International business might have unexpected complexity especially for American mid-market firms opening branches internationally the first time. Foreign countries have their sovereign rights to expose business community to their own restrictions and legislation environments.
In this small publication we would like to come through Corporate ERP localization concept in general and then review special conditions in such regions as Brazil, Russia and China. We do not pretend to be scientists instead we are ERP consultants with reasonable experience in international business helping multinational companies. If you need further advice then consider hiring consulting firm specializing in corporate laws in international environments. In our opinion we are doing sort of ‘community service’ as our publication is in open press and free of charge for you:
1. ERP localization concept. It has two components. The first one is user interface available in local language and the second one is legislation compliance including tax rates and formulas, custom clearance and reporting to the government. Important points to mention here are the complexity to program compliance in-house assuming that accounting platform is not localized directly by its vendor in the country where your branch is located. International GAAP (Generally Accepted Accounting Principles) might be respected in the country but such local requirements as SPED (Public Digital Bookkeeping System) in Brazil or Government approved chart of accounts in Russian Federation are the good example of something that is very challenging to develop internally. Let’s move now to specific country starting with China
2. Unicode and Chinese hieroglyphs support. Let’s begin with some excurse into technology and languages. ASCII table had its standards coded in two bytes, where letters, digits and punctuation characters were enabled in 127 slots. Most of European Latin based languages are covered as well as Russian and Arabic in the second register of the byte. However Chinese hieroglyphs could not be restricted to just about hundred ones. Here we need Unicode which is two bytes per character and each world language with written alphabet at this point is covered in this standard. Business One is Unicode enabled and user interface is available in hieroglyph based languages such as Chinese, Japanese and Korean
3. Let’s now move to Brazil. Here we have such challenges as SPED where each corporate entity since January 1st 2008 has to report AR, AP, GL and other taxation involved documents to IRS server electronically. This is automated via ISV channel available add-on. Another challenge in Brazil is complex tax determination procedure where your rates and formulas are dependent on industry code, sales to and from, product group or individual item type just to open the list. Business One is available in Brazilian Portuguese
4. Ok now we are across the Atlantic or Pacific in Russian Federation. Very good. In Russia we have required chart of accounts which is intended to fit all the industries including manufacturing (account 20 main production). SAP in its Moscow office is working to cover the gap and the result is expected in the end of 2012. SB1 is available in Russian user interface
Let’s take few questionsQ. We are deploying Microsoft Dynamics GP ERP here in the USA and would like to use the same application in Brazilian and Russian offices. What are the next steps and could you help us?A. We would be a bit conservative here and even if the solution could work from the mathematical possibility but it is not practical. Our consultants were working on the issues to enable Great Plains Dynamics version 4.0 in Russia as well as version 7.5 in Brazil. As you may know with the acquisition of Navision Software Microsoft Business Solutions had a dilemma to choose the ERP platform which would be recommended worldwide. From Great Plains the shift was toward Navision and finally toward Dynamics AX formerly known as Axapta. Even technically you can purchase GP licenses in Sao Paulo there is no localization or development efforts at this time from Microsoft to localized this application in Brazilian Corporate ERP market
Q. We like the idea of SAP B1 for Sao Paulo and Campinas locations. Where should we purchase software licenses and where the server should be hosted?A. We believe that the answer depends on where your headquarters is located. If you identify your company as US based multinational firm the answer is consider hosting in the United States. But when you are Brazilian company expanding internationally to North America and Europe then host your server in Brazil. The same should be advised about software licenses acquisition
Q. We are planning to acquire mining facility in Siberia Russian Federation. Are you ready to help us and come out onsite and do you speak Russian?A. Of course you do not expect our office to be located somewhere in Yakutia or Tuva. But we are ready to travel from Moscow to your Siberian facility and our consultants are native Russians with consulting experience in the United States: Chicagoland, Atlanta, Georgia and Southwest Michigan
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
Dexterity Customization for Dynamics GP Evaluation Level Paper
When you are developer it is always a good idea to read technical manuals. But if you was just assigned to the IT team to decide if Dexterity is the right tool to customize your ERP application then first you need something which is in style of ‘easy reading papers’ or FAQ
Planning Dynamics GP Customization in Large Corporation
If you are reading this page then chances are high that you were not able to find ISV add-on and need customization project. Let’s talk about planning, quality assurance and future event such as version updates.
Dynamics GP Invoice Logo Attributed to Specific Company or Crossing the Borders of Three SOP Forms
Initial Great Plains Dynamics architecture had three SOP Invoice forms: Long, Short and Blank. Modern GP is popular in scenarios where you have more than three companies under one business entity umbrella
