ERP: Brazil – Microsoft Dynamics, Oracle Apps, SAP Business One

ERP: Brazil – Microsoft Dynamics, Oracle Apps, SAP Business One

By Andrew Karasev

São Paulo: +55-11-3444-4949, USA 1-866-528-0577, 1-630-961-5918, Europa: +44-20-8123-2580 or +45-36-96-5520

Brazilian ERP/Accounting systems market is represented by local MRP applications, such as Microsiga, Datasul and other local ERP applications as well as several international ERP brands from Microsoft Business Solutions / Dynamics, SAP, Oracle. When planning to penetrate to the market place in Brazil, such lucrative urban areas as São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Curitiba, Salvador, Belo Horizonte or simply open manufacturing facility in the industrial areas, corporate ERP selection and implementation question is one of the first questions to raise. Let’s review the options for multinational corporation.

Management Control. When you select ERP/MRP you are looking for standard solution for international market. Standard solution should allows you to avoid the dependency on the human factor, plus you should have an option to change ERP implementation contractor if needed. We will give you more details on how this control is realized in the ERP. In our opinion one of the international ERP brands will give you more control from your overseas headquarters than one of the local ERPs.
Localization. It has two components – country specific sales/purchasing tax adoption and language translation. Nowadays it is usually not a big challenge to translate modern ERP to Brazilian Portuguese, but local taxes might be really difficult to program, especially in the case of such large and self-sufficient country as Brazil: CNAE (Cadastro Nacional de Actividad Económica), CPF (Cadastro de persona física), IE (Inscripción Estadual), IEST (Inscripción Estadual Substituto Tributario), IM (Inscripción Municipal) – these rules make localization quit difficult and you should probably stick to the ERPs, which are already localized (even if you have world-wide corporate ERP policy and your MRP is not on the localized list).
SAP. SAP all-in-one, mySAP, R/3 and SAP Business One are localized, the most recent localization was SAP Business One (February 2006). Flexibility of SAP BO and its transaction consolidation to high-end SAP ERP makes it attractive for local branch, especially if your subsidiary is small or midsize. SAP Business One has all-in-one type of licensing, named user license is below 2,000 USD and implementation cycle should be reasonably short. One of the nice features of SAP BO is possibility to switch languages for the same user session and for the same company.
Oracle. In Brazil you can choose from Oracle E-Business Suite (also known as Oracle Financials and Oracle Applications) – this ERP is high-end and targeted for large companies (light version of Oracle E-Business Suite is not available), or JDEdwards. Both applications support Portuguese and Brazilian tax code
Microsoft Dynamics. Microsoft Navision (Dynamics NAV) is one of the popular ones, Solomon is also available. Microsoft Axapta (Dynamics AX) is available in 2006 (April). There are several Microsoft VARs participating in Axapta beta testing: Alba Spectrum (former Enterlogix), XPTA and Cadia. We’d like to kind of give you good words about Axapta – in Brazil it has aggressive price model (which makes it comparable with SAP Business One), plus Axapta can easily automate higher mid-market company and even serve as a corporate ERP for multinationals. If you are US, Australia or UK based corporation – please be advised that Microsoft Great Plains is not localized, however you can get local support if needed.

Andrew Karasev is ERP consultant at Alba Spectrum Technologies ( http://www.albaspectrum.com http://www.greatplains.com.mx http://www.enterlogix.com.br ) - Microsoft Business Solutions Great Plains, Navision, Axapta, MS CRM, Oracle Financials and IBM Lotus Domino Partner, serving corporate customers in the following industries: Aerospace & Defense, Medical & Healthcare, Distribution & Logistics, Hospitality, Banking & Finance, Wholesale & Retail, Chemicals, Oil & Gas, Placement & Recruiting, Advertising & Publishing, Textile, Pharmaceutical, Non-Profit, Beverages, Conglomerates, Apparels, Durables, Manufacturing and having locations in multiple states and internationally.

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