Forrester’s 2013 Global Tech Market Outlook report defined a new class of applications.

These smart process applications provide:

  • Embedded awareness data relevant to the business activity
  • Embedded analytical tools designed for the task at hand

These points reinforce the view that companies looking to deliver analytic capabilities should not rely on general business intelligence tools, which often require users to create their own reports. Instead, tools should help users work smarter. To do so, they need to be designed for and embedded into the business activity at hand.

Smart process applications embed analytics deep in the user experience and as a core capability—just like successful consumer applications—such that the lines are blurred between transactional capabilities and analytics capabilities.