Sarcouncil Journal of Engineering and Computer Sciences

Abstract: The Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system has made a remarkable change since its establishment in the 1980s as a basic accounting application, developed through four separate technical waves that originally defined organizational functions. The journey from the character-based interfaces on the mainframe computers to today's conversational AI assistants reflects wide technical changes that lead to the democratization of the enterprise's sophisticated business capabilities. Initial ERP implementation requires adequate capital investment, special technical expertise, and a long deployment deadline, which creates adoption obstacles for all but the largest organizations. The introduction of web technologies in the late 1990s expanded these systems beyond accounting to include wider commercial operations, although integration challenges were associated with special departmental applications in organizations. The 2000s Cloud Revolution has fundamentally changed ERP economics through the membership-based pricing model, dramatically improving user experiences, and reducing the implementation and total ownership cost. Contemporary AI-enhanced solutions represent the fourth wave, starting with natural language processing and conjunctive interfaces that originally changed user interactions with enterprise systems. This evolutionary trajectory reveals a potential cyclical pattern, and the ERP system potentially returns to its main financial functions while operating procedures become rapidly automated through the environment computing model that eliminates traditional user interfaces.