International Place
Dynamics GP International Implementation Notes
When companies cross the borders in their operations, they try to consider their Corporate ERP to expand internationally as well and be implemented in overseas branch. In this small publication we will review this option, if your corporate ERP domestically in Microsoft Dynamics GP, formerly known as Great Plains Dynamics and eEnterprise. If you are reading these lines, you are likely to be US, Canadian, British, Australian, New Zealand or South African company. We will review such points as ERP localization for specific country, customizability in the sense of translating small subset of GP interfaces into local language, upstream GL transactions consolidation and consolidated financial reporting:
1. ERP and Accounting System Localization. It has two aspects: interface translation to local language and compliance to local tax and government reporting. At this time, 2009 - Dynamics GP is translated into Spanish for Latin America, Canadian French for Quebec - these languages are officially supported by Microsoft Business Solutions. Plus, in some countries, such as Poland - you may find translations supported by local Dynamics GP partner. This is about Dynamics GP version 10.0. Earlier versions were supported in Germany, France, Belgium, and some other ERP markets. It is unlikely that Dynamics GP will be translated into more languages in the future, as it seems that Microsoft is making more efforts to translate and localize Dynamics AX or former Axapta and few years ago Dynamics NAV or Navision was expanding also internationally. Compliance to Tax and Government reporting is in some cases more challenging than simple translation to foreign language, especially for large countries, as Brazil, Russia, India, China. Smaller countries typically have more generic compliance requirements and you can consider simple translation of several Dynamics GP screens into local language and support it with some Crystal Report, where compliance could be achieved
2. Dynamics GP translation to local language. First of all you need to look at Dynamics GP architecture - Great Plains Dexterity, that was created in earlier 1990th, as the shell coded in C programming language. C was good abstraction from Computer operating system (remember fight between Windows, Unix and Mac), but at the same time pure C coding had some limitations. One of them was lack of Unicode support. As you may know - Unicode characters cover all the languages in the World, while earlier ASCII character only cover English plus some other languages, mostly Latin and Cyrillic based. Dexterity supports ASCII, so if your target language has ASCII compliant alphabet - you can translate Dex screens and implement Dynamics GP in your country, plus some add-ons exist for Arabic. If you are thinking about China, or another hieroglyph based languages - Dynamics GP is very limited here, and all you may try is NJ Star to accept and save Chinese, Japanese, Korean characters, but you cannot translate GP user interface. So, in the case of hieroglyph you could only consider in our opinion Asian specialty foods and restaurants supplying automation in USA, where some very limited Chinese language support is desired
3. GL Consolidation and Consolidated Financial Reporting. Even if Dynamics GP is not localized for your international place, you can always consider to implement local ERP leading application, from where for controlling purposes you establish regular GL transactions export and import via Dynamics GP Integration Manager (or eConnect) to the image of the this foreign branch company in your GP system. If your branch is in start up phase, you can always use Excel export files and consolidate it in Balance Sheet or Profit & Loss Statement in FRx - you know that FRx has an option to link to Excel directly. If you do GL transactions consolidation, then your FRx financial reporting in based on the company in GP
4. SAP Business One. In the case, when other Microsoft ERPs are too expensive for international branch (Axapta or Navision) and you would like to have something from brand names, we recommend you to consider Small and Midsize business ERP, MRP and CRM from SAP. This software was created by Israel based firm with the hope to expand internationally and be localized in most of the countries of the Globe. SB1 can solve your problem in such challenging countries (from their demanding Tax and Financial Reporting regulation stand point) as Brazil, Russia or India. In SBO you can switch language for example from Brazilian Portuguese to English and if you are US based corporate controller this fact allows you to exercise control and review what is going on in Brazil. SB1 has simple data export, virtually you can export to Excel or CSV every report, plus you can export data from MS SQL Server 2005 company database and then import it into Dynamics GP via Integration Manager integration
5. Some additional considerations. From our international ERP implementation experience, and in various times we were consulting Great Plains in Russia, Brazil, Czech Republic, Poland - in international environment you may meet local accounting differences and even resistance from locally educated chief accountant or controller. This might be somewhat like surprise for you, but you should be aware that there are several leading models in accounting regulation and one of them is coming from France, where government has required Chart of Accounts. Russian Federation is good example where this strictly forced CoA is adopted and you have to follow to imitate you GL transactions to follow required standards. If you are in Moscow, this way is realized in such local accounting packages as C Accounting. Please, decide internally what is your possible trade off - either you need American GAAP compliance or you would rather avoid Russian Tax Agency audit problems. SAP Business One is available in Russia.
6. How to get help. Please feel free to call us: 1-866-528-0577, help@albaspectrum.com. Our Dynamics GP and SAP Business One consultants speak English, Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, Filipino, Arabic, Russian. We specialize in Dynamics GP, SAP Business One, Microsoft CRM implementations internationally, plus we are happy to help you with eCommerce integrations to GP or SB1. In Brazil we have subdivision, implementing Dynamics AX Axapta and NAV Navision, in Russia we also can help you with Lotus Notes Domino
About the Author
Andrew Karasev, Alba Spectrum, subdivision of M2-D2, help@albaspectrum.com 1-866-528-0577 http://www.albaspectrum.com Serving ERP and MRP community since 1994, local service in Chicago, Houston, San Diego, Atlanta. Information portal: http://www.pegasplanet.com We serve you USA and Canada nationwide from our SAP Business One call center: California, Illinois, New York, Florida, Minnesota, New Jersey, North and South Carolina, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, Ontario, Quebec, Washington, Missouri, Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, Arizona, Montana, Oregon, New York, New England. International clients welcome from Australia, New Zealand, Oceania, South Africa, UK, Brazil, Caribbean, Russia, Central America
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