Serving customers all around the world, we are dealing with different legislations every day. Since I’m part of localizations team of Exact, I’m busy with all kind of adjustments, to make sure our software meets expectations of our customers in the supported countries. This of course also includes ‘managing those expectations’ and clear communication of what’s already available.

To give an overview of what can be expected per country, in the past we prepared documents that listed supported functionality for each country. As a result of many modifications over the years, the documents were no longer user friendly. To optimize usability we first differentiated all supported functionality per country into ‘general’ for general information like supported language, ‘legal’ for legally required functionality, ‘local’ in sense of common business use and ‘banking’ for supported bank formats and country specific cash flow functionality. As a consequence we now offer a clear overview per country with linked detailed information and release notes.  Those fact sheets which work as a sort of country cockpit, have been first introduced internally and now are also available for our customers.

Take a look at Synergy document 17.073.975, to see what we prepared. To view it you need to login with your customer portal credentials. Those factsheets will be updated for every product update. So better stay tuned!

As of now Exact Synergy Enterprise product update 249 and Exact Globe Next product update 404 are in controlled release. That means that these releases are now available for resellers as well as all controlled release customers. After a successful controlled release period we will announce both products generally available, planned for mid-June.

Responding to challenges and needs of professional services organizations we have extended our PSA offering with numerous enhancements which will allow users to work more efficiently, save costs and achieve higher margins. Among others we will offer now integration of WBS (work breakdown structure) and budgets, a new flexible project cockpit and the possibility to copy a scope of a project  for easy project scope creation. Additionally, in this product update of Exact Synergy Enterprise we will launch a new Word Merge functionality that makes it easier to generate MS Word documents in which content from various entities from Exact Synergy Enterprise, such as accounts, projects and persons is automatically included. Moreover, we have extended Exact Synergy Enterprise with numerous enhancements, such as UX improvements, a solution to facilitate new Dutch holiday entitlement legislation and other improvements that have been developed based on direct feedback from our customers.

In Exact Globe Next we focused on facilitating the needs of our Wholesale customers; we have implemented numerous changes to the current functionality, such as improvements to E-WMS (release notes in tab Warehouse Management System). Additionally, after an extended controlled release period the B2B e-Commerce Portal will be generally available as of Exact Globe Next product update 404. To further extend the value proposition for customers in the Manufacturing field, we offer new solutions such as Exact Visual Scheduler (to be generally available) and back flushing for by-products. Moreover, we have extended Exact Globe Next with a large number of new features that facilitate changes in regional legislations and other enhancements that have been developed based on direct feedback from our customers.

Furthermore, in advance to launching Exact Globe Next product update 404 and Exact Synergy Enterprise product update 249 we have introduced numerous solution: Exact Synergy Enterprise Configurator and Central Master Data Management are now generally available. The Exact’s Service Management solution that strengthen wholesale and manufacturing companies is now in controlled release.

Please note that as a result of an extensive controlled release period and the feedback we received from our customers we have made a decision to change the name of Exact Globe to Exact Globe Next. What it means in practice is that when a customer decides to update his current Exact Globe, it will be updated to Exact Globe Next product update 404. An upgrade is not mandatory but when a customer decides to do so he will automatically benefit from the improvements of the Exact Globe Next version. Furthermore, he can request for up to four additional features that are standard in Exact Globe Next but not available without requesting them: Exact Synergy Enterprise with the Synergy user, integration with SSRS reports that offers real-time dashboard reports and a selection of alerts facilitated by Exact Event Manager. And a new menu/shell with state-of-the-art UX from which a user can operate all new and existing features. In the coming weeks we will provide more information on how this request process will work.

Should you have any questions regarding controlled release of Exact Synergy Enterprise product update 249 or Exact Globe Next product update 404, do not hesitate to comment on this blog post.

Now that the end date for the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) migration has been agreed upon within Europe, the industry has begun to realize the challenges that it will face the coming years. The good news is that a clear target date is set. In the euro area, this will be 1 February 2014, subject to certain limited exemptions mentioned in the SEPA Regulation. The bad news is that many are still in the preparation rather than execution phase. It is indisputable that the migration to the SEPA will be a challenging exercise. Market participants still need to evaluate its impact on their day-to-day operations. Migration to SEPA standards requires careful planning. The relevant actions and resources should be identified as soon as possible.

In this article I would like to share a general overview of SEPA compliance statuses as well as some short term plans of Exact Globe Next functionality for customers in countries of EU Member States.

SEPA was generally introduced in the product update 390, in 2008, and has been constantly improving since then.

We have chosen a flexible approach, with which we have implemented and support SEPA Credit Transfer for all EU countries based on general ISO20022 standard guidelines in 2009. Since 2010 we continued with extending SEPA functionality for frontrunners countries: the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany and Austria based on their national guidelines.

We are committed to plans for improving SEPA support in Exact Globe Next for all eurozone countries during 2012 and 2013.

IBAN and BIC. Customers are able to maintain IBAN and BIC in cash instruments and in debtor and creditor bank accounts in countries of EU Member States. Furthermore, to facilitate better and faster migration of bank accounts data into IBAN and BIC Exact Globe Next offers automations of generating these values for some countries or importing IBAN and BIC to debtors and creditors bank accounts for other countries.

IBAN and BIC are also included in most of layouts. For example the Exact customer in the USA is able to manage IBAN and BIC data of French debtor bank account and print this information in the sales invoice.

XML ISO20022 standards. Being based on ISO20022 standard, SEPA guidelines are allowed to be extended at the national level. Changes in national SEPA guidelines are prevail. At the same time banks within the same country are allowed to follow national or strictly EU guidelines or even extend such guidelines. Bank extensions to guidelines are prevail. Implementation of national SEPA migration plans are dependent on such diversity. Communications regarding relative technical and functional specifications as well as the speed of SEPA development in each country are different.

SEPA Credit Transfers (SCT). SCT functionality is available in Exact Globe Next for all customers and for all legislations as soon as the cash instrument and the creditor bank account are within EU and linked to euro. The frontrunners countries are having much better support of their SEPA standards.

SEPA Direct Debit (SDD). SDD was introduced in the product update 400 in 2010. This functionality is available for all customers of Exact Globe Next and for legislations as soon as the cash instrument is in the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany or Austria and linked to euro and the debtor master data is provided with IBAN and BIC and the information of relative SDD mandate exists. SDD mandate management is necessary part of the functionality. Being generally compliant to XML ISO20022 standard, the structure and content of SDD are implemented based on its national extensions.

Bank statements with SEPA information. SEPA includes a definition of Cash Management (CAMT), the XML based generic bank statements structure. The introduction of this standard, at the moment, gets lesser priority compare to IBAN and BIC, SCT and SDD. Expiration time lines for currently supported bank statements are not yet clearly defined. Therefore the majority of banks extend their bank statements specifications so that remittance information of SEPA transactions can be identified for reconciliations. Currently we keep implementing changes in existing bank statements in different countries, based on their specifications.

SEPA is a topic that can be addressed in different ways than just compliance. Starting now gives some, although limited, time to plan for changes taking possible benefits into scope. It is important to recognize that the impact of SEPA implementation goes beyond Europe. Compulsory usage of the ISO20022 standard certainly will be later considered for a global roll-out outside the eurozone.

Working in an international environment, we have to deal with the fiscal authorities in different countries. Especially in central European countries there are ambitions to streamline activities by enforcing more and more e-government processes. As this is a quite new process, there are still a lot of changes required from the government.

As a result our customers are pushed to do most tax related reporting in an electronic way, partially in the cloud. Germany is a good example for this, where all VAT reports and the newly introduced e-Bilanz XBRL reporting need to be uploaded directly to the servers of Ministry of Finance – and of course all data needs to be secured.

In the context of the act to reduce tax bureaucracy (SteuBAG), German government claimed that all companies in Germany are obliged to hand over their annual financial statements in an electronic way. XBRL was chosen as a method since this is already an existing solution for disclosure of trade balances. Based on existing trade taxonomy (version 4), a new fiscal taxonomy has been created to issue reports in form of instance documents. These reports need to be uploaded to the Elster server.

As we support import of this new fiscal taxonomy with Exact Globe Next product update 404, now we are starting detailed preparation on step 2, which means automatic upload of instance documents to the Elster-Server of fiscal government. This second part is planned for product update 405. Splitting solution into two parts should offer possibility to our customers to already set up maintenance, do all preparations and be ready in time for sending the report documents.

For companies in Germany this newly introduced e-Bilanz is quite a challenge, as all used GL account charts need to be checked and adjusted, before the fiscal taxonomy elements can be linked to them. As there is no default account template given in Germany, those links for all demanded reports need to be done manually one by one. And this of course can only be done in close relationship with the company’s tax consultant. As a result a lot of preparation is needed, which is a big effort for the all companies in Germany. Generating the reports (instance documents) and their upload to fiscal server is relatively simple and will become common practice soon.

Luckily product update 404 already offers possibility to do the biggest part of this job, so they are well prepared before their first reports need to be created and uploaded. If you want to know more about this topic, please check release notes for product update 404, which will be available soon.

With Exact Globe product update 404, E-WMS will offer a completely changed user interface (UI) for the hand terminal. Based on a direct feedback from our partners, the message for us was clear, E-WMS should look more trendy. Of course, E-WMS should also still be usable by the employees in the warehouse, so we paid attention to user feedback such as ‘too small texts’ and ‘tiny buttons’.

Along with a changed UI, we also included some UX (user experience, usability) enhancements. For example when choosing an item code in a browser list, you don’t have to confirm that item code anymore when returning to the main screen. It will be automatically selected for you.

Another UX change is replacing the READY and LINE READY button by one button: the STOP button. When pressing STOP, you will see a list of context sensitive choices of how you want to progress (or stop).

This new interface will require a new client on the hand terminal. This client app will cache objects on the device, in order to make the scanning experience smoother. The client is still told by an IIS server what to show, and also still requires .NET Compact Framework 3.5, so usage is intended for Windows CE and Windows Mobile. The current ERF client will still be supported (for now) but we expect and intend the new UI to be used by default.

Ok, by now you are certainly eager to see some screenshots; here we go. Please click here to view them. For comparison: on the left the current (old) UI, on the right the new UI. Please mind that those are not final screens, we still need to work on for example buttons naming.

Every organization faces this issue on regular basis: something has been changed in the database but who did it and when did it happen? To make sure that you don’t draw wrong conclusions on whose fault it is, you need to be able to track down the adjustments and have a good insight in the changes that have been made in the Exact Globe database.

Of course there is already a standard logbook available which can be used for various orders like sales orders, purchase orders, quotations, RTV/RMA order etc. To give you even more insight from product update 404 this logbook will be improved with a lot of new features which will be extended throughout this year!

As of product update 404, you will be able to use the following improvements that are based on your direct feedback:

• Log for deleted lines in orders
• Log for deleted orders and possibility to link a reason of deletion
• Log for change in status of orders
• Log for completed orders
• Added log for serial/ batch numbers

Possibility to add a reason of delation

Reason available in a deletion logbook

We are pleased to announce that after an extensive controlled release period Exact’s solution for centrally managing master data for multiple divisions is now generally available. Exact Globe customers with multiple divisions that are dealing with cross divisional related master data can make use of the Central Master Data Management (CMDM) solution. Although being a topic on the agenda of many international operating companies, local operating companies with multiple divisions can also benefit from implementing Exact’s CMDM solution.

Companies with multiple divisions have a challenge in managing data across these divisions and facilitating companywide compliance and a foundation for consolidated management reporting and analysis. Besides that, being consistent in the way master data is set up facilitates effective collaboration between individual divisions by sharing available capacity, knowledge, resources, products and even customers or suppliers, leading to better overall results for the group. This leads to a need for CMDM.

Our offering

Exact CMDM makes it possible to manage the following entities “Accounts”, “Items”, “General Ledgers Accounts” and “People” as per Exact Globe product update 403/ Exact Synergy Enterprise product update 248.

Benefits

• In control over divisional risk and results.
• Compliance on company standards.
• Workflow management for creation and maintaining master data included.
• Offering blueprints for business processes.
• Work together increasing efficiency and avoid redundancy where possible.
• Facilitate consolidated reporting and consistent local reporting for better decision making.
• An in-house Exact solution that synchronizes between Exact databases.
• Including Exact business logic reduces implementation time and eliminates database (update) related constraints.

For whom

• Companies with multiple divisions that share related master data.
• Exact Globe customers with multiple divisions that share related master data.
• Exact Globe customers with multiple (country) licenses.

For more information about the CMDM solution, please refer to our videos.

Should you have any questions regarding our Central Master Data Management solution, please comment on this blog post.

On behalf of the whole solution team and the development teams we are happy and proud to announce the next phase of Exact’s Service Management solution!

It all started out on June 4^th last year with the first sneak preview blog post and a video. Then we showed you a simple example how the solution integrates both Exact Synergy Enterprise and Exact Globe processes. We shared our ideas on the dispatch board and combined everything in a full concept video. We also showed you how we will use SQL Server Reporting Service reports with the solution and how we register the agreements you made in contracts with your customers and finally you could see how the functionality comes together.

And now we have reached the stage of controlled release! The first customers have started implementing the new service management solution. Many more customers are scheduled to be implemented shortly.

In case you would also like to participate in this controlled release please contact your local Exact representative or Exact Partner.

Who can join controlled release?

Exact’s product development process involves five main phases: verification, design, implementation, acceptance and launch. During the final “launch” stage, selected customers have the opportunity to take part in the controlled release of new product updates.

Please note that there are numerous pre-conditions for participation, thus taking part in a controlled release may not be for everyone. In addition to the use of Exact software, the requirements include:

• An infrastructure that permits testing in a real-life environment
• The creation of a database backup which is sent to Exact before the controlled release starts
• Provision of remote access to help identify and evaluate any issues
• A capacity to test documentation in detail
• The preparedness to share results and opinions in periodic evaluations

Benefits of our controlled release program

1. Gain privileged access to pre-release software
2. Be the first to benefit from enhancements
3. Become part of the development process
4. Receive personal coaching on new functionalities
5. Enjoy dedicated support throughout the controlled release
6. Know that any issues will be resolved quickly
7. Have a say in the development of a specific product update

Let me first introduce myself. A few months ago I did a career move towards product management and I will be responsible for Cross Border ERP. My goal for 2012 is to improve our software so it supports our international customers with multiple divisions worldwide even better. Some attention points for 2012 are as following:

• Improve the roles and rights structure within Exact Globe (Next)
• Improve the auditing and logging functionalities within Exact Globe (Next)
• Support of intercompany financial transactions by using Exact Globe (Next) and Exact Synergy Enterprise

The roles and rights structure project was kicked off already in 2011 with rights per bank/cash journal, and in the coming Exact Globe product update 404 we will offer support of rights per sales and purchase journal. During 2012 we will continue with further enhancements to the roles and rights, which I will be sharing with you via this blog.

 We have also already started with improving the auditing and logging functionalities. One of the examples is the new log functionalities in the serial/ batch numbers that will be available as of product update 404. For a part of this auditing and logging project I would ask you as a user of Exact Globe for some input and opinions. During 2012 we want to improve the logbook for sales order, purchase orders, RMA/ RTV orders etc.

In the previous article we discussed the basics of managing scope using deliverables and looked at the simple project scenario. In that scenario a project manager used Exact PSA to create a set of deliverables to define the scope of his project to implement Synergy Enterprise at a customer site.

This allowed the project manager to see what needs to be delivered on the project; however, he is also interested in how much time and money it will take to deliver it. In Exact PSA he can define tasks (or, in other words, activities) that need to be carried out in order to build a certain deliverable.

Let’s take another look at our example. The project manager wants to add more implementation details to the deliverable Requirements analysis. He conjures the following list of activities, and enters them one by one:

What does he see after completing this exercise?

• that he has estimated that 36 hours (32 hours of consultancy and 4 hours of project management) are needed to complete Requirements analysis;
• that the cost and the sales price per hour for each activity are calculated according to the rate rules in Exact PSA;
• the total cost and the total sales price of the whole deliverable are clear to him.

After having done exactly the same for every deliverable in the project, he will arrive at a complete work breakdown structure (or simply WBS) for the project, that will:

• give him confidence that every single activity that needs to be done on the project is captured in the system and is linked to a correct deliverable (based on the scope that he has defined);
• provide him with the project schedule, where each deliverable and each activity is plotted against a time range;
• let him see the total cost and total sales price of the whole project (based on the applicable rates, but not including any personal rates);
• allow him to share this calculation with the sales in order to create a final calculation for the customer, or to validate the original quotation.

In essence, that means a firm grasp of all estimated work on the project and its financials — something that a project manager is responsible for.

There are two additional features of Exact PSA that make work breakdown structures particularly convenient:

1. It is possible to list not only activities for each deliverable, but also material, in case goods are procured and shipped to the customer. In our example (as shown in the previous article), a deliverable Hardware installation might include some equipment that will be billed to the customer together with installation hours.
2. It is possible to plan hours directly from a WBS line, and, starting from release 249/404 it is possible to allocate material in the same way.

And last, in the release 249/404 the project manager will be able to see directly from a WBS line what hour planning or material & expenses requests are linked to it, that will give him insight into progress of the project. We will review these grand possibilities in the next article of the series.