Table of Contents
Hitoshi Goto
Ukihiko Takagi
In the previous article, we covered the tax systems and legal frameworks you need to know when building business systems overseas. This time, we will look at how to work effectively with local experts.
Can You Really Build a Project Structure?
For legal and tax compliance, you need consultants from that country or region. However, depending on the country or region, the number of specialized consultants may be limited.
This is a story from when we deployed a system built with Oracle E-Business Suite (hereinafter EBS) as the ERP package in Brazil. In Brazil, SAP (a competing ERP package) has an overwhelmingly higher market share than EBS, and when we tried to assemble EBS consultants, we couldn’t gather experts in the required areas at the project start, ending up in a situation where people gradually joined as the project progressed.
From this experience, we learned the lesson that we must thoroughly consider in advance whether we can truly build a project structure by examining the local market share of packaged software and assigning consultants for the targeted packaged software in that country or region.
Building a Cross-Functional Team to Coordinate Experts
One challenge often encountered in global projects is ensuring alignment across specialists whose responsibilities span different functional areas.
This is a story from when we migrated from the old system to EBS as the ERP package in Brazil. When we asked a consultant responsible for a Brazil-specific module about migration considerations, the reply was, ‘The module I’m responsible for is not subject to migration, so it’s fine.’
However, they didn’t tell us that implementing that Brazil-specific module would change tax rate calculations in other modules, and the issue remained buried until a Japanese team member noticed and pointed it out.
We even drew diagrams to explain, and they understood the situation, but when they asked back, ‘How does that concern me?’—we were exhausted.
The solution is to prepare a cross-functional expert team that coordinates such specialists. Ideally, you would create such a team with members from the target country or region, but team members who are not familiar with local legal and tax requirements may find it challenging to acquire sufficient knowledge in a short period of time, making collaboration with local leaders especially valuable.
As with other matters, it is important to prepare such a team at the contract stage and clarify roles and responsibilities. For cross-functional teams that require management including areas outside their own expertise, it is also effective to promise success-based compensation as an incentive to boost motivation.
Also, since it is difficult to create such a team (especially finding a leader is challenging), it is important to build a relationship of trust with a team that has succeeded once, so that the same members can be assembled when similar projects arise in the future.
