New Baan Division To Focus On CRM

Baan Co. is wasting little time in its struggle to recover from near extinction. Under the direction of its new owner, Invensys plc, Baan has formed a new division focused on sales and support for Baan's customer-relationship management software.

Robert Karulf, who has been named president of Baan's CRM Division in Golden, Colo., says the division will focus on adding functionality to Baan's CRM offering, supporting the company's 700 CRM customer sites, and integrating the CRM product with other Baan offerings and software products produced by other vendors. Some industry analysts have said that Baan's offering, once considered advanced, has fallen a year or more behind other vendors' products because of Baan's financial problems.

Formation of the new division indicates that Invensys sees CRM as the Baan product most likely to quickly generate new revenue. Profit potential for the CRM offering was the focus of rumors, conjecture, and talk of a spin-off while Baan attempted to recover from its financial problems on its own.

As Baan suffered losses of nearly $1 million a day in 1999 and early this year, rumors swirled that to generate cash flow, the Dutch software maker would sell off its CRM product. In April, Baan said it would spin off its CRM offerings as a separate unit. Invensys, a British electronics controls and software maker, gained control of the CRM product when the company bought out Baan this summer for about $709 million.