The hard part was never the model. It’s getting it into your business.
You’ve seen the demos. You may have even bought the licenses. And yet the value hasn’t shown up — the AI sits next to your work instead of doing it. You’re not alone: MIT’s State of AI in Business research found that roughly 95% of enterprise AI pilots produced little to no measurable impact. The reason is almost never the model. It’s the last mile — the messy reality of your data, your legacy systems, your Dynamics and Azure environment, and the workflows no demo ever accounts for.
That last mile is exactly what a forward deployed engineer is built for. Instead of handing you software and walking away, we put a senior engineer inside your business to close the gap between “AI is capable” and “AI is doing the job.”
A senior engineer, embedded in your business, who ships.
“Forward deployed engineering” is a model pioneered by the enterprise AI world — Palantir, and now OpenAI, Anthropic, AWS, and the big consultancies. The idea is simple: rather than working at arm’s length, an engineer embeds directly with you to scope the real problem, build against your actual systems, and own the outcome in production.
It replaces three things you’d otherwise have to stitch together yourself — a consultant who advises but doesn’t build, a dev shop that builds what the spec said instead of what you needed, and a product you’re left to adopt on your own. One senior person, accelerated by AI, wears all three hats: understands the business, writes the production code, and stays accountable until it’s delivering value.
That’s not a new way of working for us. It’s what Craftware has done since 2019 — now named for what it is.
The model the big labs won’t sell you.
Here’s the open secret of the AI boom: the most valuable delivery model in enterprise software is structurally out of reach for most companies. A forward deployed engineer at a top AI lab costs several hundred thousand dollars a year and only gets sent to Fortune 500 accounts — the NFL, the big banks, the insurers. The economics simply don’t work below enterprise scale, so mid-market companies get left with self-serve licenses and a help center.
But you have the same problem those enterprises do — fragmented data, a legacy ERP, integration bottlenecks, AI you’ve paid for but can’t operationalize. You just haven’t had anyone willing to embed and fix it at your size.
That’s the gap we built this service to fill. Craftware brings forward deployed engineering to companies with 20 to 500 people — the same embedded, outcome-owned model, sized and priced for the mid-market, delivered by engineers with 20+ years of combined experience in the Microsoft stack.
Embed. Ship a win. Expand.
A forward deployed engagement moves in three steps. You can stop after any one of them — there’s no long contract to sign before you see value.
Scope — 1–2 weeks, fixed fee
A senior engineer embeds with your team, maps your real systems and data, and finds the highest-value place to start. You leave this step with a concrete plan and a fixed number — not a vague proposal. If we’re not the right fit, we’ll tell you here.
Ship the first win — 30–60 days
We build and deploy one production outcome tied to a metric your CFO would recognize — a process that runs in days instead of weeks, a report that builds itself, a Copilot that actually answers from your data. Real software, in your environment, working on real data. Every sprint ends in a live demo, not a status deck.
Embed and expand — ongoing, optional
When the first win lands, most clients want the next one. A monthly embedded arrangement keeps the same senior engineer working alongside your team, moving to the next outcome — with no rehiring, no re-onboarding, and no black box.
Outcomes, not scope documents.
Because we’re embedded, the work follows your highest-value problem rather than a fixed menu. In a Microsoft-centric business, the first win is usually one of these:
-
Manual workflows, automated — billing, timesheets, order entry, and approvals that eat days each month, rebuilt as custom software. (One client’s two-week billing cycle now runs in a few days.) -
AI that answers from your data — Azure OpenAI and Copilot deployments grounded in your actual systems, not generic chat. See the Azure AI package below.
-
Data silos, connected — B2B and system integrations that stop the manual re-keying between your tools.
-
Dynamics 365, made to fit — customizations and extensions that bend D365 and Business Central around how you actually operate.
-
The report that builds itself — Power BI and Fabric dashboards replacing the spreadsheet someone rebuilds by hand every week, running on managed Azure.
Unlock the full power of AI in your Dynamics 365 & Azure environment
Current AI can handle far more of your team’s key tasks than most teams actually use. When that gap is your highest-value problem, this is what the first 30–60 days looks like.
-
As a Microsoft Partner specializing in Azure and Dynamics 365, we audit your usage, build custom AI agents & copilots, and deliver measurable productivity gains. Turn theoretical capability into real results—without ripping out your existing stack.
We were built for this model before it had a name.
You talk to the person building your software.
Not an account manager, not a project manager. The senior architect who scopes your work owns its delivery — that’s the whole point of “forward deployed,” and it’s how we’ve always worked.
Fixed-fee, after we understand the problem.
We spend the scoping sprint learning your requirements, then we give you a number. No hourly billing, no scope creep, no surprise invoices.
Human + AI, so the win comes in weeks.
Our engineers drive AI to do the repetitive build work — that’s how a small senior team ships in weeks instead of quarters. The speed is a byproduct of discipline: every AI output is reviewed, every commit is tested, a human owns every line.
20+ combined years deep in the Microsoft stack.
From CRM 4.0 to Dynamics 365, Azure AI Foundry, and Microsoft Fabric — as a Microsoft Partner, we know where the complexity actually lives. That knowledge doesn’t come from a search bar.
“Our billing process is very time-consuming, we struggled to bill every two weeks. Craftware designed a web application for us that now allows us to complete billing in a few days.”
Forward deployed engineering: FAQs
-
What exactly is a forward deployed engineer?
A senior software engineer who embeds directly with your team to scope, build, and deploy production software inside your environment — acting as consultant, builder, and owner at once, rather than advising from the outside or handing off a finished product.
-
How is this different from hiring a consultant or a dev shop?
A consultant advises but doesn’t build; a typical dev shop builds the spec and hands it back. A forward deployed engineer does both and stays accountable for the result in production — embedded with you, working on your real systems, measured on the outcome.
-
Do your engineers work on-site or remotely?
Both. For most mid-market engagements we embed remotely — in your tools, your standups, your systems — which keeps the model affordable. On-site time is available when it helps, and we work with businesses throughout Sugar Land, Fort Bend County, and Greater Houston.
-
What size company is this for?
Companies with roughly 20 to 500 people, typically running on Microsoft — Dynamics 365, Azure, Business Central — who’ve outgrown spreadsheets or off-the-shelf tools and want AI that actually works in their business.
-
How fast will we see results?
The scoping step takes one to two weeks. The first production win typically ships in 30 to 60 days.
-
How does pricing work?
The scoping sprint is a fixed fee. The first build is quoted as a fixed number once we’ve scoped it — no hourly billing. Ongoing embedded work is a monthly arrangement you can start or stop as you need.
-
We’re not sure what to build yet. Is that a problem?
No — that’s what the scoping sprint is for. Most clients know the pain but not the fix. Finding the highest-value place to start is our job, not a prerequisite.