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Building the agent is easy. The hard part is keeping it effective.
Going live was the win you celebrated. Staying live is the one most don't plan for. But processes change, agents drift and people revert to what they were doing before.
That's why our Forward Deployed Orchestrator™ owns what happens next.
Process expert first. AI-fluent second.
The Forward Deployed Orchestrator™ is our model for running agentic AI inside live client operations. Our orchestrators are AI-fluent, process and change experts who work as part of your team. They run the AI-enabled process in the live environment, continuously improving performance and owning a clear, measurable outcome. Orchestrators are accountable for the three things traditional deployments often miss:
- driving adoption, so the new way becomes the only way
- optimising performance across the combined human and agent workforce
- identifying the next use case, within day-to-day operations.
Engineers build the engine. Orchestrators drive the car.
Two different jobs, delivered by two different kinds of expert. You need both, and most organisations only have the first.
| Who | What they own | Where they stop | What Capita brings |
|---|---|---|---|
| Forward deployed engineers | Technical day to day delivery They embed in your environment, write production code and configure agents against the platform, so everything ships into your stack and runs. |
They stabilise the build and run the operation effectively but don’t bring agents, platforms and change into a single model. | More than 300 active forward deployed engineers, building natively on Salesforce, Microsoft and AWS. We bring four decades of national, regulated operations experience, from a major city's road charging to benefit and assessment services. |
| Forward deployed orchestrators | The whole system. They bring Capita people, AI agents and the platform into one operating model, and own the change around it. What you get is the outcome, not the inputs – they ensure the live service hits KPI targets. And that it continues to do so. |
They don’t stop. Operating is a continuous discipline, not a phase. | We proved the model on ourselves. We instrumented our own Accounts Payable, traced failure causes, then developed and tuned the agents to fix it. |
The process stays consistent. The agents flex.
Every operational process behind the customer-facing front line runs through the same eight stages, whether invoicing, claims, onboarding, case management, HR or finance. What changes between them is the agents: matching an invoice needs one set; assessing a benefits claim needs another.
Many organisations have already cost-optimised functions, but the processes underneath remain fundamentally manual – an orchestrator automates the eight stages for each function, bringing their expertise from previous processes.
Agents run the eight-stage flow, working within defined rules and escalating to a person on consequential decisions, with the orchestrator accountable for all of this:
| Stage | What happens |
| Intake | Capture work details, documents and supporting evidence |
Triage |
Categorise and prioritise incoming requests |
| Routing | Assign to the right team or automated path |
| Data enrichment | Collect, validate and cross-reference data |
| Assessment | Apply rules and evaluate the case |
| Decision | Approve, hold, query or refer |
Human assurance |
Escalate to a second pair of eyes, sign-off and compliance check |
| Action and output | Action, communicate, post to the system of record and close the case |
Better outcomes in the front, middle and back office
We've upskilled our own process and change experts to orchestrate, running the model on ourselves first. Draft strategy development used to take six weeks: with agents doing the drafting under a strategy expert's oversight, it now takes just 14 hours.
| Where | What our orchestrators do |
|
| Customer operations, front office | ➡ | Run regulated customer operations at scale. AI drafts, summarises and routes; advisors hold the judgement. |
| Clinical assessments, middle office | ➡ | Keep clinically governed assessments moving. Registered professionals hold the clinical judgement and the safeguarding duty of care. |
| Accounts payable, back office | ➡ | Instrumented the service, traced the drivers behind SLA variation, and applied AI to resolve them. |
| Strategy and planning, internal | ➡ | Draft strategy development cut from six weeks to 14 hours, under a strategy expert's oversight. |
| Process observability, the engine | ➡ | Continuously observe how work flows in practice, so improvement is measured rather than assumed. |
| Marketing operations, internal | ➡ | Speed up planning, drafting and coordination while holding consistency and control. |
The model works and scales well into large, complex operations:
44,500 automatable actions mapped
A four week process intelligence study of Capita’s own Accounts Payable operation traced underlying performance variation to its root causes and mapped 44,500 automatable actions. We ran it on ourselves first, applying AI within the live service to strengthen flow, improve consistency and support better outcomes.
Four days to 42 seconds
An AI operator that reads documents, runs 26 authenticity checks, and can only clear within defined rules or refer to a human, took a good application from four days to about 42 seconds, with full auditability.
43% cut in candidate screening time
Capita’s own recruitment operation utilising Agentforce saved over 1,000 hours in the first four months and cut candidate screening time by 43%.
6.5 hours saved per case
Working as one automation team with HMRC, Capita unified data across more than 20 systems and now processes over 18 million cases a year, saving up to 6.5 hours on complex tax cases, freeing 105 FTE for higher-value work.
Observe. Deploy. Orchestrate. Operate.
Four engagement plays guide you from understanding the work to taking full ownership of outcomes, with the fourth designed as a continuous, ongoing discipline.
1
Observe
Process intelligence on how the work happens: people, systems, data, exceptions and hand-offs. Continues throughout - the always-on engine - ensuring the agents keep improving against how the work really runs.
2
Deploy
Design the operating model, then build and ship the agent-enabled workflows, bringing in the trusted partner technology the outcome needs before orchestration and integrating it with what you already run.
3
Orchestrate
Compose people, agents, platforms, rules and exceptions into one working system in the live environment. This is where the Forward Deployed Orchestrator™ takes ownership so you can move to the 'Operate' stage.
4
Operate
Run it and own the outcome. Refine the agents against live process, drive adoption so the new way becomes the only way, and stay accountable for results. Four decades of complex operations now running agent-enabled.
Paired with the AI Catalyst Stack
Orchestrators do not work from instinct. They work on a layered architecture, launched October 2025, with governance embedded throughout.
| Layer | What it does |
| Process intelligence | Capture, mining, conformance and ROI. A digital view of how work actually flows, surfacing bottlenecks, compliance risk and the opportunities worth automating. |
| Low-code and pro-code agents | Assemble agents, workflows and copilots on hyperscaler technology, on a secure foundation for custom AI services and domain models. |
| Orchestration and integration | MCP, A2A, an API mesh and connectors link legacy and current estates, so data flows securely across channels and platforms in real time. |
| Data management and intelligence | A lakehouse, pipelines and a semantic layer unify operational and analytical data, for quicker insight and automated risk scoring. |
| Identity, security, governance and FinOps | Cross-cutting throughout. Identity, role-based access control, audit, data residency and cost controls, built for public and regulated markets. |
Designed to work with the platforms you already run, we build on your existing environment and the investment made by hyperscalers, adding our own accelerators to support delivery. This means no need to replace what is already working, and no dependency on proprietary solutions.
Helping you overcome the barriers to better outcomes
Every organisation is at a different stage with AI. Whether you are finding a starting point, trying to scale from pilot, or managing a growing estate without clear oversight, we can help you move forward with confidence.
Common questions
What is a Forward Deployed Orchestrator™?
Capita's own operating model for agentic AI: a process and change expert, AI-fluent, who embeds in your operation to run an AI-enabled process, keep it improving long after go-live, and is accountable for the business outcome, native to the platform you already run.
How is it different from a Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE)?
The FDE builds the engine: deploys, configures and integrates the agents, then exits when the build is stable. The Forward Deployed Orchestrator™ drives the car: operates the live process, continuously tunes the agents, manages the change and owns the outcome. You need both.
Is it tied to one platform?
No. Platform-agnostic and native to the platform you already run (Salesforce Agentforce, Microsoft Copilot, AWS). Capita brings its IP as accelerators, not a proprietary stack, so there is no vendor lock-in.
Who created the Forward Deployed Orchestrator™ model?
Capita introduced the Forward Deployed Orchestrator™ publicly as its operating model for running agentic AI in regulated middle- and back-office operations.
What does a Forward Deployed Orchestrator™ do after go-live?
After go-live the agent needs constant refinement. The Forward Deployed Orchestrator™ tunes the agents to the live, changing process, drives adoption, manages the change, and is accountable for a measurable outcome.
How is an engagement priced?
Flexibly. We match the commercial model to the client: time-and-materials, a managed service, gain-share, or fully outcome-based.
Book an Agent Discovery Workshop
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© 2026 Capita plc. Forward Deployed Orchestrator™ is Capita's operating model for agentic AI in regulated operations.
Capita is an outsourcer, helping clients across the public and private sectors run complex business processes more efficiently. Operating across 8 countries, we support primarily UK and European clients with people-based services underpinned by market-leading technology.