For many U.S.-based companies, making the decision to take their ERP implementation global comes with many potential benefits, but can also seem quite daunting when faced with the initial decision.
Many factors can drive the decision to “go global” with your ERP system. It could be that M&A activity in other countries is necessitating that systems are merged or maybe you’ve simply made the decision to create legal entities in each new location where you are doing business. In any case, a balance needs to be struck to ensure that you are getting the best of a
To learn more about how to plan your global implementation of Dynamics AX or Dynamics 365, watch our OnDemand webinar
One of the benefits of choosing
Previously, it was typical for companies to deploy country or region-specific ERP instances in order to handle this diversity of needs. This made consolidated reporting across the whole company very complex, time-consuming, and expensive. In addition, business users that worked across multiple countries or regions might not have access to all of the information they needed. For example, it might be difficult to view real-time inventory from another country that you could sell in your home market if that other country was using a different ERP application. In addition,
Dynamics 365 solves many of these issues. It can be configured to provide a global chart of accounts using financial dimensions and masking enabling firms to create a consolidated, global roll-up of their ledger. The Microsoft business model has always been to have approximately eighty percent or more of the requirements for global companies handled in the out-of-the-box application and then to have available
Another strategic functionality within Dynamics 365 is the ability to have global master records. Customers, Vendors, and items can be shared across entities worldwide. Inventory can be transferred from one entity to another, and the underlying financial transactions are handled automatically. In many other ERP systems, these requirements are handled by duplicating master records across companies and manually creating orders between entities.
The most
Getting stakeholder buy-in is critical to ensure the balance is kept between global requirements and country-specific needs. A financial controller at headquarters may want to standardize reporting in a way that will not provide enough flexibility enough for the regions. Users in each country might not have the longer-term perspective of the business, such as what new markets are the company entering where a global ERP system could accelerate that expansion. Also, high-level managers will want to keep an eye on what localizations are needed for statutory reasons and what asks are being made by the regions that are not required and might add unnecessary complexity to the system or make global reporting difficult.
This team of stakeholders should make basic structural decisions, such as whether to make the chart of accounts global. Can financial dimensions be standardized, such as company number, legal entity number, common departments, business units and cost centers? How will taxes be handled? Everyone has to buy-in on what will be a global requirement and what won’t. Once those decisions are made, each country needs to validate that they can operate within the global chart of accounts and that their ‘last mile’ reporting in each country can be covered.
Finally, once decisions are made, it is important to document all of them and
Western Computer has helped many companies go global with Microsoft Dynamics AX, NAV, and Dynamics 365. To learn more about how to plan your global implementation of Dynamics AX or Dynamics 365, watch our OnDemand webinar
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