Microsoft Great Plains Implementation in Russia – Overview for Consultant

Microsoft Business Solutions Great Plains is very popular ERP platform in the USA, Canada (including French speaking Quebec/Montreal), U.K., Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Middle East: OAE, Egypt, Arabia, Latin America. Former versions – Great Plains Dynamics/eEnterprise was also popular in Europe: France, Poland, Russia. When Microsoft acquired Navision Software – and handed it out to its subdivision: Microsoft Business Solutions – we saw some geo-strategy changes. Navision, the leader on the European mid-market and successfully overcoming such localization barriers as language translation, adaptation to country-specific taxes and payroll taxes – was chosen as preferred or the only recommended solution for emerging markets. In Russia we saw dramatic situation, when multiple Great Plains Dynamics/eEnterprise resellers went out of business. At the same time, Russia is huge and lucrative market for ERP/MRP applications and we envision large number of multi-national companies, having GP as their Headquarters chosen solution and who needs Great Plains to be implemented for Russian subsidiary. Here are the implementation highlights for you:

• Localization: Microsoft Great Plains is Great Plains Software Dexterity written application. Dexterity has string resources and in order to localize DYNAMICS.DIC – you need to translate all or just some strings. Great Plains version 5.0 had Russian language support and translations. Version 8.0 doesn’t have that – but it is very easy to translate the string resources for several windows, where Russian operators and order takers be working

• Chart Of Accounts concern. In Russia we see government regulated chart of accounts and the accounting code for the accounting records keeping. It is in somewhat similar to France or former Germany. From the philosophy of the accounting this means that regulated chart of accounts should fit to variety of business and non-for-profits – manufacturing, assemblies, wholesale, distribution, retail, services, mining, oil & gas, etc. This ends up with manufacturing-style of official instructions

• Government Audit. In the conditions of Russia you should consider these things and be sure that each ERP vendor is trying to certify their application with the government. Microsoft did it for Microsoft Navision and Axapta (for corporate market)

We encourage you to analyze your alternatives. You can always appeal to our help, give us a call: Russia: (095) 918 3314, Germany: (0177) 8349 806, USA 1-866-528-0577 or 1-630-961-5918, help@albaspectrum.com

Andrew Karasev is Chief Technology Officer at Alba Spectrum Technologies ( http://www.albaspectrum.com ), serving Microsoft Great Plains, CRM, Navision to mid-size and large clients in California, Illinois, New York, Georgia, Florida, Texas, Arizona, Washington, Minnesota, Ohio, Michigan, Montreal, Moscow

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