When your company is crossing the USA borders and opens or acquires subsidiaries or facilities overseas the important decision to be made is about Corporate ERP architecture. There are several points to review.
The first one is the question about availability of your existing accounting application on the software market in the country where you are opening doors to the new office. Second question is about the foreign branch ERP implementation budget and scope. If in the headquarters you are deploying high-end ERP package then is it feasible to purchase expensive licenses of the same application and do implementation assuming that overseas you only have few people in AR, AP and Accounting departments. If you are acquiring existing manufacturing or distribution facility it may already have accounting system and in this case do you keep it or do you replace it with something that is backed by worldwide brands such as Microsoft Dynamics, SAP or Oracle. If you decide to keep local package then how difficult it is to perform internal audit and compile consolidated financial reporting? If you decide to deploy only two solutions in hub-and-spoke architecture then do you deploy all databases and user interfaces in the headquarters backed by central IT subdivision or you are installing dedicated server in each country and then establish communication between them and central office? Let’s try to review these decisions and potential pluses and minuses:
1. ERP Localization. It includes two aspects and the first one is user interface in the languages of the country. The second aspect is compliance to foreign country legislation and tax code including possibly federal, state and municipal levels. Localization might seem like a simple thing where you may suggest ‘why don’t we just translate few screens into Chinese, Brazilian Portuguese or whatever is our targeted audience and then provide tax compliance via Invoice form modification?’ This decision might work especially in small countries where international GAAP is followed directly. However in large regional powers such as China, Russian Federation or Brazil in South America compliance is typically a big deal and it is complex to program in-house. If you deploy Microsoft Dynamics GP in the headquarters which is very popular in the United States and Canada and you call to Sao Paulo based Microsoft office you might be surprised to learn that GP is not localized for Brazilian software market and Dynamics AX is recommended instead
2. Spoke and Hub ERP architecture. In this scenario you pick central accounting system in the United States and second solution geared toward smaller operations in your overseas locations. These applications are talking to each other on the level of just consolidated Balance Sheet, P&L or you provide overnight GL transactions export and import into central databases. In this approach you can deploy Oracle Financials or Microsoft Dynamics GP in the USA and pick non-Microsoft or non-Oracle platform worldwide SAP B1 for example. Business One exports everything to Excel and the worksheet could be part of Reporting Tree in FRx or Microsoft Management Reporter to cover consolidated financial reporting. Great Plains Integration Manager module could be used to import daily or weekly GL transaction log into the company specially created to replicate foreign subsidiary General Ledger
3. Central Location versus dispersing servers in the subsidiaries. Modern internet bandwidth is sufficient to provide user access over such technologies as Microsoft Terminal Server or Citrix. We recommend you to host all the databases and application servers directly in your central headquarters and expose them to international users. Centralized control is often crucial in international business environment. We know what we are talking about as we were consulting to multinational companies in such mega polices as Moscow, Sao Paulo and Prague Czech Republic. If all your servers are located on the same LAN then it is much easier to design reports pulling data from multiple companies with such reporting tools as Crystal, Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) or FRx and even Microsoft Access or Excel. There might be few disadvantages especially when you are trying to spin off or sell foreign location and accounting is not local to the place
4. Where Business One is staying on the international arena. First of all it is localized directly by SAP in the majority of world regions and it supports Unicode meaning such languages as Chinese, Korean and Japanese based on hieroglyphs. Its software licenses cost is targeted toward small to midsize businesses which might be a value for overseas subsidiary with limited operations scope
5. Openness to Customizations and Integrations. At this time it is available in Microsoft Windows user interface however database platform is not limited to Microsoft SQL Server only. Custom programming is often done in Microsoft Visual Studio with linking DLL from local client application and referencing sample code available in Software Development Kit in C# and VB. Most of the reports are exportable to Excel making Business One friendly to such consolidation reporting tools as Microsoft Management Reporter or old-good-days FRx. If you see the gap then it is possible to create Query directly in SB1 which is also exportable to Excel. There are third party integration tools, such as iBolt but this topic is outside of the scope. Let’s now talk about several specific world regions
6. Brazil. Here we are monitoring as SAP BO is triumphing and taking ground from such traditional locally programmed ERP applications as Microsiga. Business One is perfect fit to mining and food exporting industries with its inventory picking and packing as well as simple manufacturing module
7. Russia. Here B1 is competing hard with popular local package 1S Bukhgalteria or in English translation it is 1S Accounting. SB1 is localized in Russia and could be a good option if you are acquiring mining or food processing facility in Siberia or Southern provinces
8. China. It is localized on Chinese market and we are reading reports about expansion there. Regarding large manufacturing mills you may decide to see executive and technical demo regarding Microsoft Dynamics AX formerly known as Axapta. Both AX and Business One support Unicode and Chinese hieroglyphs
9. Please call us 1-866-304-3265, 1-269-605-4904 (for international customers, where our representative pick up the phone in St. Joseph, MI call center). help@efaru.com. We have local presence in Chicagoland, Southern California, South West Michigan and Houston and Dallas areas of Texas. We serve customers USA, Canada, Mexico and Brazil nationwide and internationally via web sessions and phone conferences (Skype is welcomed). Our consultants speak English, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian and Chinese. We feature our expertise is in International Business. We provide second opinion in SB1 data migration, customization and reporting
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