Baan - My first experiment with largest scale organizational transformation

Change and transformation

In my 22 year career I had been involved with many transformation journeys. At least 15-20 small and medium scale organization and IT transformation journeys. Barring two the rest were all nothing compared to the Baan transformation from a breadth and depth perspective. That transformation touched strategic, operational and technical and all aspects of the product and organization.

Only the largest European steel giant and another European telecom company were bigger in scale but not in the strategic breadth as I had been part of the experiment in Baan way back in 1990's...

Strategic changes

Baan entered new markets and became a global corporate with CEO coming from US and lots of managerial changes. That saw many changes at various levels in the organization and things slowly changing from the old leadership. New heads for functions and even for Indian operations and a few new members to the strategic leadership were added.

Decision to create localized product for target markets of 14 countries was another. It was a massive scale product release with over 300 requirements and under a young mostly fresh out of college team. That was a courageous decision to empower young leaders and team with such a large scale strategic responsibility. Some of the countries saw some partnership expansion and clients also.

Operational changes

The delivery teams were extended and expanded in India, Japan, Brazil and Argentina among the non-EU development operations. Netherlands saw some major operations shifting out of the HQ. Fresh young leaders and managers were given major managerial roles in delivery.

New tools and new methodologies were adopted. PSP, TSP and CMM came in for the organizational process and quality assurance. WinRunner, TestDirector - Mercury tools were used and Baan was a beta test ground for the Mercury tools. Fresh testing and delivery methodologies were trained to new leads.

And the major operational change saw the largest 3 ERP licensing deals signed in US, Asia and Europe. Baan placed on client premises a core support, consulting and implementation team. Again no surprises and many of them were youngsters.

Technology and product changes

That was the biggest transformation ever in a core product, tool and technology stack in my entire IT product / delivery/ service/ consulting history. No one else ever did such a major transformation of the product from the tools/ tech stack to the functional and technical aspect in my circle is what I felt.

Baan was adopting and building several tools and tie ups to address reports, migration, ETL etc and the research team were experimenting with XML, Java, Microsoft tools the predecessors of ASP.Net and such. But the biggest was not this. Baan ERP changed from ASCII to Graphical User Interface GUI. This was over and above being having a tech stack which was open architecture to work in any OS and DB.

THAT MEANT SEVERAL THINGS TO CHANGE IN THE TECH STACK AND TOOLS!! From multi-byte display for the Japanese, Arabic versions to adopting the GUI based tech and display changes it was enormous!

Functional changes

The functional changes were staggering also. Baan had the vision to build the ERP to handle multi business entities of a corporate but still allow them single central financial reporting and invoicing for corporate and legal reports. It was possible to set it in single server to consolidate multi-location, multi-country, multiple legal and operational business entities with separate individual company set up.

Add to it BAAN WAS ABLE TO HANDLE EURO CURRENCY AND MULTI CURRENCY TRANSACTION AND REPORTING AT THAT EARLY STAGE ITSELF.

BAAN ALSO ADDRESSED MULTI COUNTRY TAX SYSTEMS ALSO LIKER VAT FOR EUROPE, EXCISE AND SALES TAX FOR INDIA IN A SINGLE INVOICING PACKAGE!! IT WAS STAGGERING AMOUNT OF DEVELOPMENT IN THE PRODUCT, TECHNOLOGY, TOOLS AND PEOPLE INVOLVED IN ALL ELEMENTS OF DELIVERY, SUPPORT AND QUALITY.

The big picture of transformation

The product was changing from back to front and inside. New markets, new operations, new partners, new tools, new methodologies, new management, new leaders, new operations, new strategy, new global vision and CHANGE / TRANSFORMATION ACROSS THE ENTIRE DEPTH AND BREADTH OF THE COMPANY!!

Compared to that when I see how people struggle to transform from legacy systems to ERP or packages or set a new ODC or CoE or a new process QMS or a small merger or outsourcing an IT piece I feel bemused and amused.

Baan had done it and without aid of all the technology or tools or consulting available today more than 20 years back!! What I learned about transformation and end to end management of it from Baan I never had from anywhere else. Today when I see organizations struggle with small changes and transformations I remember Baan the feeling of awe I felt increases every passing engagement I do...

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