"Invensys is laying out the need for information in such a way that it can provide concise information needed, regardless of function (role) or level within the organization"

Excerpts from an Interview, Mr. Yunus Docrat had with Techieindex Inc.

1. Doing business in today's knowledge-driven networked economy requires more than software that allows access to vital information across the enterprise. How does Baan help enterprises gain business benefits in this scenario?

This is a very clear statement and very true. Well, how does Baan help enterprises gain benefits in these scenarios? Baan, as a part of Invensys provides core componentry, functionality, technologies and solutions within the Real Time Enterprise. This concept is a very important and strategic concept. It helps companies to use all their IT infrastructures and systems to communicate internally and externally, across the boundaries of companies and conglomerates. In the Real Time Enterprise, Invensys is laying out the need for information in such a way that it can provide concise information needed, regardless of function (role) or level within the organisation, all the way from the shopfloor to the Executive level or Boardroom. 


 This is defined in three different layers. 

The first delivers all the information necessary at the shopfloor level. Things you can think here are sensors that determine the condition of a machine, and software that assembles the components and performs shopfloor Just In Time Management. These processes have to be monitored and exception reporting needs to be readily available in order for the appropriate actions and decisions to be taken. 

The second is the Production engine layer. Within this layer the information is gathered in such a way that it is possible to perform tasks at the plant management level - the planning of production processes and so on. This level creates its own information streams as well as using the information from the shop floor to monitor its activities as well as allowing appropriate action to be taken to the level of replanning. This same information can be used to optimize the activities at the shopfloor.

The third is the business management layer extending to the Executive level. Here the typical datastreams from the core ERP suite takes place thus managing the entire organization's processes, data and information at the highest - the business, level. Naturally, all the information used at this level is derived from all the levels within the organization. In addition, it uses and generates its own information types as well. 

Baan provides its Business layer within the Invensys Real Time Enterprise Framework, called OpenWorldX. OpenWorldX enables the integration - in combination with the production engine and the shopfloor integration (called "Archestra") - across the whole company. In addition, to providing the critical integration for all applications at the business process level, OpenWorldX deploys the latest technologies (XML, Java and J2EE) and is compliant with the latest industry standards (Rosettanet, OAG, BOD, Biztalk).

OpenWorldX is also capable of managing the relationship with customers and suppliers outside of the enterprise or the conglomerate. With this the agility is within Baan to support the business processes that extend across the company and across the company borders.

The third aspect that makes OpenWorldX a powerful and vital component is that the data and business process information is represented in a simple and easy manner to use at any level within the organisation. This manifests in the superb Business Intelligence Suite that Baan provides. This great combination of data warehousing, portal and reporting tools provides organisations with the flexibility to make all its information useful and - as importantly - actionable for all its users. The uniqueness is that all of this can be achieved in Real Time. 

With this Baan is able to help companies gain the speed that is needed in business today. The Baan software supports business velocity, inclusive of Real-time provision.

The second manner in which Baan addresses the support of the new business paradigms is by a new and interesting way to build its software. This concept and revolutionary way of building software is called "Value Apps" where Baan reuses modules of the software that is available and needed to support the business processes that our customers are looking to rationalize. Examples of this can be an ATP process that crosses the boundaries of the CRM, ERP, PLM and SCM systems to ensure that the ATP can be delivered clearly. Value Apps are the encompassing way to take the modules out of the above described systems and tie them together, through OpenWorldX, so that the delivered software resolves the business issues, by fully supporting the business processes the company wishes to optimize.

2. Ahrend has selected iBaan Solution to support new Information and Communications Technology environment. Elaborate on iBaan solution and the Information and Communication Technology environment?

Ahrend chose iBaan Enterprise 5.0 because of the flexibility that the iBaan solution can offer and for its ability to connect to Triton, the system our trading partners use. Ahrend also selected the system with an eye towards future growth. Ahrend have plans to roll out the iBaan Solution across the entire Ahrend organization in due course.

3. Baan has expanded iBaan for PLM with new Supplier Relationship Management capabilities. How does it help drive efficiencies in enterprise organizations?

With the recent announcement of Baan's SRM offerings, Baan's PLM customers can now benefit from enhanced capabilities in areas like supplier rationalization, capacity utilization, quoting accuracy and procurement efficiency, and bring a new range of business benefits to a new community of suppliers, buyers and subcontractors.

Baan's new SRM offerings are an important component of the company's iBaan for Supply Chain Management (iBaan for SCM) strategy. The new business solution will enable industrial enterprise organizations to closely link their innovation and procurement teams by sharing product information - such as new components, engineering change orders, product enhancements, retirement schedules, and design documents - with buyers so they can efficiently manage supplier and subcontractor relationships. Buyers can share product design documents and plans with business partners during RFQ negotiations and supplier development activities - to assist in supplier selection and management. 

PLM is about owning the processes, data, trace ability history and historical analyses behind the product and SCM is about providing capabilities to better manage the supply-oriented aspects of demand-driven management, including direct procurement, demand planning, inventory optimisation, and logistics. While each of these solutions is independently valuable, the real pay-off for demand-driven organizations is the combination of both applications, allowing suppliers and subcontractors to participate in the decision making process of an enterprise.

John Moore, VP and GM, Enterprise Advisory Services at ARC Advisory Group said: "There is a natural and very compelling reason to have a comprehensive PLM and SRM solutions: it ensures that engineers are sourcing the right product from the right suppliers and also ensures that a company leverages its spend with key suppliers. Baan's efforts to bring these two solutions together will provide their customers with a very attractive offering that should deliver impressive future ROI from more cohesive design and spend management."

4. What are the vertical industries that Baan supports with their iBaan Industry Solutions?

We will focus on manufacturing enterprises with complex make, move, and service processes in four vertical markets. 
Industrial Machinery and Equipment 
Electronics 
Automotive 
Aerospace and Defense 

5. How will iBaan OpenWorld, a part of Baan's A&D Solution, help companies achieve smoother integration of a variety of legacy and third-party systems. What are the other benefits it provides for a variety of applications with their ERP systems in real-time?

First of all let me start by explaining that iBaan OpenWorld is a separate set of software geared for the best of breed integrations between applications. iBaan OpenWorld is part of OpenWorld and can be used to integrate any application with any other application. This means that iBaan OpenWorld can and does serve any industry solution out of Baan. The A&D industry solution is one of them. The way that iBaan OpenWorld helps in achieving smoother integrations between a variety of legacy systems has to do with the technology that is deployed in these solutions. Let me take you through the list of things that mark out the capabilities of iBaan OpenWorld:

iBaan OpenWorld uses the latest technologies. It fully supports Java and J2EE and is using XML as the message type. This makes it possible to generalize the data type, through which it is possible to be language and message type independent of the other applications

The deployed technology is supporting both point to point, hub and spoke and a-synchronous types of integration. This creates the flexibility to create the type of integration that is non-intrusive and can be deployed in such a way that only the least of efforts will be made to perform the integrations. The point to point works for straightforward integrations, the hub and spoke type of integration serves the more up unto the most complex of integrations and the a-synchronous integration supports the business critical type of integrations

The Message Oriented Middleware (MOM) structure supports all general ways of message transportation whether this is in a secure environment or over the internet (TCP/IP).

On top of this Message Oriented Middleware one can place the iBaan OpenWorld Adapter. This adapter supports all basic integration functionality. The adapter supports a distributed environment through local translation and local transformation of the messages. Another important feature for integration. The Adapter technology is pre-build for all Baan applications, thus having adapters for all major Baan ERP platforms and all strategic solutions that Baan brings to the market. There are also generic connectors to applications that are not pre-build. iBaan OpenWorld has generic connectors for Java, XML, (D)Com, .NET and Corba. Quite a number. With this any basic integration can be served. Meanwhile also integrations to third party software is available, like SAP R3

On top of this Adapter the iBaan OpenWorld Broker can be placed, performing hub and spoke type of integrations and a-synchronous communication. This only needed for these complex type of integrations.

Last but not least the connector for XML is also designed to perform "dynamic invocation" of other applications. Meaning that this type of integration has the intelligence to determine which application needs to be integrated with this data type. Very useful in communication over the Internet. 

To make the integrations application specific Baan is building the integrations with so called BOI's or Business Object Interfaces. This is a very nice piece of software that makes it possible to define the data that needs to be integrated on the business level, instead of the technical level. Then a very well segmented layered structure makes it able to define the languages and protocols it needs to integrate to and it determines the methods of integration. This way of building the way to do integrations makes an integration using BOI's relatively insensitive to changes in the software and is therefore robust and easy to deploy. Integrations using Baan's BOI technology take up only 5% of the lines of code compared to competitive products. Baan has over 400 BOI's available per major ERP platform and customers can then still choose to build their own BOI's 

IBaan OpenWorld is relatively cheap, while maintaining extremely high functionality 


6. Invensys Manufacturing Solutions (IMS), provides turnkey solutions to optimise the efficiency and effectiveness of the manufacturing supply chain for discrete and hybrid manufacturing customers. How is Baan leveraging it to enhance the core area of application of its solutions?

Baan is leveraging this through the OpenWorldX framework. Within Invensys Baan is positioned in the Production Management area. This provides Baan with its sister companies to both execute on the real time enterprise vision and be able to serve and leverage the knowledge throughout Invensys. Invensys is now organized to reach its maximum of success. 

7. How does Baan leverage alliances and partnerships, in its mission to deliver world-class information solutions so as to help customers run a better business in the industrial enterprise sector, and help them enjoy substantial growth in profits?

The success of Baan in the Enterprise Application Market is achieved by a business-model that makes maximum use of the unique knowledge of this market in developing world-class business software, for which cooperation agreements with established market leaders are a crucial part of the composition of the total solution. 


The importance of cooperation agreements is based upon the conviction that a software supplier is never able to offer a total solution for a customer, because of the fast changing market and the fact that on some parts other suppliers have better solutions, such as products and services in the field of system integration, hardware, operating systems, databases, additional applications, business information systems, training and education, application management, application adoption and maintenance, data migration and testing applications.


The selection process to come to a cooperation agreement with another company, is tied up in a structure, which guarantees that with each selection the same steps are undertaken, through which the product or services of a third party are integrated at most in the total solution, so that the customer gets the idea that they deal with one supplier.


Cooperation agreements are distinguished in agreements with solutions that are totally integrated in the Baan solution and that are, in most cases, put on the market under the Baan brand name, and agreements with solutions that we consider as supplementary.

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