Baan E-Procurement Solution Lowers Operational Costs, Shortens Cycle Times and Enhances Supplier Relationships

BARNEVELD, The Netherlands and HERNDON, Va. (PROTEXT) - Baan E-Procurement(TM) Solution Streamlines Corporate Procurement By Providing Intranet-based Self-Service Requisitioning for Indirect Purchases / Packaged Integration to Back-Office Systems Optimizes Implementation Time Baan Company N.V. (Amsterdam: BAAN; Nasdaq: BAANF) today announced its entry into the electronic procurement space with its Baan E-Procurement(TM) solution, an Intranet-based self- service requisitioning software solution for indirect purchasing that complements the purchasing module of BaanERP. Based on the Microsoft(R) Distributed interNetwork Applications (DNA) architecture with packaged integration to BaanERP, Baan E- Procurement streamlines procurement for companies encumbered with complex, hard-to-control, costly procurement procedures. Baan E- Procurement enables customers to delegate routine purchases to individual requisitioners within their company, thus freeing procurement professionals to focus on more strategic activities such as supplier selection and negotiations. In today's business environment, current processes for purchasing non- production goods and services are often manual and paper-driven, take weeks to complete, and cost up to hundreds of dollars just to process each order. These purchases account for 30-60 percent of a company's total spend and clutter purchasing departments, distracting professional buyers from more strategic activities. Often as much as 30 percent of these purchases are made outside of existing contracts -- increasing the cost of these purchases by up to 50 percent. Baan E- Procurement solves these challenges, while reducing cycle time and overall order-related costs by providing a controlled framework for corporate purchases. Developed using Microsoft's Site Server Commerce Framework, the Web Based Baan E-Procurement solution can be quickly implemented alongside existing IT systems, reducing implementation risks, and speeding time-to- benefit from the system. "Baan E-Procurement streamlines operations, shortens cycle times, cuts costs and helps businesses better control their purchasing processes to contain maverick purchasing, leverage supplier relationships and improve productivity," says Nathan Pieri, Product Line Manager, E-Enterprise Suite of Applications. "Our customers want single-source, integrated eBusiness solutions. With the addition of Baan E-Procurement, we are delivering an easy-to-use, low-cost-of-ownership application suite that extends the value of their ERP investment." By integrating with existing back office systems, such as BaanERP, businesses can streamline PO matching processes, eliminate the need to re-key data, improve accuracy and timeliness of data and enhance supply chain visibility and planning. Baan E-Procurement provides a single-source solution with packaged ERP integration to simplify and speed implementation. In addition, Baan E-Procurement can link multiple ERP installations to support centralized and de-centralized purchasing models for large multi-site organizations. The five main components of the Baan E-Procurement solution include: * Electronic Catalogs and Content Management: Baan E- Procurement supports the use of both buyer and supplier-managed catalogs and third party marketplaces in order to most effectively distribute vendor and product information. The catalog component of Baan E-Procurement enables buyers to aggregate, host and maintain approved vendor, product and price information and provides flexible attributes and categorization to accurately describe and organize items. * Requisitioning: Employees can create controlled requisitions by browsing or searching catalogs, copying previous requisitions, entering a part number and quantity, or using a Wizard tool to request an off-contract item or spot buy. Users submit their requisitions for approval routing and can track the approval and order process within the Baan E-Procurement application. * Approval Routing: The Approval engine builds approval lists by checking each line item against user spending limits, budget availability, contract limits, and any number of flexible approval rules to meet unique organizational needs. Flexible approval rules can be based on commodities, suppliers, purchasing offices, etc. * Order Management: Approved requisitions are either sent to an existing back office system for purchase order creation and management or sent directly to suppliers in XML format from the Baan E-Procurement system for procurement card purchases. * Decision Support: The availability of additional integrated solutions for OLAP-based decision-support provide analysis tools and flexible reporting options to track usage and capture spending history for better supplier negotiations. "Our research indicates that enterprise wide electronic procurement automation can help buying organizations reduce prices paid for material and services, shorten order and fulfillment cycles, lower administrative costs, enhance inventory management, increase control over purchases, and improve leverage with suppliers," said Tim Minahan, research director of e- business for Aberdeen Group, Inc. "However, high license fees and system-maintenance requirements made most early e-procurement solutions impractical for all but the largest companies. With its Baan E-Procurement solution, Baan delivers the benefits of procurement automation while effectively addressing the cost and IT resource limitations of the midmarket." Other analysts agree and approve of Baan's direction with its E- Procurement solution. "Mid-market companies want and need e-procurement solutions tailored to their requirements," said Joshua Greenbaum, principal, Enterprise Applications Consulting, Berkeley, Calif. "The Baan E-procurement offering gives the company a solid place in an increasingly important market." "Baan's approach for supporting various content strategies offers customers a choice in accessing and distributing content," comments Mitchell Kramer, senior consultant/analyst for Patricia Seybold Group, E-Business consultants and thought leaders. "Coupled with Baan collaboration and decision support tools, the Baan E-Procurement solution can make Baan a player in the e- procurement space." Availability Baan E-Procurement is a stand-alone application within the Baan E- Enterprise suite, a series of products focused on providing eBusiness solutions. Baan E-Procurement will be generally available in December 1999, offering multi-currency (including the Euro) and multi-lingual support. Baan E-Enterprise will be available through Baan's direct sales force, VARs, and solution integrators. For a complete listing of Baan's sales partners, visit http://alliances.baan.com. Baan Company will showcase the complete e-enabled procurement solution, integrated with the back office and data analysis processes at BaanWorld'99, its global customer event to be held on November 10-12, 1999 in Vienna, Austria. About Baan Company Founded in 1978, Baan Company (Amsterdam: BAAN; Nasdaq: BAANF) is a global provider of enterprise business solutions. Baan Company offers a comprehensive portfolio of integrated services and best-in-class, component-based applications that span an organization's entire value chain including E- Business and Web Commerce, Customer Relationship Management, Enterprise Resource Planning, Supply Chain Management, and Corporate Knowledge Management. Deployed at more than 13,000 customer sites worldwide, Baan Company solutions enable organizations to drive strategic business growth, improve business processes, reduce operating complexity, and increase corporate flexibility. Baan Company has dual headquarters in Barneveld, The Netherlands and Herndon, Virginia, USA and can be found on the World Wide Web at www.baan.com. Statements in this press release using the words "believes," "expects," "anticipates," and the like are forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, and as such are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties that could significantly affect outcomes. Actual outcomes, therefore, may differ materially from the expectations, estimates, or assumptions expressed in or implied by any such statements. Typical risks and uncertainties may be reviewed in the Baan Company's public filings on file with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (including its most recent Form 20-F and 6-K). "Baan" is a registered trademark of Baan Company, and any trade, product, or service name referenced in this release using the name "Baan" is a trademark and/or property of Baan Company. All other company, product, and service names may be trademarks of their respective owners. Microsoft and NetMeeting are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. ots Original Text Service: Baan Company N.V. Internet: http://www.newsaktuell.de Contact: Andrew Hoerner of Baan Company PR, 408-654-3464, or press@baan.com Web site: http://www.baan.com Subscribers please note that material bearing the slug "PROTEXT" is not part of CTK's news service and is not to be published under the "CTK" slug. Protext is a commercial service providing distribution of press releases from clients, who are identified in the text of Protext reports and who bear full responsibility for their contents. PROTEXT