From technology leaders like Microsoft rethinking how they deliver technical support to fast-growing startups leveraging specialized services, third-party (outsourcing) providers play a critical role in modern business ecosystems.
This article explores real-world outsourcing examples from leading companies across multiple industries, showing how organizations use external partners to build software, strengthen cybersecurity, adopt cloud technologies, and unlock new sources of competitive advantage.
Quick list: 10 examples of outsourcing
Outsourcing is used across industries to access specialized expertise, scale operations faster, reduce costs, and deliver complex projects without building every capability in-house.
- PKO Bank Polski outsourced mobile app development to build a secure corporate banking application. The collaboration resulted in a secure corporate banking application that enables business users to manage multiple company accounts, monitor transactions, and securely authorize payments from a mobile device.
- Decathlon outsourced payment engine integration to add seamless BLIK mobile payments.
- Klarna outsourced AI-powered customer support to handle millions of customer conversations at scale.
- Air France-KLM partnered with external technology providers to accelerate generative AI development.
- Snap Inc. outsourced cloud infrastructure to manage massive traffic and improve platform performance.
- Apple outsources device manufacturing to scale global production efficiently.
- Nike outsources footwear and apparel manufacturing to specialized production partners.
- Microsoft outsourced technical support operations to serve customers across global markets.
- Uber outsourced customer support to expand service coverage internationally.
- PepsiCo outsourced HR operations to streamline employee management across multiple countries.
IT outsourcing market overview
Companies increasingly view IT outsourcing services as a strategic lever for scalability and innovation enabling faster product development, flexible access to global expertise, and the ability to adopt emerging technologies without large upfront investments.
According to Statista, the global IT outsourcing market is set to generate more than $634 billion in revenue, reflecting its role as one of the most widely outsourced business functions.
Projections indicate this figure could rise to over $806 billion by 2030, driven by accelerating demand for cloud migration, cybersecurity, and advanced AI capabilities.
Building software through outsourcing
Not every company has the resources or in-house expertise required to build the software it needs. Whether developing an internal system or a customer-facing application, outsourcing can help bridge that gap.
By partnering with a software development provider, organizations can delegate certain parts of the development process, from design and engineering to testing and deployment, to complete the project.
PepsiCo Human resource management
- Partner: Hewitt Associates
- Business value: Optimized global HR operations
Visa IT recruitment and staff augmentation
- Partner: Neontri
- Business value: Reduced time-to-hire, with open positions filled in an average of 28 days
Software and IT outsourcing examples
The following examples illustrate how companies across different industries have successfully used outsourcing to deliver complex digital solutions.
- Company: PKO Bank Polski
- Industry: Banking
- Outsourced function: Mobile app development
- Rationale: Need of mobile software development expertise in-house
- Business outcome: Secure corporate banking mobile platform
PKO Bank Polski, one of Poland’s largest financial institutions, sought to expand its digital banking capabilities by developing a mobile application tailored for corporate clients. The goal was to provide business users with secure, on-the-go access to essential banking services while improving the overall digital experience for corporate customers.
To deliver the solution efficiently and ensure high technical quality, the bank partnered with Neontri, which provided a dedicated development team and mobile engineering expertise. The collaboration resulted in the launch of iPKO biznes, a comprehensive corporate banking application that enables users to:
- manage multiple company accounts
- monitor transactions
- securely authorize payments directly from a mobile device.
Since its launch, iPKO biznes has been downloaded over 100,000 times, achieving a 4.5/5 customer satisfaction score, demonstrating the success of the outsourcing partnership and the app’s value for corporate clients.
- Company: Decathlon
- Industry: Retail
- Outsourced function: Integration of a payment engine
- Rationale: Need for specialized expertise to integrate the BLIK payment module with existing retail systems
- Business outcome: Seamless in-store mobile payments
Decathlon, a global sporting goods retailer, sought to enhance its omnichannel retail experience. The goal was to introduce a “pay and leave” functionality in the existing mobile application, enabling customers to complete transactions without waiting at traditional checkouts.
To deliver the solution, Decathlon partnered with Neontri:
- Solution delivered: BLIK payment processing connected with Decathlon’s existing systems
- Delivery result: Completed in 70% of the allocated time
- Business impact: €1 million in transactions processed within the first 7 days
- Operational outcome: Thousands of customer orders handled in the following weeks
AI-driven outsourcing
Generative AI outsourcing is rapidly reshaping the technology landscape. In 2026, companies are no longer just hiring offshore teams to follow rules; they are partnering with global tech giants and specialized vendors to deploy autonomous systems capable of reasoning, making decisions, and optimizing workflows in real time.
This model allows organizations to access advanced capabilities such as machine learning, predictive analytics, and intelligent automation without building expensive in-house AI infrastructure.
AI-driven outsourcing examples
The impact of this strategy is best seen in how global leaders are reinventing high-volume business functions.
- Company: Klarna
- Industry: Fintech
- Outsourced function: AI-powered customer support
- Rationale: Handle massive global inquiry volumes without hiring thousands of human agents
- Business outcome: In its first month, the AI assistant performed the work of 700 full-time human agents and handled 2.3 million conversations
By integrating OpenAI’s API into their customer interface, Klarna transformed a traditional cost center into an efficient, automated engine.
The AI handles everything from refund requests and payment cancellations to complex troubleshooting. Notably, while the resolution time dropped from 11 minutes to under 2 minutes, the customer satisfaction scores remained on par with human-led interactions, showing that AI-driven outsourcing doesn’t have to sacrifice quality for scale.
- Company: Air France-KLM
- Industry: Aviation
- Outsourced function: Generative AI development
- Rationale: Need for high-level data engineering and specialized generative AI expertise that was too slow to build entirely in-house.
- Business outcome: A 35% acceleration in digital development cycles and the successful deployment of over 40 AI-driven projects.
Air France-KLM outsourced the innovation process itself. By establishing a “Generative AI Factory” with Accenture and Google Cloud, they created a modular environment where new artificial intelligence tools could be built and tested rapidly. This partnership allowed the airline to move its entire digital core to the cloud, providing the “clean data” necessary for AI to function.
One of the most successful outputs is Pamelia, an AI assistant that provides airport agents with instant, hyper-accurate answers to passenger questions, significantly reducing stress and wait times during flight disruptions.
Cloud outsourcing: The rise of multicloud and XaaS
Multicloud allows businesses to delegate IT services and infrastructure management to multiple third-party providers instead of relying on a single vendor.
At the same time, cloud computing has become the foundation of the broader “everything as a service” (XaaS) model. In this ecosystem, technology capabilities are delivered on demand through three core service categories:
- Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), which provides ready-to-use applicationson a subscription or pay-as-you-go basis. ;
- Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), which offers environments for building and deploying applications;
- Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), which delivers scalable computing resources such as storage and processing power.
Cloud outsourcing examples
The examples show how companies leverage hybrid cloud outsourcing and XaaS models to build and scale digital platforms more efficiently.
- Company: Snap Inc.
- Industry: Social media
- Outsourced function: Infrastructure-as-a-Service
- Rationale: Ability to manage extreme traffic volatility without over-provisioning hardware.
- Business outcome: 24% reduction in median latency for sending image snaps.
Snap’s reliance on AWS serves as a textbook example of elastic infrastructure. To support a platform where millions of users share photos, videos, and messages in real time, the company requires a highly flexible foundation capable of absorbing unpredictable traffic spikes.
By rebuilding its cloud architecture around services such as Amazon EKS (Elastic Kubernetes Service) and S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval, Snap now successfully processes more than 5 billion snaps per day.
- Company: BBC
- Industry: Public service broadcasting
- Outsourced function: Platform-as-a-Service
- Rationale: Management of unpredictable traffic spikes driven by breaking global news.
- Business outcome: The platform handles over 120,000 requests per minute and up to 2.5 million page views per minute during peak events.
BBC uses Google Cloud Run, a fully managed PaaS solution, to streamline the development and deployment of its website and digital services. Offering a serverless environment for containerized applications, this platform enables the media giant to simplify infrastructure management.
This approach not only ensures 100% uptime during crises but also minimizes costs during low-traffic periods, as they only pay for the exact millisecond their code is running.
Outsourced cybersecurity: Specialized protection, lower overhead
Managing security in-house requires continuous monitoring, advanced tools, and highly skilled professionals who can keep pace with an evolving threat landscape. For companies, building and maintaining that level of expertise internally is costly and challenging to scale.
As a result, 81% of businesses outsource at least some of their cybersecurity activities, relying on external partners for services such as threat monitoring, incident response, and vulnerability management.
Outsourced cybersecurity examples
The following example illustrates how organizations leverage external cybersecurity expertise to strengthen their defenses.
- Company: NHS Digital
- Industry: Healthcare
- Outsourced function: Cybersecurity services
- Rationale: Need for specialized cybersecurity expertise and stronger protection for sensitive healthcare data and national digital health infrastructure.
- Business outcome: Improved data privacy and compliance.
NHS Digital, a UK government organization responsible for providing IT and data systems for healthcare, has partnered with IBM to enhance its cybersecurity capabilities and improve system resilience.
Within this cooperation, IBM provides a range of specialized security services, including:
- security audits
- continuous asset monitoring
- and threat detection
while also supporting the development and operation of the Data Security Centre.
Outsourced data analytics: Filling the skills gap
The company’s business growth potential relies heavily on its ability to manage data effectively and extract meaningful insights. This requires expertise in data science, machine learning (ML), and big data processing, which is often scarce and expensive to maintain in-house.
To fill this gap, 75% of business executives now collaborate with external providers for their data management and analytics needs. Even giants like Procter & Gamble (P&G) utilize external expertise to maintain their competitive edge.
Outsourced data analytics examples
The following cases show how companies outsource data analytics to access specialized expertise.
- Company: P&G
- Industry: Consumer packaged goods
- Rationale: Access to specialized data science capabilities and advanced analytics tools needed to process large-scale consumer and market data
- Business outcome: More precise marketing strategies and stronger product positioning in competitive markets
P&G partnered with Fractal Analytics, a global provider of AI and data analytics solutions, to enhance its ability to analyze consumer behavior and market dynamics. The collaboration enables P&G brands to process and interpret vast volumes of customer data in order to identify emerging consumer trends before they become mainstream, allowing the company to refine product development and design more targeted marketing campaigns.