When I took my first tools class back in 96', my first thought was what a waste of time. As a tools instructor teaching at Baan for several consulting firms and then employed by Baan, I tried to get the material changed to reflect real life. Neither the consulting firms no Baan had a great interest in changing the material. I can tell you some real horror stories regarding the updating of the materials, but that's not what this post is about.

Rumor has it that three different divisions of Baan are getting back into the Education business. None seem to know about the other. If true, who knows if the material will be better, what the availability will be like, and what the time investment will be for the customer. I would speculate that it would still be difficult and expensive for the independant consultant to get into a class. BSP and Trinet is rumored to have laid off there Baan Education staff, although they are still advertising their classes.

While I was affiliated with Baan or a partner, I could not produce material or classes for the public. Since I do not work for either at this time, I have been working on a book for the Baan Tools area that could be used for instruction and as a reference. Recently, I have decided to expand this into online classes so that the information can be taught around the world. I have monitored all the questions asked, and they all seem to be all the same, and all basic questions. There are not really any advanced questions. I can only assume that this is because we all give up trying to find out how to do things because lack of information.

Please respond if you would benefit from this. Include any ideas as to what you would like to be shown. What you think a fair price per class, or per subject hour you would be willing to pay.

As this progresses, Iwould also like to hear from those who would like to attempt the functional training areas also.

Some interesting stuff in your post. I am sure you'll get replies to your Trinet/BSP comment as we have members on the board from each company.

As to the technical courses, sounds like a very good idea. One myself and James have been playing with for a while as well. One of our ideas is to see how we can bring the bulletin board and online education all in the one web site. It is still very much in the embryonic stage but maybe you would be interested in working together?

I have spent the last 8 months reading every design manual on online training. I have been working on my web site www.webetraining.com for several months. If you go there it is currently redirected to a construction page while I work on the real one.

Collaberation is a key element in any online learning environment. The bulletin board is a great way to make that happen, but should be left to the students of a particular class, and not public.

I have many ideas we can discuss, maybe we should discuss them outside this post.

Yes let's take it offline.

As Director of Education for TriNET, I will respond to some of the points you raise:
1. Rumors are not fact.
2. As Baan's Education Alliance Partner for the Americas, TriNET offers the full range of Baan IV and Baan V education and training curriculum. These classes are scheduled and run from our public classroom facilties in Chicago, as well as being given on-site. This includes Tools, which is one of our most popular courses. We run a Tools class about once a month.
3. TriNET has not laid off its education staff. In fact we have increased the number of instructors. The new instructors I have brought on board fit a much different model than the Baan instructors. Briefly, I feel that instructors who have field experience are able to provide a much more valuable and customer-centric experience than instructors who teach from purely an academic perspective.
4. In the spirit of continuous improvement, TriNET is both aggressively upgrading the existing Baan curriculum as well as developing new courses.
I would be happy to share our exciting progress and vision with you or other members of the board in whatever forum you would like.
I do know what the situation is at BSP-US, but would prefer to let one of their repesentatives respond to your post.

Hello Roger,

I have heard you present your education plan before, and I am glad that you have not given up. I am sure your future classes will be better than those offered by Baan in the past.

I have heard the names of several people that have been laid off at Trinet, although I can not say if they were instructors for sure. Times are tuff and companies are trimming. I'm glad to hear that your not giving up.

The tools classes are Baan's classes and the only ones offered. So of course they will be taken. As you and I have discussed, they will not be rewritten from scratch as Baan has tied your hands. New functionality will be documented and taught and done very well. But when will someone teach the basics better.

Baan, not you, needs to do a better job communicating between their development staff and everyone else. They need to let you development material the way you need to. Venkat are you listening?

Roger good luck in your endevors!

For everyone else, has Baan Tools training taught you what you want to know? Let's here from you!

I have to say that when I had my tools training, it was given in-house by the implementation partner. Which was useful apart from the fact that they rammed 8 days worth of training into 4 very long days, which I then followed with 5 days of intensive Informix training. It was one of the most brain hurting fortnights in my life.

However, the training was useful as a starting point, as with most training, using the system taught me far more than any book or course would. Now I have several years in the business and have worked on loads of systems and would say that a standard training course that also shows how real systems work would be very useful not only for the starting out systems admin but also for the users that want to know a bit more out the backbone of Baan....