Computers were first used in Batch mode. End users had little interaction with the corporate computing systems. Inputs would be gathered in a "batch" and keyed into punch cards, which were fed by operators into the mainframe computer when the computer was done running previous batch jobs. When the mainframe processed the job it usually produced printed output which eventually made its way to the end user.

The batch process included no user interaction, and the only recourse a user had after discovering errors in the batch run was to go through the cycle, which often took hours or even days, again and again.