Corporate ERP: Microsoft Great Plains for the plant in Brazil – overview for CIO

By Arthur Ferretti

Alba Spectrum Technologies

São Paulo 55-11-3826-3449, USA 1-866-528-0577, 1-630-961-5918

help@albaspectrum.com

Microsoft Business Solutions Great Plains as new ERP for multinational corporation manufacturing facility in Brazil.

If your company plans to outsource manufacturing in Brazil by purchasing existing facility there, the first step would be to implant new management team and revise business processes and procedures.  The way there comes through the new ERP/accounting system implementation from scratch.  We’ll show you the way to implement new system on the base of Microsoft Great Plains.  You may have two reasons to place Great Plains, first – you company has Great Plains implemented in the headquarters and this is worldwide policy, second – if you have high end ERP at the headquarters, such as SAP, Oracle, PeopleSoft – it might be too complex/expensive for Brazilian facility.  Looking at the Brazilian ERP software market you will find out that the leader there is local ERP application – Microsiga and it is relatively easy to implement it there, however you will have language barriers, plus differences in reporting and tax rules, when you consolidate the statements to the corporate report.  Let’s review Microsoft Great Plains option:

• Licensing.  You should consider two options.  First, if you host your Brazilian company GP databse in the USA, Europe, Australia, or where your headquarters is located, you do not need to pay additional fee to Microsoft Business Solutions.  You may have connection performance issues, but this is separate consideration.  Alba Spectrum Technologies owns Great Plains Brazilian version through our office in Sao Paulo – Enterlogix.com.br.  Second option and this is applicable if you have high end accounting application in the Headquarters – you can purchase Brazilian version through Enterlogix.com.br and in this case software price would be about half of what you would pay in the USA or Eurozone.
• Localization.  Brazil is self-contained large country and people, including executives and accountants speaks Brazilian Portuguese there, not necessarily English.  Plus all the local reporting and documentation, including expenses and invoicing should be done in Portuguese.  You need localized version and in the case of Great Plains it is available.
• Implementation.  Again, consider that Microsiga holds huge percentage of the Brazilian ERP market and the majority of local consulting folks are Microsiga gurus, you probably have to deal with the multinational consulting company with the presence in USA, Europe and Sao Paulo/Rio de Janeiro
• Customization.  Microsoft Great Plains stays in the low end of the pricing pyramid and so, instead of long implementation cycle you should expect light or mid-level customization to meet your unique business processes requirements.  In this case you need Great Plains Dexterity, Modifier/VBA/Continuum developers, who are working on the Brazilian market.

Final words: Brazil is excellent manufacturing place for beverage production, especially the one, related to fruit juice concentrates, food import to the USA, restaurants suppliers, automakers, especially in the Salvador area.

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! help@albaspectrum.com

Arthur is Great Plains specialist in Alba Spectrum Technologies ( http://www.albaspectrum.com  ) – 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