Baan Co NV hopes that conflict between its direct sales and reseller channel will disappear with a line it has drawn in the sand at $350m (CI No 3,446). Mid-market customers with revenue of less than $350m will be serviced by resellers. Those with revenues above $350m will go through its direct sales force. 26% of Baan’s total license revenue went through resellers last year, it expects that number to climb to 50% in short order. Gates Arrow, Ingram Micro, Integration Alliance, Standard Electronics and Access Graphics will in addition peddle pre-packaged Baan application bundles for application-specific use on Compaq, HP and other hardware to resellers. Morgan Stanley Dean Witter & Co estimates the ERP market is worth $6.8bn this year rising to $12bn in 2000. Baan says it’s determined to become a multi- product company and believes there are opportunities to market its software well beyond the ERP space, as supply-chain and front and back office solutions for example.
