Dynamics GP Implementation for Multinational Corporation

It is typical scenario, when the company growth encourages you to expand internationally. Microsoft Dynamics GP is mid-market Corporate ERP application and we see the customers, who decide to retain Great Plains in its headquarters and even implement it for the subsidiaries in the countries, where Dynamics GP is localized: United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand. If you are expanding, more likely you are opening subsidiary or manufacturing facility somewhere in Latin America, India or China. Let’s review the options in you disposition:



1. Spanish Latin American version of Dynamics GP. It is available and reasonably well localized for the majority of countries. The countries in South and Central America are relatively mid-size by their territories and population (except Brazil, but it is not Spanish speaking, in Brazil they speak Brazilian Portuguese). It is known issue with regional dominant powers, when the tax code and business legislation is becoming unique and not compatible with standard American GAAP (Brazil, China, India, Russia would be good examples). But this is not the case for the most of Latin World (please, note that Dynamics GP is not localized for continental Spain)



2. Brazil. Here we recommend you two options. If you are acquiring small subsidiary, consider SAP Business One, it is very popular in Brazil, available in Brazilian Portuguese and you have large poll of SB1 consultants (and consulting firms) in Brazil, as well as in USA or Europe. Second option is Dynamics AX Axapta. As you may know – Microsoft Business Solutions markets Axapta pretty much Worldwide, and if you have larger manufacturing facility in Sao Paulo or across Brazil, AX would be the variant to consider



3. China. Well, if you try to consider Dynamics GP for Chinese subsidiary, please know, that Great Plains Dexterity (Dynamics GP Architecture) doesn’t support Unicode characters (or in other words Hieroglyphs, typical alphabet in the Eastern Asia: China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan). We specially posed this question on Microsoft Convergence 2010 tradeshow Dynamics GP Customization Tools seminar (to David Musgrave) – is Unicode support on the list of the future improvements, and his answer was "No", as it requires too much code revision. For China we recommend you SAP Business One (version 8.8 is now allows you to host all countries companies on the same SB1 MS SQL Server, previous versions were divided on A and B version blends)



4. Russia. Here we see the trend where Dynamics GP is obviously not localized, but even SAP Business One might be in fight with local accounting applications, such as 1S Accounting. Axapta (Microsoft Dynamics AX) seems to be popular and reasonably localized



5. India. Here we see Dynamics GP is supporting English the language of the business, however localization is challenging and Microsoft would probably rather suggests Dynamics AX Axapta



6. Pakistan. In this country, Dynamics GP has more rights for existence, as tax legislation is not that challenging



7. Saudi Arabia, Lebanon and Arabic World. We have several implementations in this region, and we would like to admit, that localization is only challenging in supporting Arabic alphabet. Even in Afghanistan, all you need to do is open Dynamics GP user interface for Dari language annotations and editing fields entering (as there they use Arabic alphabet, it fits to this paragraph content)



8. Consolidation. International business often requires you to do consolidated reporting (or even do General Ledger consolidation for all your subsidiaries to the Headquarters GL). In the case of Dynamics GP as Corporate ERP in the Headquarters, you can consider FRx (as proven traditional Consolidated Financial Statements reporting tool), or even Microsoft Management Reporter (as the replacement to the FRx, where Microsoft tries to make its own move, it is definitely successful, but we would rather recommend this tool for the company, ready for innovations)



9. Consolidation via GL transaction regular integration. This technology suggests you to create Great Plains company for each foreign operations, but you do not have foreign users to enter transactions there, instead you have overnight data migration from your foreign subsidiary ERP application into Dynamics GP shadow company (the most natural technology is probably Integration Manager, you can also consider eConnect). Then you move all your newly created and posted GL transactions from your overseas Accounting (SAP Business One, Axapta, Oracle Financials, Microsiga, Navision Dynamics NAV, 1S Accounting, or your name it) to Dynamics GP



10. For additional information, please feel free to call us 1-866-304-3265 or 1-269-605-4904 (this number works for international customers) or email us help@alba866.com We serve you USA/Canada nationwide via remote support (web sessions and phone/Skype conferences). Local service is available in Western Michigan, Chicagoland, Southern California (LA, Orange County, San Diego), Houston area of the state of Texas





Andrew Karasev, http://www.alba866.com Great Plains Dynamics GP and eEnterprise Certified Master, Microsoft MVP and consultant with 10 years and plus experience and expertise. Alba 866 Corporation, 1-866-304-3265, 1-269-605-4904, help@alba866.com If you are thinking to implement Dynamics GP in challenging environment, we recommend you to give us a call. Our information portal is http://www.pegasplanet.com Pegas Planet