arbitrage, but if you have robotic automation being significantly adopted and you perfect the technology, you can potentially do a lot of transaction work from onshore locations, even expensive locations."

Gott, at right, cited the use of freelancers, but said that at this point, it's limited to small and midsize enterprises. But again, it's a change that shifts companies' perspective on geographical considerations. They can make use of skilled freelancers from countries where they might not be willing to locate a shared service center or hire an outsourcing provider.

When it comes to finance work, Rutchik said, companies are becoming more comfortable about outsourcing more complex tasks. He cited financial planning and analysis as an area that some companies are now willing to hand off, in part because outsourcing providers have developed "greater subject matter capability."

"On the currency side, I think more companies are forgoing local currency devaluation opportunities for the certainty of paying in dollars," Rutchik added. "They're trading lower prices for budget certainty." He said that decision might in part reflect the dollar's recent strength and companies' outlook on where it's likely to go in the future.

Name Your Destination

When it comes to moving work offshore, a recent A.T. Kearney study that ranks countries on financial attractiveness, labor force skills and availability, and business environment shows Asia remains the top region to send work. India, China and Malaysia take the top three spots, unchanged from the firm's 2011 survey.

The biggest change since A.T. Kearney began to assess offshoring locations is the number of countries involved, Gott said. This year's study ranked 51 countries, up from about 25 in its first study in 2004. "It used to be a handful of countries you considered, but now the universe is very large," he said.

Dani agreed that companies are considering a wider range of locations than ever before, but noted that at the same time, "the India market is growing at a faster rate than what it was two or three years ago."

Southeast Asia has been a popular destination since the late 1990s, while Eastern Europe has faded as the region's economies grew stronger and costs rose, damaging their attractiveness, Gott said. "In the last decade, Eastern Europe used to be much higher in the rankings."

Still, two of the biggest movers on this year's list were Poland, which jumped 11 spots to 13th place, and Bulgaria, which jumped 8 spots to ninth place.

Bulgaria is the lowest-cost provider in Eastern Europe and has maintained its cost advantage as neighboring countries have become more expensive, Gott said, and Poland has a much bigger labor pool than other countries in Eastern Europe. "We have also seen recently improvements in the business environment in Poland," he said.

Spain moved up 10 spots, to 32nd place, as the financial crisis reduced real wages, making the country more attractive as an offshoring location and also resulted in business reforms. But Gott doesn't expect that to last. "I would caution clients from making long-term investments based on the current situation in Spain," he said.

Rutchik noted continued growth in Central American nations such as Costa Rica, Guatemala and Panama, and cited their location and time zone. "It's difficult to manage these relationships, and not having to go three-quarters of the way around the world is preferable to a lot of executives," he said.