Abstract
This case study focuses on the rise and fall of Baan Company which developed in the market of software technology. Baan was one of the leaders of the market in the beginning, but it crashed in 2000. Initially, Baan was especially strong with its manufacturing module, SAP with its finance module and PeopleSoft with its HRM module. Later, these differences became smaller because each company was in a continuing process of product improvement, imitation and innovation. In any case, Baan was the most visionary of the ERP vendors. It then (in the 80ss) positioned itself as a software manufacturer and gave up a part of the service sector. Contrary to the others ERP vendors, it chose to grow on the licenses market which was more volatile than the services market but the profit margins were much higher.
