To succeed in the international marketplace, you need a detailed understanding of the culture, customs, and conditions in all your markets. You also need the flexibility and responsiveness to account for diverse legal frameworks, different languages and lifestyles, and a wide range of other local business requirements. Companies need to comply with a range of country-specific financial reporting standards, tax calculations and laws Example for these standards. Examples are the Sarbanes-Oxley Act in the United States, G10 Basel Capital Accord (Basel II) in the European Union, excise tax handling in India or nota fiscal handling in Brazil. Organizations must also be able to document their compliance
accordingly.
SAP enterprise applications enable you to reach these goals by providing country versions, language compatibility, and various application types.
This section describes the international capabilities of SAP ERP 6.0. It defines a globalization standard, to which SAP ERP 6.0 adheres.
Section 4 - Key Functional Areas of SAP ERP 6.0 provides more information on processes or role-based Work Centers of SAP ERP 6.0. That section also summarizes the availability of individual processes or role-based Work Centers by country and language. In that section, you can obtain additional information on possible deviations of individual processes or role-based Work Centers from the globalization standard documented here. For more
information, see SAP Service Marketplace at
http://service.sap.com/notes SAP Note 883072 (Globalization information on SAP ERP).
2.3.1 Country Versions
The localization scope of SAP ERP covers the following individual key functional areas:
SAP ERP Financials
SAP ERP Human Capital Management
SAP ERP Operations
SAP ERP Corporate Services
We have designed country versions for these applications. You can run all standard country versions simultaneously on the same system. Country versions are available for the following localized functions:
Chart of accounts
Depreciation methods
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Tax calculation
Withholding taxes
Local and legal reporting
Materials valuation
Sales processing
Inflation accounting
Payroll
Corporate governance and regulatory compliance
SAP offers country-specific versions for SAP ERP for the following regions and nations:
Americas
o Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Peru, United Status, Venezuela
Europe, Middle East, and Africa
o Austria, Belgium, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Kazakhstan, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Poland. Portugal, Romania, Russia, Serbia, and Montenegro, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, Ukraine, United Kingdom
Asia-Pacific
o Australia, China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand
2.3.2 Application Types
SAP defines the following localized applications:
Standard Country Version
Country-specific functions are integrated directly into the software and do not constitute separate applications. Since SAP delivers all country-specific functions as part of the standard SAP software, all the standard country versions are mutually compatible and you can use them simultaneously.
SAP Add-On Country Version
An SAP add-on country version contains the country-specific functions available in addition to the standard SAP software. We deliver these versions separately to the standard CD/DVD. The solution type add-ons with modifications are compatible with standard country versions, but they are not necessarily compatible with other add-ons. An add-on without modifications is compatible with standard country versions and other add-ons without modifications.
Partner Add-On
Add-Ons provided by partners contain country-specific functions. Depending on whether or not they contain modifications to standard development objects, they may or may not be compatible with standard country versions or other add-ons. Check with the respective partner, listed on the individual country pages in SAP Service Marketplace.
Installation
An installation application denotes that at least one customer has installed SAP software in a given country. No country-specific function is available, unless an add-on applicatiadd-on is available for a particular applicatiadd-on, for example, SAP HCM add-only.
Not all applications of SAP ERP 6.0 are available in every country. For more information about application availability by country, see to SAP Service Marketplace at http://service.sap.com/localization.
2.3.3 SAP Globalization Knowledge Base
SAP Globalization Knowledge Base is an easy-to-use Microsoft Excel tool that supports decision makers and consultants in global implementation projects. This tool provides important country-specific information in a consolidated way.
This tool covers 50 country versions. This allows you to select countries and run the tool for countries of interest. For more information, see SAP Service Marketplace at
http://service.sap.com/gkb.
For more information about country versions and languages, see SAP Service Marketplace at http://service.sap.com/globalization and
http://service.sap.com/erp-hcm Country Information.
2.3.4 Language Combination: UNICODE Ends Compatibility Problems
The use of multiple languages for internal or external systems may lead to problems with the character recognition. If you employ truly global business processes, you need to support local language characters. While advances in webpage encoding enable the display of diverse orthographic characters, they do not cover the large number of conflicting, language-specific, platform-dependent code pages.
Unicode cuts a clear path through this maze, providing a widespread, accepted international standard that supports most of the world’s scripts. This helps avoid potential conflicts
between individual platforms and languages. SAP applications support the Unicode standard to aid your globalization and localization efforts and SAP highly recommends you to install only Unicode-based systems. Non-Unicode systems can only run one code page, limiting the language usage to English and the additional languages available for the given code page.
The software does not support code page combinations.
For more information about the Unicode advantages, see SAP Service Marketplace at http://service.sap.com/Unicode, and http://service.sap.com/Unicode@SAP.
For more information about the upgrade of Unicode systems, see SAP Service Marketplace at http://service.sap.com/erp-inst:
Upgrade Master Guide SAP ERP 6.0
SAP Note 928729Combined Upgrade & Unicode Conversion FAQ
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