SAP Business One has up to 10 thousand installations worldwide and in the perspectives of Latin/South America we are talking about multiple countries, such as Chili, Argentina, Venezuela, Colombia, Mexico, etc. Brazil however has some implementation, localization and customization challenges. Being purchased from original vendor in Israel, SAP Business One has such nice features as Multilanguage in one database/company, multicurrency, MRP/Production/Manufacturing, Service Management, CRM (with graphical interactive sales funnel), integration with MS Office on COM level, Drag and Relate, from technical side – Microsoft SQL Server database platform, etc. We’ll describe Brazilian market challenges in the small article format:

• Tax Engine. Who is familiar with the subject understand the importance of Brazilian, Indian, Russian, French tax engine localization. Being very efficiently designed, SAP Business One object model structure still required a lot of development efforts to localize SAP Business One tax engine to Brazilian tax code. SAP seems to have global strategy, while developing Brazilian tax engine. It plans to use the same flexible construction to adopt/localize SAP BO to Indian market, where we have similar issues (uniqueness of the tax code)

• Potruguese/Braziliero translation. This is where SAP BO is really strong – you can switch American English to Portuguese by clicking CNTRL-XXX combination (you will have to close all the SAP BO windows, but hey – this is not a big deal comparing to the amusement to have Multilanguage feature in the same company). Plus you can have user profile to define the language for the named user (SAP Business One has named user flat licensing fee)

• Integration to SAP. SAP Business One has integration gateway to SAP, which makes this product attractive for franchise network, where you consolidate franchisees into central ERP.

• Competitors. You should expect that SAP will try to get market share from such local ERP solutions for midsize (and even large) companies as Microsiga and RM, Microsiga is probably the focus. SAP Business One plans to come up with price strategy, which will make this brand name product licensing price slightly below Microsiga

• Lockbox Processing. Current Localization will allow you to work with several central banks, such as Banco do Brasil.

• Some Drawbacks. No Payroll, just HR, No Project Accounting (however you can emulate project allocation for inventory items through user defined fields, etc.), no Retail Management solution (for Brazil, however 3rd parties exists in Venezuela for Auto Dealership and in Argentina - RMS)

• Licensing. You can start with just one license. In the case if your business has large sales department you can purchase CRM users only licenses and half of the price (you will have access to CRM module with ability to create the quote, order and invoice, plus see the interactions and reporting for these)

• CRM. You can have workflow (compare to Microsoft Sharepoint) with approval cycles, CRM uses messaging through Microsoft Outlook client

Good luck with implementation, customization and integration and if you have issues or concerns – we are here to help! If you want us to do the job - give us a call São Paulo 55-11-3826-3449, USA: 1-866-528-0577, 1-630-961-5918! help@albaspectrum.com

Andrew is SAP, Great Plains specialist in Alba Spectrum Technologies (http://www.albaspectrum.com) – SAP, Microsoft Great Plains, Navision, Microsoft CRM Partner, serving clients in São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Salvador, Porto Alegre, Curitiba, Belo Horizonte, Recife, Manaus, Lisboa, Coimbra, Porto, Cascais and having locations in multiple states and internationally.

How to delete the user? This is the first problem you encounter - when user shuts down the computer - Great Plains doesn’t have the command to log off the user and when user tries to login the next day - she gets error message that user is already logged on. The fix:

• Microsoft SQL Server - open SQL Query Analyzer, switch to DYNAMICS database and run the following script: DELETE ACTIVITY WHERE USERID=’KATHY’.

How to unlock the batch? This happens when user posts the batch and has her computer crashed (via surfing the internet - smile - or things like this)

• General tip - Great Plains recommends to logoff and then login back with the same user id. Then Great Plains will prompt the user to recover posting batch. Unfortunately it doesn’t work in 70% of the cases

Now we would like to stress you the need to move away from Pervasive SQL 2000/Ctree platforms - you are in trouble - Microsoft Business Solutions cuts technical support for Microsoft Great Plains 7.5 and prior on these platforms. This means not only the support, but also tax updates (especially Payroll and Federal Magnetic Media).

What is migration from Ctree/Pervasive.SQL 2000 to MS SQL/MSDE? MBS has migration tool. You need first to install Great Plains on SQL Server with exactly the same account/segments structure and then install migration tool (it is Dexterity chunk) on your ctree/Pervasive workstation - then, when you integrate the chunk - you will map it to target SQL-based Great Plains Company, select all system and company tables, click the button and it will move all your tables one-by-one. In the case when your Great Plains ctree/Pervasive has third parties - you need to check if the vendor has migration tool - otherwise you have to do manual move, use SQL Linked server to your legacy data

Do I need consultant? It is probably good idea to have consultant to do the upgrade. We strongly recommend you to use consultant in the following cases

• You have Dexterity customization

Good luck in fixing and if you have issues or concerns – we are here to help! If you want us to do the job - give us a call 1-866-528-0577! help@albaspectrum.com

Andrew Karasev is Chief Technology Officer in Alba Spectrum Technologies – USA nationwide Great Plains, Microsoft CRM customization company, based in Chicago, California, Texas, Florida, New York, Georgia, Colorado, Oregon, Washington, Canada, UK, Australia and having locations in multiple states and internationally (www.albaspectrum.com), he is CMA, Great Plains Certified Master, Dexterity, SQL, C#.Net, Crystal Reports and Microsoft CRM SDK developer.

You can contact Andrew: andrewk@albaspectrum.com