We’ve been recently acquired and our management asked us to see how we could harmonize
our IT systems in the world.
At this stage we do not know the exact scope of the project, but some of the main ideas seems to be
Facilitate the reporting & consolidation of data across all our companies
Optimize our purchases (since most of the raw materials needed to build our products are similar in the US & Europe)
Have a unique database to have the same processes througout the companies
Let me give you some background of our setup :
Industry : WholeSale + Retail (We purchase in Asia and resell in Europe & the USA)
In Europe : - One single database : Navision 3.60 -Located in France
Licence : 90 Users
6 countries (Belgium, France, Denmark, Germany, Spain, Italy)
Most users connect via Citrix
The Database is heavily customized
Only the French company places purchase orders in Asia for Europe. France runs the central European Warehouse using Navision WMS
The items sold in Europe are not sold in the US, no common customer either
In the USA : - One Single Database - Solomon 6.0
Running their own warehouse (we do not know which software they use yet)
the item sold in the US are not sold in Europe, no common customers either
In Asia : nothing for the time being
We need to find a good PDM (Product Data Management system)
Give them the possibility to update a few fields on Purchases Orders & Products
in Europe & the USA (maybe via a simple web based interface)
What would you advise us to do ?
1 - Migrate all the European companies to Solomon ?
2 - Migrate the US company to Navision ?
(where ? on a dedicated server in the US or on the existing database in France)
3 - Migrate everything to Axapta ??
4 - Should we live the sytems as it’s and use BizTalk to exchange data back & forth ?
5 - Another alternative ??
Thank you in advance for any feedback that can stimulate our brainstorming session [:)]
Well, since Solomon is not supported ouside the US, migrating to SL is not an option since you’ll need localised functionality.
NAV is the most supported system of all and ideal for hub-spoke and distributed systems. NAV is also very commonly used in the US and Asia and there is loads of knowledge.
In AX you should be able to have them all in one database but that brings other problems like maintenance windows and connection speed. Even most large SAP systems have a distributed database system.
Firstly Solomon is not really an option outside of the US. The support issues etc just don’t makes sense. The only reason for Axapta would be if you want all the languages on one server. First question is “are the US happy on Solomon” if so then moving them from Solomon to Navision is only going to cause a lot of grief and head aches. So for now unless there is a reason to change, I would leave them there.
My plan would be something like:
Navision in Europe,
Solomon in the US
New implementations on separate country specific Navision systems.
Then create one new Navision consolidation company where you con consolidate and coordinate all the common fucntionality.
Of course every case is different, and this is really just one of many options. I am sure other people will give their recommendations.
If you want to use a single system then I probably would recommend Navision. It’s a system that is available in Europe an US (besides Axapta) Migrating Solomon to Navision in US has its own risks. It’s always better to have a working system, and you probably know new projects some times can be a mess.
I’m more apologist of each country having its own database and using a central database for consolation. But I know that in some business it’s impossible to achieve that .and all country companies must be in the same database.
To swap information between different systems you can use whatever you want, the final method (BizTalk, files) depends how information will be exchanged.
