Baan

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Baan was a vendor of popular enterprise resource planning (ERP) software that is now owned by Infor Global Solutions.

The Baan Corporation was created by Jan Baan in 1978 in Barneveld, Netherlands, to provide financial and administrative consulting services. With the development of his first software package, Jan Baan entered what was to become the ERP industry. The development of the company was heavily supported by local Dutch Reformed christian business people. A few years later his brother, Paul, joined what was to become the largest software family firm in Dutch history. The Baan company focused on the creation of enterprise resource planning (ERP) software.

In 1998 the Baan Corporation was exposed to be manipulating profits in a prelude to the big accounting scandals that marked the turn of the century. First Paul Baan left the company as a result of this, shortly after to be followed by brother Jan. The loss of confidence in the Baan Corporation was reflected in a rapidly declining share of the BaaN program in the ERP market.

In June 2000, facing worsening financial difficulties, law suits and reporting seven consecutive quarterly losses and bleak prospects, Baan was sold to Invensys, a UK automation, controls and process solutions group to create its new Software and Services Division.

In June 2003 poor market performance of BaanERP (Baan V) and delays in introducing the new Baan version (code named Gemini) led Invensys to sell Baan to SSA Global Technologies for a cash consideration of US$ 135 million. The sale of Baan was consistent with Invensys' stated objectives to divest non-core assets as part of its overall plan to improve capital strength and increase strategic focus.

Upon acquiring the Baan software SSA Global ceased to promote the Baan brand, instead referring to it as SSA Baan. In August 2004, after delaying the release of Gemini to allow for improvements SSA Global released SSA ERP LN 6.1. In May 2006, SSA announced it would be acquired by Infor Global Solutions of Atlanta, which also owns some of the former Geac ERP software as well as MAPICS software.

In September 2004, Jan Baan has launched a new Web services company Cordys([[1]]). Cordys' core architecture is a business collaboration platform known as an Enterprise Service Bus - built on XML and open standards - for creating enterprise-class composite application frameworks.

The Baan organization was very closely tied to the Dutch Reformed Church. For a while, corporate policy dictated that no employees would be compensated for traveling on a Sunday: if an employee had a meeting off-site on Monday morning, he or she was expected to travel on Saturday if Monday travel was not possible. There was no customer support offered on Sundays. Women were required to wear skirts, as trousers were considered inappropriate for women. Swearing was forbidden.[2]. When President Jan Baan stepped down after the company had difficulties, he sent an email to all the employees saying "First of all, I have taken my decision Coram Deo, before the face of God.".