Refurnishing with Baan

Downsview, Ontario, Canada-based Teknion Furniture Systems is one of Baan's oldest customers in North America -- and one of its newest. The office-furniture maker first bought Baan software in 1993, but Teknion recently put Baan into a competitive evaluation project before deciding to stick with its software. "I'd call what we're doing a reimplementation as opposed to an upgrade, because we're essentially starting from scratch with version IV," ex plains Mike May , director of IS at Teknion.

The biggest factor for Teknion was picking a system that had the depth of functionality to handle the configuration requirements of a company manufacturing a whopping 53 million different parts and features and selling more than 10 million different product variations a year. Baan had an edge because Teknion was comfortable with the software's basic architecture, but it was the package's new capabilities that made the sale.

Bill Minimization

The next step, not surprisingly, was to find a consultant to help Teknion with its planned six-month implementation. The company went with a system integrator with experience not just with Baan software but with particular expertise in integrating Baan's bill-of-materials technology: SE Technologies.

Teknion's Baan project, which goes into production with its pilot this summer, will involve 192 users and a somewhat unusual architecture involving a third-party developer environment called Progress (from Progress, Inc.), Citrix's WinFrame clients, and Digital Unix servers. "We really like Citrix clients for Baan," says May. "We installed a mixed-mode environment using WinFrame clients, and almost everyone wants Citrix. Plus, we find that cost per user is really down, and because the Citrix clients don't have disk drives, heating fans, and so on, it's an economical client that's also great for a dusty factory floor."

In general, keeping costs down was a key criterion. Even the most well thought-out projects often go over budget and behind schedule during massive enterprise-software implementations, so Teknion negotiated an innovative contract. "Consultants are all expensive, and in most cases they offer questionable value. Integrators wanted to bill us $1700 per day per consultant on the job, which is pretty standard," says May. Instead, Teknion negotiated a total project cost; cost overruns are SE Technologies' responsibility.

"Implementin g Baan software is actually an easy task," explains May. "The issue isn't how to make Baan work, but how to make our organization change to make our business processes work with Baan."

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Mike May

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"Consultants are all expensive and in most cases offer questionable value."--Mike May