I was reading the other day an old post about "Search as a User Interface" and it was very close to what I am thinking lately.

Imagine an ERP system where you don't have to remember the exact menu path in order to modify an existing Customer or get the latest sales for Product X. All you have to do is enter a Code/Description in a search box and the application will show you the application entities that match entered string. Hopefully you will easily identify the one you are interested in and right-clicking on it you will have available a list of potential actions you can perform on the selected entity.

Of course this is only the beginning, the application can remember what are the most used actions you perform on each different entity type and display them on top positions learning as you work with it, the results are not just rows of products but hyperlinked text paragraphs, so you can easily navigate to related entities like orders and order lines and so on.

I am sure that classic applications can benefit more from web related behaviors and metaphors except using web forms to enter data.

What do you think ?