Expansion to China with SAP Business ByDesign – Own experience

20.02.2018

Companies are expanding to China

Around the year 2000, many international companies expanded their business to China and opened sublocations there to take advantages of the strategic and growing market. As a result, the SAP consulting companies expanded to China in order to cover the exponentially increasing SAP needs. From a business perspective, companies always try to transfer their SAP templates to the branch offices to maintain global control and create transparency on how each branch performs.

In international projects, not only the expertise of the entire SAP ByDesign consulting team plays a role, but also intercultural skills and the coordination of all parties involved.

Team Bösch in China

In 2016, we, the Bösch-Team, provided technical support for the implementation in a German Group subsidiary in China in cooperation with a Chinese consulting company and in 2017 fully realized the implementation for a new division of the Group. For this it was important to understand the processes, wishes and requirements from the headquarter and implement the company processes and goals accordingly at the Chinese branch as well as to take over the management consultancy in addition to the common implementation project tasks. The decision to use SAP Business ByDesign was made even before the project started. Now it means for consulting firms like us to implement the desired business scenarios accordingly on the system side. As a basis for this, these must be defined in form of BluePrints as process documentation. There is the As-Is situation from which, in an optimal case, results optimization potential, so that To-Be processes can be defined. During this definition phase, the first challenges of decision making arise. Those responsible must be available and committed to this important definition. In the same way a team must be defined, who is responsible for the master data procurement and verification, so that these data are available promptly and completely.

SAP Business ByDesign meets Chinese requirements

SAP Business ByDesign has a localization for China and options for all country-specific adaptations such as currency, VAT rate and financial accounting. Typical national regulations for invoicing, taxes and auditing must be observed. The best example of this is the Golden Tax rule – each invoice for a sale in China must be printed via the Golden Tax system, which requires integration of the two systems.

Culture is something special

The Chinese are quiet and polite people from whom one does not hear a “no” or doubt so quickly. This requires good cooperation and above all good communication between the project managers, who are able to bridge the intercultural differences.

Expand with SAP Business ByDesign

Bösch can say with a clear conscience that the projects that have been carried out in China so far have been successfully completed. We now know how to deal with the special requirements of the Chinese government and how this can be optimally implemented in SAP Business ByDesign. If you plan to expand your business to China, you can continue to rely on SAP Business ByDesign and are not forced to introduce another product.