Salesforce Launches the Forward Deployed Engineering Partner Network to Scale Agentforce Success

Salesforce is extending its engineering expertise and product roadmap insights to a select global partner network, significantly expanding access to trusted Agentforce experts worldwide.

Launch partners Accenture and Deloitte are joined by over 30 firms, including PwC, Slalom, and IBM Consulting, all selected for their proven success with Agentforce.

Salesforce’s FDE Partner Network combines the deep industry expertise with specialized Salesforce training. These partners will help drive Agentforce implementations at scale.

Bridging the Gap Between Ambition and Results

For the C-suite, the period of AI experimentation has ended and the mandate has shifted to delivering tangible business outcomes. However, a significant execution gap remains. IDC FutureScape* reports “over one-third of organizations will be stuck in the experimental, point solution phase of AI experimentation, requiring a shift of focus to enterprise use cases to deliver ROI.” Most businesses can build an initial proof of concept, but few have the technical foundation required to scale those pilots into systems that the business can actually run on.

Becoming an Agentic Enterprise requires more than deploying models. It demands systems that can reason over proprietary data, operate within complex security environments, and deliver consistent, trusted outcomes. Salesforce is meeting this demand by expanding customer access to specialized Forward Deployed Engineering (FDE) expertise, providing businesses with more ways to bridge the gap between AI ambition and real-world results.

Scaling Elite Engineering to Meet Global Demand 

Salesforce has long supported customers through a trusted portfolio of success offerings, including Professional Services, implementation partners, and Success Plans. With Agentforce emerging as the fastest-growing product in company history, Salesforce is increasing its investment in these offerings to support tens of thousands of customers worldwide.

The launch of the Salesforce FDE Partner Network provides businesses with the engineering depth required to achieve measurable outcomes at scale. By extending internal learnings and specialized training to a select group of partners, Salesforce helps to ensure that customers can turn unique business IP into a production-ready reality.

“Our partner ecosystem is a massive competitive advantage, and the Salesforce FDE Partner Network operationalizes that advantage for the agentic era. The most successful organizations don’t just invest in Agentforce. They align with partners who possess the engineering and industry knowledge depth to turn that technology into the engine that transforms them into Agentic Enterprises.” — Miguel Milano,President & Chief Revenue Officer, Salesforce

The network provides partners with a direct link to internal product teams, offering expert backing at the pace of Salesforce innovation to de-risk deployments and solve complex data challenges. By tying partner incentives to agents reaching production, Salesforce also helps to ensure that every engagement delivers measurable business value.

“Getting AI into production is an engineering discipline. We know this because we’ve done it, and at enterprise scale. The Salesforce FDE Partner Network takes what we’ve built internally — the skills, capabilities, and high standards — and expands the talent and partnership with our elite network of partners. For customers, that means faster time to value and the absolute confidence of an enterprise-tested deployment.” — Lori Steele, President, Global Professional Services, Salesforce

Proven Expertise, Engineered for Success

The Salesforce FDE Partner Network is an exclusive designation that prioritizes technical rigor and production outcomes over firm size or tenure. Every member is a vetted partner with a proven track record of delivering Agentforce; to date, firms in the FDE Partner Network have driven one-third of all successful Agentforce implementations. By merging this technical proficiency with decades of knowledge in industries like financial services, healthcare, and manufacturing, these firms ensure that an enterprise-grade digital workforce is engineered with the industry expertise required to succeed in complex regulatory environments.

Launch partners Accenture and Deloitte are joined by a global network of leaders including Capgemini, Cognizant, IBM Consulting, KPMG, PwC, Slalom, and Tata Consultancy Services, alongside regional experts such as InspireAI, OSF Digital, Rosetree Solutions, TerraSky, Twoday, Oy, and more than 20 additional partner firms. This global reach enables  customers to have access to engineering expertise regardless of location or operational model, facilitating a secure and compliant path to building a digital workforce tailored to specific industry requirements.

“The Salesforce FDE Partner Network is a critical milestone in our mission to enable enterprise reinvention in the agentic AI era. By embedding Salesforce-trained engineers directly into our delivery teams, we are moving beyond traditional implementation to true ecosystem orchestration. For our clients, this means we aren’t just ‘setting up’ Agentforce — we are modernizing their digital core to run a unified, agentic workforce at a scale that delivers measurable business value. This production-first model allows us to combine human ingenuity with high-velocity engineering to turn business intent into live, high-performing agents faster than ever before.” — Manish Sharma, Chief Strategy & Services Officer, Accenture

“At Deloitte Digital, we believe the agentic front-office creates value when it is trusted, governed, and built for production from the start. The Salesforce FDE Partner Network reflects an important shift from traditional implementation to embedded engineering. It brings together deep technical expertise, rigorous data architecture, and compliance by design, giving the C-suite the confidence to move from pilot to production with greater speed.”
— Karl Rupilius, US Salesforce Alliance Lead, Deloitte Consulting LLP

This isn’t just about implementation; it’s about how these systems are built from the ground up. Specialized Product Development Outsourcers (PDOs), including Appiphony, Aquiva Labs, and Bridgenext, are bringing these same high engineering standards to the developers creating apps for AgentExchange. This ensures that the solutions customers buy are as robust as the ones they build, with every application engineered for enterprise-grade production from day one. By combining global scale with specialized development expertise, the network provides the unmatched breadth needed to support the most complex business goals in the agentic era.

The Methodology: How FDEs Operationalize Success

Whether through Salesforce Professional Services or the FDE Partner Network, the delivery model relies on specialized, outcome-based teams that work side by side with customers to drive a sprint from priority use case to a live, compliant agent.

An example of an FDE delivery model includes these components:

• Solution Architecture Design: Before a line of code is written, FDEs define how the agent connects to enterprise data, what permissions govern its actions, and where compliance controls sit. This is aligned to Salesforce best practices from day one, not retrofitted at the end.
• Agentic Design: A detailed blueprint for how the agent behaves in production. Every decision, action, and escalation path is mapped, with trust guardrails and compliance checks built in before the build phase begins. This eliminates the surprises that derail enterprise deployments when it matters most.
• Go-Live and Post-Activation Hypercare: FDEs stay engaged after launch to monitor agentic behavior, resolve issues that only surface in production, and fine-tune for sustained performance. Launch day is the starting line, not the finish line.
• Adoption and Change Management: The most technically perfect agent fails if users don’t trust it. FDEs build and execute adoption plans for readiness, onboarding, and long-term usage.

The Bottom Line

In the agentic era, success is measured by what runs in production and, ultimately, the business value delivered. While every company relies on proprietary data and workflows, the organizations pulling ahead are those with the engineering discipline to wire that uniqueness directly into their agentic workforce.

Salesforce provides a proven path from AI investment to lasting outcomes through a unified offering of Success Plans, Professional Services, and now the FDE Partner Network. By combining expert backing with internal technical rigor, Salesforce helps to ensure that every agentic deployment is built for high performance and long-term stability.

Find a Salesforce FDE partner on AgentExchange to move from pilot to production and achieve business outcomes at scale as a true Agentic Enterprise.

Learn more:

• Learn how Salesforce Partners transform businesses into Agentic Enterprises
• See what’s new in AgentExchange
• Learn how Salesforce is driving customer value through the new Salesforce Partner program
• Hear how FDEs solve enterprise complexity with Agentforce
• Read why today’s hottest role is the Forward Deployed Engineer

*IDC FutureScape: Worldwide Generative Artificial Intelligence 2025 Predictions, #US52632924, October 2024