By Eugene Grygo

IN ITS CRITICAL e-business push, struggling packaged application vendor Baan will bring front and center its Web-based, thin-client product configuration package for sales and CRM (customer relationship management).

The Baan E-Configuration software, Version 2.2, which debuted this week at DCI Consulting's CRM trade show in Chicago, is slated to be a key component of Baan's E-CRM strategy, company officials said.

At the same time, the company is not ignoring mix-and-match configuration options.

The release also supports Oracle's 8i and IBM's DB2 relational databases, concurrent users, and expanded user interface tools, such as Javascript controls, said Niels Bo Theilgaard, general manager for Baan's front-office products.

This latest upgrade also supports Microsoft Access, Microsoft SQL 7.0, and Oracle 7.3 database offerings.

"We weren't as scalable as we are today," Theilgaard said of the Web version of E-Configuration. However, the client/server version of the product dominates at the moment, he said.

"It's clearly 90 percent [client/server]now ," he said. "Only about 10 percent are starting to move to the Web."

The Web-based version will allow a sales force to remotely configure a product as well as permit the use of flexible templates for popular configurations, Theilgaard said.

The new version will also allow direct customer configurations via the Web. The E-Configuration package has a constraint-based orientation.

The Baan E-Configuration upgrade is integrated with the Web-based, sell-side e-commerce offering, Baan E-Sales. The software will also be a key component of Baan's E-CRM strategy, company officials said.

Further integration of E-Configuration with other E-CRM modules for proposal, contact, and opportunity management will be forthcoming during the third quarter, Thielgaard said.

In a related move, Baan also unveiled BaanMarketing for campaign management, marketing business analysis, and campaign execution.

The new software is geared for direct, indirect, and Web-based sales and marketing efforts. BaanMarketing is integrated with BaanSales, the opportunity management module of Baan FrontOffice.

BaanMarketing is for routing qualified leads to sales teams. It also works with the Baan business intelligence offering, Baan Business Intelligence Suite.

The Baan E-Configuration effort underlines user demands for secure and personalized configurations, said Kai Rostrup Jensen, an analyst at PricewaterhouseCoopers. "As e-business matures, the market for product configurators will increase," Jensen said in a prepared statement.

Baan Co., in Barneveld, The Netherlands, and Herndon, Va., is at www.baan.com.

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