Microsoft Great Plains Customization: Project Organization ? International Business Example

Microsoft Business Solutions Great Plains fits to majority of horizontal niches and clientele in the USA, Canada, Mexico, Latin America, U.K., Brazil, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand and Middle East. If you are project organization: Real Estate, Law Firm, Placement Agency with permanent clients, Construction or Freight Forwarding company ? you probably use or plan to deploy Project management or Project accounting extension for Microsoft Great Plains. If you have your business in one country ? this work relatively simple, however we see clients, involved into international business, when your headquarters is located in the US for example and offices and locations are in Mexico. Let's look at your options:

? Localized version of Great Plains. Former Great Plains Software, who created Great Plains Dynamics/eEnterprise/Dynamics C/S+ back in 1990th had serious international expansion plans and realized the majority of them. Currently you can purchase Spanish, Canadian French, Brazilian Portuguese and other local versions of Great Plains. When we are talking about localization ? we mean not only translated into local language, but also tuned to local taxation regulations. You can have users working with the same company in Great Plains ? some of them will use English and others Spanish version.

? Project Automation options. When you are doing business internationally ? you are dealing with multi currency. In the case of Great Plains you can have unlimited number of currencies and for the specific company you select so-called functional currency. If you have branch in Mexico ? you can setup US Dollar as functional currency and have invoices issued in Peso. Then you will have gains or losses on currency revaluation posted to your General Ledger. However you should know that multicurrency works with limited number of Project Management extensions. If you use third party extension in the US ? you should check with its vendor if multicurrency is supported. Chances are that it isn't and in this case you should consider using standard version of Microsoft Great Plains Project Accounting.

? Great Plains hosting. Most of our clients are hosting the system in their headquarters. However you could get your software price discounts if you host in the main facility abroad. Let's say ? you have production facility in Brazil and distribution offices in US. If you place your system in Brazil and have remote connection for US-based users ? you can purchase the software by Brazilian price list.

Good luck with implementation and customization 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! [email protected]

Andrew Karasev is Chief Technology Officer in Alba Spectrum Technologies ? USA nationwide Great Plains, Microsoft CRM customization company, serving clients in Chicago, California, Texas, Florida, New York, Georgia, Arizona, Minnesota, UK, Australia and having locations in multiple states and internationally ( http://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: [email protected]