Baan
Baan was a Dutch manufacturer of standard software for enterprise resource planning and the name of the corresponding software solution. The Baan company no longer exists, it was taken over by SSA Global, which was taken over by Infor Global Solutions in August 2006 . The Baan software solution continues to exist as an ERP solution under the name Infor ERP LN in the Infor product portfolio.
History of the ex-Baan company
1980s
The former company Baan developed in the late 1970s and early 1980s from a management consultancy of the founder Jan Baan in Barneveld , Netherlands. A program for asset accounting was then developed for a computer that, according to legend, Jan Baan received as payment for consulting services. The company gradually switched to offering complete packages (hardware and software modules in BASIC ) for these devices. In contrast to the temporary competitor SAP , which was founded by ex-IBM employees, someone from outside the industry had success here.
Business was good, so additional programmers were hired. In 1982 the founder's brother, Paul, joined them. As before, they were in the area of customer-specific software and job programming. In the mid-1980s, the strategy was developed to bring reusable modules onto the market.
Baan relied on Unix as the operating system and on relational databases .
The then developing CIM production approach accelerated growth. In the mid-1980s, the forerunner of today's Baan software was launched: "BMCS", essentially a PPS system . At the same time, the development of an intermediate layer began, which was supposed to decouple the software from the hardware: the “Baan tools” developed from a basic-to-C translator.
At its peak at the end of 1989, 400 people were employed. Baan got into a crisis and cut almost half of its employees. Additional lines in the product range, such as hardware or CAD systems, were discontinued. The business was completely focused on software development.
1990s
In 1990/1991 "Triton 1.0", the first product from the Baan software package family, was completed. A phase of globalization began. In the late 1980s, an OEM agreement was signed with Bull Computer that gave Bull the right to market Baan software. In 1991, IBM joined as a partner. At the same time, a network of international branches was set up, and the company's own sales through these branches pushed the OEM channel into the background.
In 1993, General Atlantic Partners , an American investment firm, invested in what was then Baan. With this injection of capital, the leap across the Atlantic succeeded. At the same time, a majority stake in the German sales partner, SPACE GmbH in Hanover, resulted in Baan Deutschland GmbH. In 1995 Baan went public in Amsterdam and on the NASDAQ .
The group used a balance sheet trick that contributed to its demise: software licenses were sold by the parent company to the subsidiaries. They activated the software on the balance sheet, the mother had high sales and many licenses sold. After Baan had switched to the US GAAP method in 1998, under whose accounting guidelines license sales may only be shown as sales if the licenses actually left the group, the fraud was disclosed.
In July 1998 Jan Baan resigned from the Board of Directors, Tom Tinsley took over the position. After the first stock market losses, a restructuring was decided, which from October 1998 to spring 1999 lost 1200 of the previous 6200 jobs at Baan. In Germany, 170 employees switched to outsourced partner companies, 80 were made redundant.
In January 1999, the US investment fund “Fletcher International Limited” invested in Baan and took a share of 2.5% of the company's capital for 75 million US dollars (126 million DM / 64.42 million euros ).
From 2000 until Baan was sold to SSA Global
In January 2000, Baan boss Mary Coleman resigned from her posts. The previous chairman of the supervisory board, Pierre Everaert, took over provisional management of the troubled group.
In February 2000, the Amsterdam Stock Exchange threatened to list Baan shares separately if the equity ratio was not increased within three weeks. Baan then convinced investors to swap convertible bonds for Baan shares earlier than due, and sold the company Meta4, a provider of personnel management systems, and the finance specialist CODA. This poured about $ 90 million into the coffers, but had little effect on the share price. When it became known that Jan Baan had sold a large number of his shares in the previous year - even without making this known properly - the already low share price fell by half again.
At CeBIT 2000, interim boss Pierre Eveart announced that Baan would be for sale if an investor was found. At the end of May 2000, Invensys, a provider of factory automation and engineering services, offered to take over all Baan shares for EUR 2.85 each. Invensys announced in early August 2000 that it now had control of 72 percent of Baan's shares. Baan has transferred all of the assets and liabilities to the Invensys Group. There Baan was brought into its own software division.
In summer 2004, the software activities related to the Baan solution at Invensys were bought out by SSA Global Technologies, which arose from the insolvent SSA and with capital from the two owners General Atlantic Partners and Cerberus Capital Management.
Baan becomes Infor ERP LN
In August 2006, SSA Global was bought by Infor, and since then the newer version of the Baan solutions has been running in Infor's product portfolio under the name Infor ERP LN.
Sponsorship
In the years 1998–2000 Baan was shirt sponsor for the then second division Hannover 96 . Baan was also the sponsor of the first world exhibition in Germany, the Expo 2000 in Hanover.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Infor incorporated SSA - Article Computerwoche
- ↑ Billionaire deal , Infor takes over SSA ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. - Article Computer Reseller News
