Baan puts meat on the bones of shop floor to top floor – and on out to supply chain

Watch my lips: Invensys is going to continue to own Baan. That was the style of Invensys CEO and chairman Rick Haythornthwaite’s opening comments at Baan’s Los Angeles user conference which played host to 750. “Baan is strategic to Invensys,” he said, hopefully scotching the rumour mill, “now can we get back to work.” Brave and forceful words but, without wishing to detract from what followed or to score cheap points, while there’s no doubting the intent or fact of Invensys’ business plan, the ailing giant still has serious work to do to get its finances robust enough to offer guarantees in this regard. That said, yes, back to work. And highlights at the event in terms of introductions were: iBaan SRM (supplier relationship management); and a combined iBaan ‘Value Apps’ alongside Baan OpenWorldX real time integration framework providing what look very like SAP’s business process (instead of function) focused umbrella Cross Apps (xApps). It also revealed tantalising elements of Baan’s next full suite, code named Gemini, the first release of which is scheduled for next year – unsurprisingly, with “functional and technology enhancements, and an easy migration path from Baan IV and Baan V. This will be Baan’s big push into a true, multi-platform, zero client web architecture. Apparently, it will also provide for rapid implementation templates for no fewer than 20 different manufacturing operation and industry types all still targeted on the company’s preferred verticals. Significantly, Baan’s new senior vice president of marketing Dave Wangler (formerly vice president of sales and marketing for Skyva, and prior to that with Invensys’ Wonderware business) also alluded to changes in its approach to market, clearly aimed at capturing more service revenue. “We want to become more involved [with projects],” he said. “We’ll be letting the customers drive the engagement and working more closely with partners to drive new business.” Some consulting and implementation partners will do well out of this; others ought to start looking around. Beyond all this, the firm revealed what is undeniably good progress since acquisition by Invensys two years ago. It claimed 400 new customers, and 100 during 2002 in its key vertical industry targets of electronics, automotive, aerospace and defence, industrial machines and equipment and, through separate Baan Process Solutions, the process industries. And it claimed improved user feedback and resumed loyalty. Baan’s SRM solutions, in the form of iBaan Sourcing with enhancements to the existing iBaan E-Procurement, will be viewed by many as jumping on the analysts’ acronym bandwagon. Most manufacturers will find it hard to resist a wry smile over an application set supposed to encompass supplier analysis and operations around everything from spend and performance to product lifecycle and production. Nevertheless, Baan makes the point that it’s a sizeable expansion over its earlier supply chain capabilities, allowing users, for example, to plan, source and procure raw materials, components, goods, services and capital equipment with the emphasis on best total cost. In the one broad suite is control of contract negotiation and ongoing management, supplier performance measurement and contract compliance tracking, as well as traditional purchasing and exception management – all geared to supply chain agility and reducing the associated costs. Moving on to the Value Apps, harnessing the OpenWorldX real time integration engine is an obvious and good tack for linking functional and legacy applications and systems to provide business process- (and by the way role-) based super-suite templates, links and views. OpenWorldX is the top layer of a three-tiered real time framework, with ‘Production Engine’ as the mid layer, handling the cross-enterprise and workflow stuff, and Wonderware-developed ‘ArchestrA’ automation and information tolls and services at the bottom, exposing factory data and applications to third party systems. The comparison with SAP’s xApps push is just as obvious, although Wangler insists the difference has to do with the scale of componentisation of the suite – meaning easier weaving together of, for example, product configurator, order processing and production management. Either way, it means Baan is now better able to address industrial users’ current drive for, for example, pragmatic web-based ‘collaborative’ supply chain operations expressed as publishing demand and managing the dialogue of acknowledgements, exceptions, alternatives, ASNs, rejects and the rest, that involve combinations of functions, layers and systems. The bottom line: “We can [now] implement non-invasive, ‘lightweight’ functionality that does what [manufacturers] want,” says Wangler. In other words, establishing auto-replenishment loops with trusted suppliers – extended real time inter-supplier dynamic Kanbans with hooks into forecasts, inventory and production planning – are within the ERP remit.