Going Multi-National - HELP!

[Larry_Jones]

Looking for advice from those who have been there / done that.

Our little manufacturing company (under $100M revenue, around 400 employees) is in the process of creating small "service centers" as separate subsidiaries in several regions of the world. This is new for us. Initially these "service centers" will provide sales (distribution) and service activities for customers in their geographic region. We're only talking about 4 of these subsidiaries.

What's being tossed about is whether or not to use JDE as the business system for these subsidiaries. Given that the number of employees at each subsidiary will be just 4 or 5, we're not sure if the cost of setting up everything to operate locally is worth it. We (I.T.) have been told that the subsidiaries will need to take sales orders, purchase material, and track inventory. A independant accounting firm will handle finances (A/P, A/R, G/L). The Director for these service centers additionally wants all screens and menus to be in the local language, and of course all documents (Purchase Orders's, etc) should be in the local language. All item information (Descriptions, item notes, attachments, etc) should also be in multiple languages as well as UDC code descriptions, etc. And of course we will need to setup the appropriate currencies.

I fully understand that JDE is capable of doing all this. What we're questioning is whether or not the size (and initial low business volume) justifies the amount of setup work we'd have to do to make this happen . . . not that we know everything we'd need to do to make it happen

. I'm also concerned about the impact of local regulations that we in the U.S. would be unaware of. The alternative suggestion is to tell the subsidiaries to buy a local software package and only send summary financial information to corporate HQ.

Given that our I.T. support for JDE is two people that are business analysts, CNC Admins, database admins, programmers, and all-around help desk, we know that we'll need help to go the JDE route.

I hope that's enough background. What I'm looking for is advice on the pro's and con's of trying to implement JDE as described as well as the scope of resources we'd require to do it. If there are people out there who have done this already a recounting of your experiences would be greatly apppreciated.

Thanks-in-advance,

 

[pales]

Hi Larry,
it depends a bit on the countries your have to roll out to (localisations) but personally I would say to roll out Jd Edwards into these local service centers. Make sure you have all localisations right.
You already have a ready system which only needs to roll out and which is very capable of handling this.
Aspecially when they will place sales order/purchase orders and maintain inventory you would like everything directly in your G/L. You will probably have to start using multi currency.

I assume you are going to be delivering a lot of stuff from the Us to these local warehouses? When this is true the intercompany processing will also provide a lot value. Not to mention DRP/MRP? How will you do the planning?

One thing I would question is the translations of the internal screens/menus and item/udc descriptions. Personally I'm not a big fan for this. It brings a lot of confusion in communication between the sites. And as support center it doubles time as you have to translate everything or people have no clue what your are talking about. I've seen quite some translations -->

Besides this you are a US based company and everybody speaks english...they will probalby have to communicate with the US office as well??
External documents should always be setup in the local customer/supplier language that is pretty clear. You have have to set up some translations for this.

Hope this helps

Good luck!
Paul

 

[Larry_Jones]

Thx Paul.

FYI actual inventory will be rather small, anticipated transaction volume is really low also (<100 a month). Minimimal stock balances for selected items will be maintained in order to honor contractual support agreements only.

Regarding maintaining multiple languages, I agree - it just doesn't seem to be worth the cost/effort to maintain given the size we're talking about.

Thanks again,

 

[Saskia]

Hi Larry,

Your question, with when to start a site to use the "mother" system was
one of the main questions in one of my previous companies.
We had a rule that when they used manufacuring or became a bigger
company then a certain amount of users, they would move.

The problem we encountered when move was to come, that users where used
to the "easy system" they used to have (that they
were able to grow into after some years) and we had to tackle their
specific local problems with more daily transactions on hand.

My advise now would be, as long as they can handle with a manual system
(excel/word etc), let them go. But as soon as you
start think of database system, or small ERP, do not do it. Use the low
transactions amount, the eager to get a system to
help (as the manual system is not doing the trick anymore), to get the
local organisation to use the mother ERP system. As
minimal data/transactions are going in, you will have more time to
react.

Just a thought,

Saskia