At first glance, forward deployed engineer, one of the trendiest enterprise technology buzzwords of the moment, might sound like a fancy new way of referring to what businesses have been calling implementation consultants for decades.
After all, the main focus of forward-deployed engineers is to embed directly within organizations to help implement and optimize new technology. That’s a lot like implementation services that major consulting firms have offered for decades.
The reality, however, is more nuanced. While it’s certainly true that FDEs resemble traditional consultants in many ways, they’re actually a distinct type of solution, and enterprises seeking help with technology implementation must understand the differences in order to choose the best option for their needs.
To prove the point, allow me to walk through what highly impactful FDEs do, what makes them different from conventional consultants and how organizations can decide which type of assistance they require.
A brief introduction to forward-deployed engineers
Let’s start with some basic context, for the sake of readers who may not already be familiar with the forward-deployed engineer trend.
Again, a forward-deployed engineer is someone who helps an organization implement a technology. For example, I help manage FDE teams that specialize in assisting enterprises with designing, deploying, configuring and managing Salesforce solutions. FDEs can work directly for technology providers (like Salesforce), or they can be independent consultants who bring deep expertise in a technology vendor’s offerings but are not employed by the provider directly (my teams fall into the latter category).
AI vendors, such as OpenAI and Anthropic, have helped popularize the concept of FDEs over the past couple of years because they are leveraging FDE teams to assist clients in implementing their products. However, both the FDE term and concept have a longer history that started at Palantir in 2006.
What highly impactful FDE teams do
To be more specific about what forward-deployed engineers do and how they help enterprises, it’s useful to break their work process down into the key steps. They include:
- Discovery: Great FDE teams start by working extensively with customers to figure out exactly what they need – which is often different from what the customer initially thinks they need.
- Assess data readiness: Because the success of virtually any modern technology hinges on having high-quality data to power it, smart FDEs make it a priority to assess clients’ data resources and hygiene early-on.
- Evaluate user needs and capabilities: Impactful FDE teams don’t just build a product that works for their immediate contacts within a client’s organization. They take the time to understand what the solution’s actual end-users require of it – lest they end up building something that the client signs off on, only to discover down the line that it’s not actually a fit.
- Align existing capabilities with new ones: While engineers sometimes have a temptation for ripping-and-replacing everything, the more efficient and effective approach is usually for FDEs to build only what’s necessary for filling in functional gaps within the customer’s workflows. They can then integrate those new capabilities with existing ones, resulting in a solution that evolves and enhances, rather than disrupts, the client’s operations.
- Implement solutions: After taking full stock of client needs and capabilities, FDEs sit down and build the requisite solution.
- Transfer knowledge and ownership: FDE teams can’t stick around within a customer’s environment forever. Before they leave, it’s critical to ensure that the client understands how to operate the solutions they’ve implemented.
This is what an end-to-end FDE workflow looks like, and it’s the ability to approach their mission holistically that sets excellent FDE teams apart from those who are good at building solutions, but not necessarily so good at aligning what they build with their customers’ requirements and technical readiness.
FDEs vs. traditional consultants: The critical differences
This is not to say, however, that the difference between forward-deployed engineers and conventional consultants also boils down to approaching their tasks holistically. Traditional implementation consultants also do that.
Nonetheless, there are other important distinctions between FDEs and “ordinary” consultants, and these are the critical differences that enterprises must weigh when deciding which type of implementation partner to seek out.
One difference is velocity: In traditional consulting, it often takes months, or sometimes even years, to bring a new solution to market. But in the fast-moving AI ecosystems in which FDEs specialize, that’s far too long for enterprises to wait. Good FDEs start creating value within weeks by introducing production-ready products. Then, they keep building until they’ve fully met the client’s requirements.
FDEs also specialize in leaning into new technology. Traditional consultants may do this as well, but they have a tendency to prefer tried-and-true solutions over cutting-edge options. The former approach may well be the better one for enterprises that prioritize risk aversion. For those centered on innovation, however, FDEs usually offer a faster path.
FDE teams tend as well to be smaller, often consisting of no more than a half-dozen experts, who stick with clients through the full scope of their implementation journey. This provides the opportunity for them to get to know customers and their requirements especially well.
In contrast, traditional consultants sometimes operate with larger teams, and it’s not uncommon for them to swap staff in and out during different stages of the process. This is not an inherently problematic practice, but it does result in less connection between the implementation partners and the customer, for better or worse.
Conclusion: The ongoing value of FDEs
Far from replacing implementation consultants (or being synonymous with them), FDEs complement traditional consultants by filling gaps in areas where the former tend not to excel.
That’s great news for businesses because it means they now have a wider set of solutions to choose from when seeking implementation help. Conventional consultants are not going anywhere. But the unique role that FDEs play in modern technology implementations (especially those that center on AI solutions) means that FDE teams, too, are poised to remain a fixture of enterprise tech strategy for years to come.
