Tag: Brazil

This small article is written with the international focus. SAP B1 was initially targeted to small businesses, however its reasonably rich Corporate ERP functionality dictates mid-market user license cost (especially for SB1 professional user, where license is close to k$3 in USA). There is large number of Certified SAP BO consultants on the Corporate ERP consulting market, however in our opinion SAP B1 requires closer attention to such technologies as Crystal Report, SB1 SDK (Microsoft Visual Studio ecommerce programming in C# and VB.Net), SAP Business One Data Transfer Workbench (where you do initial SB1 data conversion from your legacy system, such as MYOB, Peach Tree, Quick Books, Accpac, Great Plains Accounting for DOS, Windows and Macintosh). We do not pretend to be ultimate authority for SAP Business One implementation recovery, however we did the service for numerous companies in the USA, Canada, Brazil, Russia, China. OK, below is our article:

1.Corporate ERP localization dilemma. Typically your problems are related to language translation and the compliance to the local country tax and corporate reporting legislation. SB1 is localized and certified in most of the Globe (probably excluding Arabic alphabet countries). SAP Business One supports Unicode (Chinese, Japanese, Korean). SAP certifies its SB1 application with local tax and government authorities in the countries, where SAP Business One is localized. New SAP Business One version 8.8 is now available on the same flavor for all the countries (while 2007 and 2005 versions were available in A and B flavors, and you had to implement them on different SQL Servers with different code page and language collation). For SB1 8.8 you can deploy SAP Business One system for all your international companies, where SB1 is localized: China, Russia, Korea, Japan, Thailand, Brazil, India, France, UK, etc.

2.SAP B1 implementation recovery service. We saw numerous implementation screw-ups when your company requires challenging technology integrations: ecommerce, barcode scanning and integration, EDI, customizations, Crystal Reporting, deep data conversions from your legacy accounting package to SAP B1. And you have to be tolerant to the consulting industry practices: your generic certified SAP Business One consultant should be good in Corporate ERP presentation, user licenses sale, CPA type of the implementation with reasonable onsite user training, simple initial data conversion (via SB1 Data Transfer Workbench, where you should help your consultant to prepare CSV files, based on DTW CSV templates)

3.SAP Business One Data Conversion Puzzle. Typically here you have the problem with your current SAP Business One Reseller, who has no experience in industry specific data massage and migration from your legacy accounting or Corporate ERP to SAP Business One

4.Do I have to switch out to another SB1 Partner? Yes, this is what you have to do or what is sort of recommended. Your SAP B1 Partner has access to your company record in SAP Portal and it allows your chosen partner to broke for your and sell you new software licenses

5.How to get help? Please, call us 1-630-961-5918, in USA or Canada: 1-866-528-0577, or email us:

Business One is good solution when you are midmarket organization with attributes of multinational corporation, such as branches in foreign countries and headquarters and research facility in the United States. SAP B1 is popular in international business scenarios as it is localized in such popular regional powers as China, Brazil and Russian Federation. There are known cases studies when companies with non-SAP Corporate ERP applications launched Business One for their branches in Brazil and later one switched to it in the headquarters as well. There are some challenges however and one of them is consolidated financial reporting. As you may know such popular tools as Microsoft Management Reporter and FRx do not have GL connectors to SAP BO. Some customers are doing GL trial balance export to Excel and then prepare it to fit consolidation template. This is definitely possible way but you may mention that it is time consuming and open to human errors. In this publication we recommend old-good-days method of GL consolidation:

1.How does it work conceptually? You have to create new company with account structure matching your template. Then you schedule regular GL entries migration into this company General Ledger. This company obviously doesnt represent legal entity but it has all your branches GL activity and ready for consolidated Balance Sheet and P&L. You can use internal reporting

2.How does it work technically? You can deploy several tools. First of all it is possible to pull GL records via Data Transfer Workbench when it has integrations for each company SQL database via ODBC. Second method is programming with Software Development Kit. This second method might seem like something challenging. However it is only one type of transactions and code samples in VB and C# are straight forward. There are ISV products working with SAP B1 SQL database via direct data feed. They are usually expensive and require learning curve. But if you are ready to deploy luxury solution then you should probably make your homework

3.International Business Specific multicurrency. Business One is multicurrency enabled so in our opinion it is just one additional factor to incorporate into the solution. We have done it for the company which operates in Brazil and USA with respectively Real and Dollar

4.Standard for Chart of Accounts. This might be additional challenge as often company deploys the same system in several countries but contracts different consulting partners to do from ground up implementation without coordination with central office. In consolidated financial reporting Chart of Accounts should be reviewed and unified in all business entities. In any case this is good exercise in order to understand you foreign country branch operations and finances or in other words strengthen central control

5.Other aspects of multinational environment and Business One. It is generally good idea to host all the installations on the server located in the Headquarters. There are definitely some specifics associated with foreign company regulations and tax code. But these compliances should not be the central emphasis. Instead you should think about your new Corporate ERP system as the tool allowing you to exercise tight central control over all of your overseas subsidiaries. General advice is to assign chosen consulting organization here in the United States for picking subcontractors for each country to implement just compliance related functionality. Compliance is just a small part of what the system is for

6.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). [emailprotected] 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