Forrester Says Software Is Going Process-Centric — Your Users Won't Be Humans Anymore

Forrester's 2026 predictions report drops a quiet bombshell: AI agents are fundamentally shifting enterprise software from user-centric to process-centric design. The implications are massive. For decades, software was built around human users clicking through interfaces. Now, the primary "users" of business software are increasingly AI agents that consume APIs, trigger workflows, and make decisions autonomously.

This isn't theoretical. Salesforce reports 85% of executives will rely on AI agents for real-time business decisions by end of 2026. Google Cloud's agent trends report describes "intent-based computing" where agents interpret business goals and execute multi-step processes across CRM, ERP, and industry platforms without human intervention. IBM's Agentic Operating System framework formalizes this: agents as first-class participants in business process orchestration, governed by policy rather than UI.

The shift changes everything about how software gets built. Traditional UX design — wireframes, user flows, button placement — becomes secondary to API design, event schemas, and agent-readable documentation. GAPPs Group's analysis of 2026 enterprise trends confirms the pattern: companies are rebuilding their software stacks with "agent-first" architectures where the primary consumer is an AI agent, and the human interface is a monitoring dashboard.

For businesses, this creates an urgent question: who builds your process-centric layer? You can't just bolt agents onto user-centric software and expect results. The 40% failure rate Gartner predicts for agentic AI projects comes precisely from this mismatch — deploying agents into systems designed for human users, then wondering why they break.

The companies succeeding are the ones redesigning their workflows agent-first. Nubank didn't just give Devin access to their codebase — they restructured their development process around agent capabilities and limitations. Infosys's enterprise agent deployments succeed because they re-engineer business processes before deploying agents into them.

This is where managed agent teams become essential. The transition from user-centric to process-centric software isn't a tool purchase — it's an organizational transformation. You need teams that understand both the agent capabilities and the business process redesign required to make them work.

At Seven Olives, we don't just deploy agents into your existing workflows. We help redesign those workflows for an agent-first world — where AI agents are the primary operators and humans provide oversight, strategy, and exception handling. The future of software isn't better interfaces. It's better processes, operated by agent teams, supervised by humans.