Features - Enterprise Data Insights:

BAAN LEADS CRM PITCH WITH CROSS-ENTERPRISE ANALYTICS

While maintaining its spotlight on the industrial market, erstwhile ERP vendor Baan has been diversifying into new technological areas with its iBaan suite.

The company has been in the CRM game for longer than many CRM pure plays, having acquired Aurum back in 1997 for about $250m. But as the company has added more supply chain and product lifecycle management technology, it has been gently refining its CRM message.

Baan now approaches CRM as a combination of software and applied business intelligence, a tool for maximizing customer acquisition, loyalty, retention and profitability. To really discern where resources are best allocated, Baan offers what it calls cross-enterprise analytics, analytics with data drawn from and fed to all parts of the enterprise.

Impact assessment and the message

Baan sees its differentiation in CRM resting on a tripod general excellence of its software suite, its laser-sharp focus on industrial customers and the attendant domain expertise and strength in analytics. Baan claims its analytics are superior because it can draw data from all parts of the enterprise, including ERP, CRM, supply chain and product lifecycle management systems.

Competitive landscape

Any company that provides both ERP and CRM to its customers would be a challenger to Baan. Foremost among these is SAP, but Baan also runs into PeopleSoft, Oracle and JD Edwards. Siebel can't be counted out of any major deal either.

While Baan claims that it's targeting new customers with its CRM offering, the pitch that its analytics are tops relies on customers having installed several Baan applications. This bit of message-muddle aside, Baan is in a good position to start sewing up deals within its own customer base.

Context

Baan, unlike most of its competitors in the enterprise application space, has basically stuck with the same customer set industrial customers, especially in the aerospace and defense, machinery/heavy equipment, high tech and automotive markets no matter what the fashion. Or as one Baan CRM executive put it, "We have chosen not to be all things to all people; we don't have many insurance experts in our company."

Given that enduring focus, when Baan purchased CRM vendor Aurum in the 90s it seemed that the company should have come to dominate the CRM space in its chosen markets. Baan instead self-destructed. After its awkward bouts with reorganization and management shuffles, the company was sold to UK-based controls and automation company Invensys. It has been doing a fairly respectable job of rebuilding its finances and reputation since the acquisition. This, however, has not meant that the CRM line has been a smashing success. Even if judging its success by penetration with its existing customers, Baan has really just begun ramping up its efforts.

Baan tells its customers that because of its ability to monitor the flow of data through both front-office and back-office applications, it is superior to the analytics that come with CRM packages from the likes of Siebel. The pitch to its existing accounts strongly features analytics. Because Baan has a lot of consulting muscle built up for CRM, it also talks about getting everyone that touches a customer at any point involved in the process. So, while the purchasing department may not traditionally be closely associated with the customer relationship, if a particularly profitable customer places an order that requires a purchase to be made earlier than usual, then the purchasing department needs to be aware of this. According to Baan, other systems wouldn't even come close to being able to do this.

Strategy

Baan has three prongs to its selling strategy. Because of its long history in ERP, it says to existing customers that it can take them from being a company running an ERP package to being a company with a complete view of the enterprise, wedding ERP, supply chain, CRM and a recent addition to the Baan arsenal, product lifecycle management. Second, Baan has been quietly trying to expand into new customers that are not in its four key verticals. It has had some success with the utility industry in the Middle East, for example, and has signed up services leviathan EDS as a CRM customer.

Finally, Baan believes that it has come up with such a unique menu of capabilities that other companies will want to take specific pieces of the iBaan suite (iBaan is the collective term for the company's Web-enabled product set) and build their products around them. This OEM business is just getting off the ground, and the CRM group is deeply involved in seeking such deals.

Competition

When considering CRM and analytics, it might at first glance seem useful to divide the two markets. After all, the business intelligence and analytics field has strong vendors such as Business Objects, Crystal Decisions and Cognos that could conceivably be wooing Baan's CRM customers. The only problem with that view is that Baan has no objections to customers buying a BI system. In fact, Baan has deals in place with both Business Objects and Crystal Decisions. The way Baan sees it, its software can provide any BI tool with better and more complete data for analysis.

A more accurate idea of the competition would come from companies that provide both ERP and CRM applications, plus Siebel, which can't be counted out of any CRM deal involving large companies. The main rival for Baan has traditionally been SAP, and this market is no different but it also most cope with PeopleSoft, JD Edwards and Oracle, especially when venturing outside its traditional customer base.