I know that baan have provided several CRM products, they are iCRM, SalesPoint, E-Enterprise, E-Configuration..., Can somebody tell me the difference between them? And why Baan developed so many similar products?

Many of the names are confusing.... perhaps Mr. Timmermans (product manager for Baan CRM) will read this post soon and offer a thorough description of each. Here's what I know based on past experience:

iCRM (iBaan for CRM?): a very confusing term. It seems to be used very loosely in press releases and success story articles. Most often, this probably means SalesPoint.

SalesPoint: This is a Web-platform CRM product. Contacts, partners, notes, quotes, etc. May also be used with the sales configuration product.

SalesPlus: The client-server CRM product. More feature-rich than SalesPoint, though the gap should narrow over time.

iBaan: Used very generically. Sometimes this includes SalesPoint, sometimes this includes E-Sales- a completely different product.

ConfigurationPlus: PC-based (client-server or stand-alone) version of the sales configurator. Technology is based on a configuration engine originating from Beologic in Denmark. Can be developed alone, but usually used in conjunction with SalesPlus for customer management and quote generation.

E-Configuration:
Web-interface version of the sales configurator. The modeling environment is PC-based and is essentially the same as used for ConfigurationPlus. One difference is an add-in module that creates certain files needed for the run-time Web interface. But the process of creating configuration models is essentially the same. Can be developed alone with custom Web applications (such as can be found at www.volvoce.com), but is often used with the E-Sales product for B2B e-commerce applications.

E-Configuration Enterprise (E-Enterprise?): New generation of the sales configuration product. New modeling environment and Web-based. Offers a lot more configuration power for very complex products. Effort to model and develop is more technically-oriented in comparison to the previous modeling environment. But if a company has the need for a very powerful configurator, this is the right product. Moving forward, I would say that any company that is very serious about investing in configuration technology should look at this product.

As far as the different products, here's my take. Many of these started out as client-server apps before the Web made such a big impact on business. So Web-enabled versions were released. In some (many?) cases, a Web-enabled product was not the right answer for a company; the client-server version many times was still the right product for the business problem. Lastly, as time has allowed, a new generation of the product is released, as seen in the new configuration product (E-Configuration Enterprise).

Your answer is great! It is really confusing, may be a period of time should be spent for me to understand it.
I wish Mr. Timmermans could provide a more complete answer, too.

Karl's answer below is already pretty complete. Here's my summary of products. It's not as complex as it seems.

First of all, following a general characterization of CRM, as is done by press and analysts, CRM consists of three areas and Baan has products in each of these: marketing, Sales, and Service.

Marketing
This is the most easy one as Baan has only one product here, MarketingPlus, for marketing automation, list and event management, including costing, scripting, and lead management. This product is integrated with Call Center functionality from third party Apropos.

Sales
One the Sales side of CRM, Baan has 3 products, each addressing a specific sales channel:
SalesPlus for mobile, direct sales, working both offline and online. Functionality includes catalog, pricing, proposal management, funnel and opportunity management, contact manaement.
SalesPoint a web based application for indirect sales channels such as resellers, distributors. Functionality includes opportunity and contact management, proposal generation, pricing, catalog. As a note: some of Baan's customers are using this also for their direct sales channels when there's no need for detached use or a high need for real time availability of the latest data.
E-Sales a web based solution for 'unassisted sales'. Basically a 'web shop' application that can be used by customers directly or anyone else who wants to place an order online. Functionality includes: order management, catalog, pricing.

In addition, each of these sales applications work out of the box with Baan's sales and product configuration products which are also sold separately since they are truly the market leading products in this domain. The configuration product line consists of:
ConfigurationPlus: client/server based sales and product configurator
E-Configuration: web based sales and product based on the same technology as ConfigurationPlus with 'just' a different user interface, allowing for web access while using the same product models as in ConfigurationPlus.
E-Configuration Enterprise: the latest release of configuration technology available for both client/server and web. This product is now being introduced, starting for Engineer-to-Order companies. Over time, this product will replace the current configurators.

Service
Baan has 3 products in the service area, in addition to the Service module in ERP (Baan IV, Baan ERP 5.x and the coming ERP Gemini release) which serves as a (fulfillment) backbone of many service oriented companies.

E-Service is a web based application for customer selfservice including a knowledge base, FAQ, trouble shooting, tracking, service requests, and agent support.
E-Service Remote for field service including service order management, dispatching, time tracking, costing, configuration management
Service Scheduler for interactive planning, scheduling and dispatching for equipment related service and maintenance.

That's our products.

As for other terms you may have heard/seen:

iBaan; the general brand name for all of Baan's products.

iBaan for CRM; a strategy for companies that lead with a strategy of customer intimacy, versus product excellence or operational excellency. The implentation of this strategy may require CRM product, but also other products and will largely depend on the business strategy of the company.

Baan CRM; business unit in Baan responsible for the products listed above

iCRM; someone made this one up. Was never formally used in any Baan product or anything else.

Invensys CRM; at one point in time, Baan's CRM product were co-branded under the Invensys name (Baan's owner). The business unit was then named Invensys CRM. This name is no longer used.

E-Enterprise; a former development group in Baan that initiated the development of web based applications 6 years ago. This group no longer exists as the development of web based applications has become mainstream of all development groups

E-Enterprise Server; a common infrastructure used by various of Baan's web based applications including E-Sales and E-Service.

Hope this clarifies it all,

regards,

Patric Timmermans

You explain the problem from different points of view, and now I am quite clear. Thank Timmermans and Karl!

A small update on this thread as product names have been changed since SSA Global acquired Baan:

old name -> new name
MarketingPlus -> SSA Marketing
SalesPlus -> SSA Sales Force Automation
SalesPoint -> SSA Interactive Selling
E-Service Remote -> SSA Mobile Service

other product names have not changed except for the prefix iBaan -> SSA

Also, SSA Global already had a market leading suite of eCommerce products which are sold under the name of SSA Collaborative Order Management. These are now also available and integrated to Baan IV.

regards,
Patric

Indeed thnx for all the information (being Baan consultant probably dragged in some CRM-projects soon so I can use all available info)

One question which pops up: couple of times the word "sales configuration" is mentioned: how does this cooperate in ETO-comps with heavy use of Baan (IV) PCF?

Thnx

I use the term "sales configuration" to differentiate from "manufacturing or production configuration" such as PCF in SSA Baan ERP (triton, IV, 5.x, or LN). The product behind this is currently SSA E-Configuration Enterprise or simply SSA Configuration, which is the next generation and natural replacement (with automatic upgrades) from both iBaan/SSA ConfigurationPlus and iBaan/SSA E-Configuration.

SSA E-Configuration Enterprise is used for customer facing configuration (hence 'sales configuration'), and has very advanced capabilities based on Object Oriented product modeling. This includes the capability to generate BOMs based on customer/sales person input. Obviously there's too much to mention in this thread and I refer to the SSA Global site for more information. http://www.ssaglobal.com/solutions/crm/configuration.aspx.

One thing worth mentioning is the capability to integrate with PCF (Baan IVc4 or 5.0c), where the BOM is send to PCF to get into production by manufacturing.

Another interesting application is that the same SSA E-Configuration Enterprise is integrated with SSA PLM for a roundtrip from sales to engineering to manufacturing. The case study of Rodgers Instruments on the SSA Global website refers to this business process.

regards,
Patric