The first time I ever saw an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system, it was the late 90s and I'd been quite excited about seeing this mythical beast. The company I worked for had long struggled with many out-dated and disparate mainframe systems. Like many other organizations, we were seduced by the possibility of 'one system to rule them all' and invested heavily in ERP.

I completely got the concept; one database, interlocking processes, a seamless transition of sales orders to manufacturing, logistics and accounts. The future was bright! Meanwhile, the Internet was growing and Amazon, eBay and Boo.com (remember them?) were revolutionizing the way consumers interacted with enterprises. In my mind, it was easy to conflate the two and I imagined a brave new world in which a modern computing experience was on its way to a desktop near me.

And then I saw my first ERP user interface. Google 'ERP User Interface' and then click the Images tab and you'll see what I mean. Ugly.