> We are working on a proposal for client who has presence in Europe, Latin America and Asia. Some of the countries are UK, Germany, France, Italy, Brazil, China and Thailand.
>
> We are trying to come out with an answer on the multi-lingual SAP implementation u2013 whether we should go for it or not? What are the issues in this? Is this a big effort?
We are doing that. We have 12 languages in the system (incl. Russian, Polish, Hungarian and Chinese) and we offer the external daughter companies their own languages. Installing a language in the system is (if the system is Unicode) not a big issue. The country specific implementation definitely is - but this would need to be considered even if you decide finally to only use English.
We install in those companies the Windows MUI (English Windows + specific language on top) so the support people can log on there in English (or German) to check things if anything goes wrong and they don't understand error messages. The same is true for the SAP systems of course also.
You also need to think about a general output concept (printing). Using localized "printer versions" are mostly only able to print that one codepage the printer has by default. We are just about to switch printing output to UTF8 (Unicode) also.
I think this is all manageable from a basis point of view (that's what I can speak for only) as long as you don't use any BIDI languages (Arabic, Hebrew). Then it can become really complicated - although I'm sure it's feasible as well once "understood".
It's a total different story if you have employees sitting in the office who're able to speak English or if you have people working in "the factory" who need to work with the system as well and who do not understand English. This issue can conclude that processes need to be designed differently (someone has to type in the data who understands the language) - however, this depends on your processes and how you plan to work with the system.
The big advantage of such a language specific implementation is "system acceptance". People will more identify with the system and will accept it better if they can interact in their native language (that's just our experience).
A disadvantage may be the "SAP terminology", people doing rollouts may have difficulties to speak of the same thing if using two languages. Communication will need to be increased to make sure both parties speak of the same.
I also suggest you order a Globalization Workshop and let SAP explain their experiences and pros and cons. We did that too and we decided to have a language specific implementation. This may work for you - or you will finally conclude that it won't.
Markus
Bluesky
