Multinational ERP Brazil Consider SAP Business One

Jun 20
09:14

2012

Andrew Karasev

Andrew Karasev

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If you are working in IT department of multinational corporation then you are probably involved or even responsible for accounting software picking and implementation in your subsidiary in Sao Paulo or across Brazil.

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Even mid-size companies nowadays may have most of the features of multinational firm such as foreign branches,Multinational ERP Brazil Consider SAP Business One Articles multicurrency and consolidated financial reporting.  Here in the United States very popular ERP platform is Microsoft Dynamics GP formerly known as Great Plains.  Natural idea is to implement it for your Brazilian subsidiary.  Let’s review the options and suggestions and then answer popular questions:

1. How to translate GP to Portuguese?  The reason of this question is simple as it is not available in Brazil.  Translation could be done in Modifier.  There is no need to modify forms.  Instead we recommend you to translate string resources from English into targeted language.  Translated strings will go to Forms.dic if you are familiar with Dynamics.set file structure.  Deployment requires Customization Site Enabler license.  We have seen successful cases where it was partially translated into Arabic and Russian by this method.  And the second method is to translate string resources in Dexterity and then distribute Dynamics.dic dictionary to users.  This way requires more technical expertise and we would rather recommend the first one in Modifier

2. If we translate to Portuguese then work is done, right?  Unfortunately the answer in most cases is ‘No’.  Multinationals have to open fully owned corporations in foreign countries and corporations are subject to SPED (Public Digital Bookkeeping System) in Brazil.  If you do not know what it is we should give you short introduction.  The idea is to block such schemes as money laundry and make corporate records available electronically to tax professionals, CPA and lawyers (or in other word to make them public).  This means less paper based audit and possibilities of corruption in tax related government agencies.  Tax related documents as well as standardized financial statements should be filed in XML format over the internet.  As Microsoft office in Sao Paulo doesn’t offer Great Plains you may guess that SPED is not automated for this ERP.  SPED is just one of several regulations.  We do not believe that you would like to seek problems in foreign country

3. Why SAP Business One?  There are several reasons.  First of all it is localized and if you need clarification then please take a look at the paragraph above.  Secondly it is multilingual including Portuguese, Chinese, English, Spanish and Russian just to open the list of languages.  There are other players on this foreign software market including Dynamics AX, Oracle E-Business Suite and SAP All-in-one.  The problem for mid-size multinational might be high software licenses and especially implementation cost (consulting hours).  If your subsidiary down there is small then Business One is probably positioned to be reasonably priced and simple in being implemented

Let’s now answer popular questions:

Q.  We have Dynamics GP as corporate ERP here in our Chicago based headquarters.  We like B1 option.  But how do we produce consolidated financial reporting – Profit & Loss and Balance Sheet?A.  We have seen how it was implemented.  Consider the following method.  You export GL entries from SB1 company database directly as SQL job (do not forget to mark entries as exported).  Then from Dynamics side you deploy Integration Manager GL level integration.  Good idea is to create company which is only for integration.  Next step is Reporting Tree creation in FRx or Microsoft Management Reporter

Q.  Due to such complications as SPED, NCM and others our controller in Rio de Janeiro believes that server should be hosted in Rio.  Me as IT director I don’t like this idea as it requires hardware and software support additional overheadA.  We also think that your concerns are legitimate.  We would recommend find decent internet provider and give them good bandwidth.  Host the server in your headquarters and open client interface via Citrix.  There are additional advantages of this method as you can design consolidated as well as managerial reporting without data shipping from your foreign office

Please call us 1-866-304-3265, 1-269-605-4904, help@efaru.com.  We have local presence in Chicagoland, Southern California, Atlanta Georgia, South West Michigan, Houston and Dallas areas of Texas. We serve customers USA and Canada nationwide and internationally via web sessions and phone conferences (Skype is welcomed).  We are working on Brazilian ERP consulting market in Sao Paulo since 2004