Having used many third party products from Safari to CloseIdle, I wonder how many there are out there. Whats the strangest add on you have found for Baan?

I never worked for any customer that was brave enough to try out any of them except for Safari or Crystal Reports :D

Actually, thats a very true point. Many people are worried about using things that could (and have) stopped Baan working. But hopefully this will help people find out about whats out there and (more importantly), does it work?

I think there are quite some good software products out there but for a smaller company to get a food in the door with a Baan customer, I think they have to provide a very 'close-on-the-ball' support. Om average better than Baan's support.

I think you'll find that in the U.S.A. everyone will use a third party tax provider, as the tax rules are so complicated.
The two main providers are Taxware and Vertex (the latter more widely used). I couldn't tell you which was better.
One of the big failings of Baan as an ERP is its limited scope e.g. no payroll application, though the current thinking is less in support of ERP and more in support of best of breed applications communicating through XML - Baan provides OpenWorld for this reason.

Closeidle is a great piece of software, solving the age-old Baan licence problem. I've been on a few Baan sites to succesfully use this. Available in the UK and NL from www.am-connect.com

Another nice product I've come across Document Styler - a pretty slick way of using Word to format your external documents (eg invoices), filtering using templates. I think there's an Excel version available too. Drop me a mail and I'll put you in touch.

Yet another is Croko report writer, far better (and cheaper) than Safari.

If I think of anything else, I'll add them here....!

I already came across several sites that provide added functionality for Tools like ways to control password changes of users, etc.

Last one I came across (and I installed the test version) is B2Win from www.nazdaq.co.il . Helps exporting reports to Word / Excel / Notepad, instead of using ttstpconv, etc...

B2Win of course is very popular, as CloseIdle is. However, B2Win is a very expensive replacement for a system already available. Of course, there is nothing wrong with that...

CloseIdle does have its problems (I can give you a great story about it that is very long winded but explains the problem exactly, if you want me to post it, then just ask) but on the whole is a very nice tool for all those who need those extra licenses but have lazy users.

CloseIdle
I found there were some slight alterations you had to make dependant on whether Baan4 or Baan5 and whether using DEM, but their email support was excellent - speedy and knowledgable.
Version 2 of Closeidle is even better - much more tuned to Baan

DocumentStyler
As previously mentioned, DocumentStyler provides Word & Excel functionality to Baan PROPERLY! From what I've seen, Baan just dumps lousy looking reports to Word that look the same as the lousy printouts. DocumentStyler also uses an alternative ttstpconv tools object to let you filter by using a template to define layout, fonts and graphics.

Plus, it is not expensive! Contact pmoss@macroscope.co.uk

Expense is, of course, depending on your point of view. If your Baan implementation has cost £millions then extra costs is nothing, its part of the project. But for a small firm, maybe around 30 - 60 users, when a piece of software costs the same as a license, it has to be justified.

In my job, I normally come across these small users wanting a quick and cheap solution, and they work with the tools that are available (I know of one firm that uses the free version of Seagate off a coverdisk to do all thier report writing!). I also come across the 'Money is not a problem' people, who want a program to stop them having to buy a new licence or two.

Having installed CloseIdle in a place with 200 licenses and over 400 users, all using Normal, Dynamic and DEM browsers, even some using ASCII, I know about setting up the program (we solved it by creating a load of versions of CloseIdle and writing a script that downloaded the correct version on login, nasty but it worked!). I also have been to somewhere, where they have one guy just working on producing Streamserve layouts. The problem with these kind of add-ons is not the expense of just purchase but the expense in time and extra man-hours cost.

Expense has nothing to do with ability to waste or 'save' money. Any decent company should be able to cost justify any investment.

If they have spent £50k on a 'cheap' Baan implementation, then maybe an extra £2,500 add-on would drastically improve their whole system (by allowing users to login!) Therefore not sinking the ship for a ha'ppeny-worth of tar.

I find its a general company attitude that applies to PCs, furniture, salary - everything. Not just Baan add-ons. There's always a cost/quality compromise.

Nothing comes for free, there are no cheap & quick solutions to complex problems. The more 'labour-saving' the product, like Streamserve, the longer config will take, but the longer term benefits will be greater.

We are here to help customers decide on these products by giving them an honest account of costs and benefits, based on our experience.

So lets hear about more products out there...:) :) :)

I have to agree with you totally, but in the current enviroment, people often accuse thier Baan installation as a pit they don't want to throw money into.

A forum like this allows people to see what products are being used and what the problems/benefits to them are.

In the long term, anything that is a bonus to using the system has to be seen as a justifyable expense. But earlier in this site, I talked about the lack of budget for IT around at the moment as a fallout for the Y2K expense. Remembering that a lot of companies pumped money into Baan to make it Y2K and evolved up to more recent versions, some managing directors are wondering why more money has to be spent on the systems. The truth is that, if you planned for your system 2 years ago, its not good enough now. Problems will have been created in the last few working months that you could never have expected, everything from to few licences to disk space. A Baan system (like any other) is an evolving system and sometimes justifying expense is not the easiest thing to do.

I am not trying to stop people considering these products, in fact, its more helping them. There are some products out there that offer the world and some deliver, others need a lot of work that the average buyer may not consider. Hopefully, this and other forums will help the average user to understand the pleasures and pitfalls of third party software.

BDN (Baan Data Navigator)
Toptier Portal
Crystal Reports
Broadbase - MSOLAP - EDM (Enterprise Decision Manager)

and we just bought:

streamserve: implementation in october

CU,
PV Ramone

We use OPTIO (tool like streamserve) and Crystal Report.
We are implementing Baan 5C on AS/400.

We had some problem with optio because our AS/400 system is french and Optio has some problem with marked characters. It's now solved. Client part work under windows and is not very stable...

Crystal report is a great tool but Baan ERP driver is still on beta version...but we don't have discover any bugs.

We use...

Safari
A faxing software called hostfax
B2win
Microsoft access - for reporting
Marex - A marine exchange program for EDI transfers

We also use a check writing third party software, but I can't think of the name of it.

We have bdnp on the list of things to do. We don't have any problems with any of these third party interfaces. PMC gives us more of a headache than all these combined. :)

as many other, our company uses Safari as well. for the standard reporting which have been created its OK. But for a fast report one might want to try BXL - its fast and easy to use comes with some interesting standard reports. I tested it - had some problems of course - but the majority were solved fast.

mabe you want to take a look - cost $500

www.isplonline.com/downloads/c_downloads.htm

Marlon