subject: Sap Business One Multilingual Mid-market Erp Opportunity [print this page] In actively expanding multinational company the question of accounting package selection is often about supporting foreign languages and at the same time ability to produce consolidated financial reporting. Popular destinations in the second decade of XXI century are China, South East Asia, East Europe and Brazil. It is not a common for ERP application being popular in the United States to support large number of foreign languages in its user interface and data entry. Business One is an exception and we would like to talk about international features and implementation methodology. This paper is not intended to be technical or technology oriented. If you need technical specifications then you should request executive and technology oriented presentation. In our case we are giving you initial information or impulse for your following homework especially when you are decision maker or influencer in IT department of multinational firm:
1.Chinese Hieroglyphs and Unicode. Applications programmed specially for the market in USA or Europe traditionally follow ASCII standard where each character (digit or letter in Latin alphabet) takes one half of the byte (8 bits). However with the trend of manufacturing outsourcing to Asia and China we see apparent needs for supporting more complex languages where instead of letters we see hieroglyphs. The number of signs in these alphabets is more than half a byte could encode (127). The problem was addressed in Unicode standard where all world languages (with written characters) are handled in two bytes per sign. It is reasonable to expect such software products as Microsoft Windows, Linux or Apple OS to adopt the trend immediately. ERP applications have longer adaptation period. Some of them were programmed in C++ with Shell technology (Great Plains Dexterity for example) and Unicode adoption is difficult to introduce. SAP B1 is Unicode compliance and it supports Chinese, Japanese, Korean and other Asian languages
2.Brazil and South America. Here people are speaking Portuguese as well as Spanish. Both are ASCII compliant and supportable in this program. However we would like to mention such challenges as SPED (Public Digital Bookkeeping System) and complicated taxation rules (NCM, ICMS and others). All corporate entities since January 2008 should report their AR, AP, GL and other tax related transactions via internet to SPED servers hosted by IRS and States. SPED is definitely the step in the direction to eliminate gray schemes and money laundry but it is a challenge to implement it in accounting software
3.Eastern Europe. It is marching over the continent and it is available in such countries as Russia, Romania, Bulgaria and Estonia just to open the list. We would like to talk about Moscow and RF in general including opportunities in Siberia and Far East. In RF the challenge is often associated with very complex annual and quarterly reporting to Tax Agency. Even if it is not required but recommended it is better to follow standards. For example account 20 is main production and most of the expenses got to be recorded through this account even when you are not a production mill. Russian languages support is easy but compliance is difficult. SAP BO is available here and supported by Moscow office. However it is common practice where General Ledger entries are exported to 1C Accounting (locally developed and very successful ERP package) for financial reporting print out
4.Worldwide deployment recommendations. It is good idea to start with GL Chart of Accounts template and template company creation. Second advice is to roll out all the companies on the same server hosted in the headquarters and opening client interface via Citrix, Microsoft Terminal Services or competing technologies. Consider finding general contractor consulting company in the United States who should be responsible for finding local consulting firms for user training and compliance implementation in the foreign countries
Lets take few questions from our prospects:
Q. What are the advantages of Business One over Microsiga for our subsidiary in Sao Paulo?
A. It is better to stick to one solution worldwide and do not give up control and ability to perform internal audit and consolidated P&L and Balance Sheet. Microsiga is great package but it adds problems with being out of synch with your Corporate ERP application
Q. We are using Dynamics GP Great Plains in the headquarters in Atlanta and we understand that B1 is better option for our manufacturing facility in China, Argentina and Kazakhstan. Is it possible to produce Consolidated Profit and Loss Statement out GP in FRx/Microsoft Management Reporter?
A. We have implemented this tandem for one of our customers. SB1 exports GL entries directly from SQL Server to CSV file. Then Dynamics GP Integration Manager imports them on the regular basis. At this point you can use MMR or FRx
Q. What is better Dynamics AX or SAP BO?
A. It depends on your requirements and the size of the business. AX formerly known as Axapta is worldwide Microsoft Dynamics offer. Its price is higher and implementation cycle could take longer comparing to SB1. In each targeted country we recommend you to call both vendors and check if software is available and supportable
Q. If we decide to implement Business One for our facility in Krasnoyarsk in Siberia then are you ready to come out onsite to do user training and data conversion?
A. Yes from our office in Krasnogorsk just West to Moscow Circle highway
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
