If your organization deploys Microsoft Dynamics GP, formerly also known as Great Plains Dynamics, as its Corporate ERP system, and you are expanding internationally, we would like to give you some ideas about Great Plains translation to foreign language and implementation internationally. You should look at GP from two positions: first, interface translation and local characters entering and saving, and second – making your foreign subsidiary ERP application compliant to hosting country business regulations and practices (also referred as localization):

1. Which languages could be supported? There are the restrictions of ASCII table compliance. If your language is not ASCII compliant and requires Unicode characters support – we do not recommend GP, as its technology layer – Microsoft Dexterity doesn’t support Unicode directly, at least at this time and in foreseeable future. Unicode typically means hieroglyphs: Chinese, Japanese, Korean. The rest of the World, including such languages as Arabic, Russian, Dari, Persian, Ukrainian, Latvian, Portuguese could be translated and supported

2. Translation technologies. We recommend you to review two methods. First method is based on Great Plains Dexterity, where you open Dynamics.dic in Dex and then export string resources to convenient file format (Excel, for instance), make required translation and then distribute customized Dynamics dictionary to your users. Second method is when you are exporting strings from Dynamics dictionary, translate them and finally import them into Forms dictionary (if you plan to have modified reports, you need to import strings associated with reporting into Reports.dic). This second method requires Customization Site Enabler license, however in our opinion it is preferred, as you do not have to expose your users to bug fixing cycle. Dexterity is more powerful and flexible, however it may require additional programming and debugging

3. How to enable saving foreign characters in Microsoft SQL Server? This question has two parts. First part is Windows operating system characters support, two options available – first is to select your local country version in Windows installation (this option will load Windows in your local language and automatically enables characters entering support in Dexterity); second is to enable foreign language in Windows Language support (in control panel). Second part is installing MS SQL Server with local language collateral support. If you are planning to host all your Great Plains companies on the same server in USA, you have to change collaterals for foreign company Database manually

4. Corporate ERP localization dilemma. Each Accounting system has reasonable flexibility in settings: taxes (including Sales Tax and VAT or Value Added Tax), ability to provide custom Sales Invoice report (foreign countries may have unique requirements, related to Invoice numbering, reporting to tax agency, etc.). From our experience, we do not recommend non localized Corporate ERP system in large countries, such as Brazil, China, Russia, India, and the reason is simple – large countries have all the points to consider themselves to be self contained and develop complex regulation. For smaller countries, such as Afghanistan, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Lithuania, Poland, Uzbekistan the compliance issue may have lower concern as these countries typically follow international GAAP standards

5. And final paragraph: maybe Great Plains is already localized for your country? This Corporate ERP application is available in most of English speaking countries: USA, Canada (including French version for Quebec/Montreal), UK, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand. It is also localized to some of the Spanish speaking countries in Central and South America: Mexico, Argentina, Chile to name a few. There are also few flavors of localizations in Arabic, available from several local resellers in the Middle East