I have been involved systems engineering/network & system admin fields for the past 5 years and currently I am presented with an opportunity to work with Baan. However, in my part of the world, Baan is not as widely used and popular as Oracle or SAP.

Do you think it's worth going into the product which is not widely used and with a shaky history or even to be involved in the ERP field as a whole? Appreciate some comments.

Thanks.

...I am presented with an opportunity to work with Baan. However, in my part of the world, Baan is not as widely used and popular as Oracle or SAP...

It probably depends to some extent on your location (which you have not disclosed). But in a more general vein, does the fact that other software is more popular really affect your situation? That is, if you decline the Baan opportunity will you necessarily get similar opportunities with the more popular software?

It may be that the Baan opportunity may give you some experience that you could use some other time. If a similar opportunity were to arise with say SAP down the track (next week even) the fact that you took the Baan opportunity wouldn't preclude you from subsequently taking the new one.

Terry

I'm based in Asia. As mentioned, the Baan opportunity is new and will gain me an entry to the ERP field, even though the product might not be widely used.

My concern is more on future prospect - where can I go with Baan knowledge, experience and skills. Are they portable to other ERP suite? Does employers normally look generally at the broad knowledge a person has on business and technical background, rather than product specific skillsets?

Getting into Baan, which was never so popular as SAP, always had one big advantage: Because there are not many Baan consultants out there, it was easy to get an outstanding visibility and guru status in the market.

So if you would have asked this questin 5 years ago, the answer would have been clear: go for it!

Now for me things changed. Not the history of Baan is shaky, but it's future. I am very negativ about this, but this is my personal feeling. SSA is kicking out a lot of independent Baan partners and consulting freelancers. It looks a bit like SSA wants to make the business themselves and mainly live from support revenue. Milking the cow before it dies, as some called it here.

Regards

Markus