Forward Deployed Engineering

Get AI to actually run
inside yourproduction systems

Not another pilot stuck in a slide deck. Our engineers embed with your team and build agents into your real business systems from day one — crossing the pilot‑to‑production gap, with ROI you can actually measure.

Core team from
HuaweiMicrosoftGoogle
Engineering × Consulting
Pilot · Gap · ProductionPILOT / POCTHE GAPPRODUCTION / LIVE
88%
of enterprises already use AI regularly in at least one function
31%
have reached true enterprise‑scale deployment
57 pts
that 57‑point gap in between is exactly what we do
Source: McKinsey, The State of AI 2025
What we solve

Most enterprise AI is stuck between “it demos” and “it ships”.

Models are already strong enough. What blocks enterprises isn’t the technology — it’s delivery: data governance, system integration, process change, compliance audit, closing the ROI loop. That hard, unglamorous work is exactly why Forward Deployed Engineering exists, and what sets us apart from players who only sell models or pitch concepts.

How we deliver value

From a consultation to actually running the last 100 meters

We don’t sell training, and we don’t write strategies that sit on a shelf. We start by diagnosing your business, accelerate with AI, and stay until the problem is running in production — that’s FDE: accountable for results, not generalities.

01 Consulting · Diagnose

Go deep, find the real problem

Engineers and consulting experts embed together, immerse in your real business and data, and pinpoint the problems most worth solving with AI and easiest to justify — concrete scenarios, processes and ROI, not an industry‑trends report.

02 AI enablement · Accelerate

Build AI into production with FDE

With Forward Deployed Engineering we build agents straight into your real systems and prove them on your production data — not in a sandbox or a demo — so AI becomes an accelerator for the business, not another island.

03 Landing · Last 100 meters

We run the last 100 meters with you

From a lighthouse scenario going live, through process redesign and scaled replication, we stay with you from “usable” to “used well” — accountable for the final result, not gone at handoff.

× Not training. Not a slide deck.
We’re accountable for the outcome — and stay with you across the last 100 meters, from “it demos” to “it’s in production and working well.”
See how we do it →
Core delivery model

FDE: we put engineers on your floor — not a proposal in your inbox

Forward Deployed Engineering means our people enter your environment, work with your real data and systems, and prove value alongside your team — the model Palantir and Accenture validated, and the one large customers actually pay for.

01

Embedded build, not a document

Engineers work on‑site, building shoulder‑to‑shoulder with your team — not dropping a deck and a quote and leaving. Where the problem is, that’s where we are.

02

Aimed at production from day one

We start from a lighthouse scenario and validate value on production data and real systems — not in a sandbox or a demo. Ship to production first, then talk scale.

03

Engineering × consulting, both legs

We can deliver systems that hold up under real data volumes and do the process redesign and ROI math. Both are essential — and where most competitors have only one leg.

04

Private & domestic‑stack ready

On‑prem and domestic (Xinchuang) deployment, data never leaves your domain — meeting the compliance bar for finance, government and SOEs.

Delivery method

From one scenario in production to a repeatable product

We don’t promise instant, end‑to‑end “full intelligence.” We get one high‑value scenario running in production first, build confidence and data, then distill it into a repeatable solution and expand step by step.

01

Pick the scenario

High‑frequency · data on hand · standard process · quantifiable ROI — all four aligned before we start.

02

Lighthouse proof

2–3 flagship customers, running in production, in exchange for cases and data.

03

Build the kit

Knowledge base + agent workflows + system connectors + ROI dashboard + AgentOps.

04

Productize

Compress one‑off delivery into a standard “deployable in X weeks” solution.

05

Scale

Replicate horizontally to adjacent scenarios, extend vertically to adjacent industries.

Capability base

Agents that can act — not just chat

Model‑agnostic

Private‑first with DeepSeek / Qwen, best model picked per scenario — never locked to any single model.

Industry knowledge base

RAG built on your data, so agents truly understand your business context instead of giving generic answers.

System connectors

Wired into ERP, online banking, core and intranet systems so agents can really execute complex cross‑system operations.

AgentOps monitoring

Execution‑trace audit, permission control, exception handling — so agents stay stable even inside core processes.

Private & Xinchuang

On‑prem deployment, data stays in your domain, fully adapted to the domestic hardware/software stack.

Security & compliance

Multi‑level security and auditable design that meet finance and government regulatory and audit requirements.

Industries

AI transformation for manufacturing, retail and traditional enterprises — landed in production

We focus on AI transformation for traditional enterprises like manufacturing and retail — from consulting and diagnosis to production landing, applying AI where it creates the most value and the math is clearest. Finance and insurance too.

Core focus

01Manufacturing

Visual QCProcess optimizationSmart schedulingAlarm triageOps reporting
Core focus

02Retail & Consumer

AssortmentSmart supportMembership opsStore inspectionSupply forecast
Core focus

03Traditional enterprise · AI transformation

Process automationKnowledge Q&ADocument processingOps analyticsCost reduction

04Finance & Insurance

Compliance reviewClaims triageSmart supportReport generation

05Online Education

AI teaching assistantAuto gradingPersonalized learningContent generationLearning analytics

06Healthcare

Record structuringSmart triageImaging assistFollow-up managementCompliance QC

07Logistics & Supply Chain

Smart dispatchRoute optimizationDocument OCRDemand forecastException alerts

08Energy & Power

Equipment inspectionLoad forecastFault diagnosisSafety complianceO&M reporting

09Government & Public Services

Gov Q&ADocument processingSmart approvalData reportingKnowledge Q&A
See full industry solutions →
Value reference
7.5×
daily throughput uplift (claims triage)
↓60%
front‑line labor cost reduction
6 wks
from kickoff to production
97%+
processing accuracy

* Reference ranges from industry deployments; actual results depend on the specific project.

Cases

Results that ran in production

Finance · ComplianceExample · placeholder

Joint‑stock bank · Compliance review agent

Automated regulatory‑document comparison and compliance review, integrated with the bank’s core and intranet systems, cutting review time sharply.

↓70%manual review hours
Insurance · ClaimsExample · placeholder

Leading insurer · Claims triage

The agent handles document recognition and first‑pass triage automatically; daily capacity up several‑fold, accuracy steady above 97%.

7.5×daily throughput
Manufacturing · QCExample · placeholder

Manufacturing group · QC + ops reporting

Visual QC and automated ops reports replicated across plants, scaling from a single pilot to broad production use.

12 plantsscaled replication
About the team

We build systems into production,
and get organizations to truly adopt them

Our core team brings together senior engineers from Huawei, Microsoft and Google with delivery experts from top consulting firms. We’ve worked the engineering front line of large enterprise systems and done the consulting that makes AI actually change a business — the combination it takes to cross the delivery gap.

HUAWEIMICROSOFTGOOGLETOP CONSULTING
Engineering
production systems at real data volumes
Consulting
process redesign & ROI loop
Industries
finance · insurance · manufacturing · gov
Xinchuang
private & domestic‑stack deployment
Let’s work together

Tell us the one scenario you most want running

In a single consultation we help you judge: which scenario to do first, how to compute ROI, and roughly how long to production.

sales@substantia.ai · Beijing / Shanghai · Mon–Fri 9:00–19:00