International business has its surprises especially to newcomers or in other words midmarket firms opening their first international locations in such countries as Brazil, China or Russia.
All the sudden you realize that accounting application which is serving you perfectly in the headquarters in United States doesn’t have Russian, Chinese or Brazilian Portuguese user interface and there are strict requirements such as SPED in Brazil or federally approved chart of accounts in Russian Federation. You can think that in any case here in the USA or Canada your accounting system is really outdated and needs replacement so it might be a good idea to start from blank paper. Let’s assume the sentence above and begin with candidate selection:
1. ERP Localization criteria. If you plant to have subsidiary in Brazil for example then be sure that software supports Brazilian Portuguese and has its forms translated to this language. At the same time it is good idea to have system open to American controller and managers so English interface should be also required. But it is only one side of ERP localization. The second side is supporting Brazilian tax code and regulations such as SPED or Public Digital Bookkeeping System. In our opinion if your domestic accounting package doesn’t support Portuguese it might be easy routine to translate several key screens and reports. However SPED is something that is impossible to program in house (IT department or subcontractors). Let’s now take a look at software products localized in foreign countries
2. Localized brand names. As you may expect such brands as Microsoft Dynamics AX, Oracle Financials and SAP are present in most of the regions. However such packages as Oracle Ebusiness Suite might be targeting large companies. If you are midmarket business here in the North America then you probably expect something more associated with modest operations in your foreign branch. And here SAP B1 is showing up as likely candidate due to its internationalization and reasonable price. Of course in each country you can find local software such as 1C Accounting in Russia or Microsiga in Brazil. However corporate policy might be tight and has requirements to support American English user interface and be open to internal auditors
3. What if we choose SAP BO and have it implemented in all our offices? Well here question is often about such things as consolidated P&L and Balance Sheet as well as strategy to install all the servers in the United States and open the system to foreign locations via Citrix or Microsoft Terminal Server. There is General Ledger consolidation technology where you are moving all your General Ledger entries from all companies to one consolidated database. We also often here the question on how you choose language in user interface. There were nuances in the past when B1 had two hives A and B (2007A and 2007B for example). In version 8.8 A and B hives were merged and you can now deploy SAP B1 on single server and open it to all the offices worldwide
4. How scalable is the solution in the sense of number of users? Here you should consider several factors. First of all when you save document in Business One AR invoice for example it goes all the way to General Ledger and updates accounts balances. This might be considered as something more feasible in the small business. However there are options to restate Balance on cash basis. Now let's look at the number of users. There seems to be different estimations coming from SAP. Recently we heard the number of users should be limited by one hundred named licenses. However on the recent seminar in Sao Paulo Brazil the number was increased to two hundred
5. Let’s take some questions. Does it support Brazilian SPED? Yes it does via ISV channel add-on and we believe that this is one of the reasons why application is so popular in Brazil. How about Russia does it support account twenty main production and all required transactions? SAP in Moscow is working and we expect solution to be presented at the end of the year 2012. Does it have Chinese user interface? Yes it does and it supports Unicode characters. If it supports Russian interface then is it possible to implement software in our mining place in Kazakhstan? Good question and we believe that precedents are known. Smaller countries tend to be more international GAAP compliant and we believe that it is similar in the case of Kazakhstan
6. 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
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