BAAN'S VOYAGE

BAAN'S VOYAGE
In the market for ERP applications, Baan is either ahead of its time or ahead of itself.
By Brian E. Taptich
From August 1998 issue

an old article...

http://www.redherring.com/mag/issue57/baan.html

Thanks for posting this. My career with Baan started shortly before this article was written and lasted until December of 2002. My...how things changed.

What amazes me is that I still believe that Baan's solution for discrete manufacturing is one of the best, and I have seen many ERP systems.

The article speaks of increasing the solution's scope through aquisition of other 'speciality' software developers. The problem with this strategy is that the ever changing focus of the market to address the current 'buzz word' changes faster than the ability of companies, like Baan, to integrate whatever 'speciality' solution they aquire. By the time, if ever, the integration is done, the market preference has moved on to something else. In essence, companies are forced to sell 'visions' and not working products. This just doesn't cut it in today's economy with a market that has been slow to spend the money on a software solution and are typically smaller and more privately held than those who purchased ERP solutions in the late '90s.

My opinion is that Baan should focus on the small to mid-market, especially in the discrete manufacturing areas and stop trying to market all the 'buzz word' fluff. How many $300 million dollar companies really need data warehousing, KPI analysis or full constraint based, optimized scheduling? I have functioned as an Operations Manger for a billion dollar plant using spread sheets to schedule and ship 30,000 items to over five million customers annually. Most companies simply need a transactional backbone.

Baan needs to find a niche and stick to it. Let SAP, JDE, Oracle and Peoplesoft fight for their share. Baan isn't in this game anymore and doesn't need to be. Baan's core ERP solution is an excellent one and they should ride it as far as it will take them.

Hexagenia,

I agree with every word of your posting.

Hope that this idea finds its way into the heads of Baan management some day. Probably then the market share will rise again. It doesn't do so by Baan selling "buzzword software" to already existing customers.

Uli