Hot Topics: Moroccan Local GAAP vs IFRS

Here I am, back from several trips to Alstom Morocco (Casablanca city), nice cliamte, nice people :-)

I am currently the Project Manager because of the Arabic language and culture (which facilitates my communication with the Local Team) and also due to my experience in B1 implementations using the French Localisation which is used in this Deployment.

We had accomplished some steps of the deploymnent.
- Impact Analysis workshops
- Key users (17 people) Basic Trainings: Standard SAP Business One Processes
- Advanced Trainings given to Finance Team and Controllers: Alstom Project management and Controlling Addons

We are now analysing the hot topics and the change requests to apply to the Alstom PMX Light Template before we start the Users Acceptance Tests which will be followed by the Data Migration.

Some of the hot topics are:
- Construction Contracts In Progress (CCIP) which must be calculated in IFRS and not in Moroccan GAAP
- Stock Management which must be handled in Moroccan GAAP in different way than IFRS
- Deferred Tax and VAT Declaration

                                   Having a Moroccan meal with the project team. From right to left:
                        Alstom Finance Expert, Functional Consultant, Head of PMX Light Team, Me :-) 
                                             

Turbines are so HUGE !!!

A visit has been organized into one of the Alstom Power factories located in Birr (a small village near Baden). It was an interesting day because we had the opportunity to see what real turbines and rotors look like: very huge stuff :-)

GT13 Gas Turbine

We also understood some of the complicated processes of manufacturing and how long do they take to get a result. In parallel we learnt about the organisation inside the factory.

                         The attendees were Powermax consultants coming from all over the world.

The bad news is time flies. The good news is you're the pilot.

Here I am again...Already one month spent in Switzerland!!!
Life is quieter here in Baden; no Metro (like in Paris) and everything is close. Zurich is 15 minutes far and is a really beautiful city :)
Switzerland seems to be very advanced in technology, people are well organized and always in time (especially public transports) and it's clean everywhere. However evrything costs 3x what it does in Paris :-)

                                                                 First Days In Alstom

In ALSTOM, The PowerMax Project based in Baden consists on standardising core business processes and tools in support of the Power Sector's goals and strategies. PowerMax (PMx)'s main responsabilities are harmonising the execution of business activities and standardising data across a wide range of functions, supported by a global platform based on SAP tool.

I'm member of the Power Max Light team (PMx light) which responsibility is to implmement SAP Business One and  PMx Project Management Add-on in different countries.
PMx Light is a powerfull team with people coming from over the world, this is one of our key points!
We started the Moroccan project and are going in few days to Casablanca for the Impact Analyzis.

To be continued... 

Alstom Power: Baden - Switzerland, August 6th 2012

I left France, the eiffel Tower and the Parisian exciting life and in a few days I'm going to Baden (Aargau canton near Zurich) in Switzerland.

I will work with Alstom Power as SAP Business One Implementation and support Consultant.

A new adventure and life will start for me in the country of Rolex and Chocolate ... :-)

SNETOR, France-Paris 2012:

Snetor is a French SME who is trading with chemicals. They have four companies in France and have customers and suppliers all over the world.

The B1 implementation project has been done by VISEO and took 2 years because of having four companies, complex procedures more the development of big special addons for them.

I started working in this project  since the go-live preparation phase. My principal tasks were linked to Coresuite Addon implementation:

-  Implementing and adapting the French Coresuite layouts for commercial documents for the 4 companies

- Implementing and adapting 30 Coresuite financial reports
- Creation of new financial reports via Coresuite: VAT declaration, VAT declaration preparation and Bank Statement Processing Report

- Setting up automatisms (send automatic email, print Bill Of Exchange when creating the Invoice ect.) using Coresuite Designer and Coresuite Customize Addon

- Key users training 

- Go-live assistance from January to June 2012

The last Picture I took in Snetor's Building before I left.

Picture taken of Snetor's Building in Paris

This project took a long time because of having 4 companies and 70 users. None of the B1 standard procedures was applied by the processes owners (they were very influenced by their old specific system) and there were lots of special cases to take into account.

After the 6 months of Go-live assistance everything went well!

Stroc Industries (Casablanca, Morocco): October 2011

Stroc Industries is a Moroccan company which is specialized in civil engineering. They handle huge projects like installing oil wells. They have subsidiaries in Mauritania and in Equatorial Guinea and they went public in 2011.

My project with Stroc Industries was to implement project Management Addon.

The project team was: purchasing manager, sales manager, engineering project manager, account manager, controller and human resources manager

The aim of project management Addon implementation was:

-          Plan resources for projects

-          Manage project costs

-          Analyse projects by P&L

-          Manage employees and equipments

Me eating coucous in my parents' house in casablanca
during the Stroc Project with my colleagues

SAP Bratislava, Slovakia: July 2011

Before releasing the 8.82 version SAP asked their partners to come to Bratislava to test the new features and report bugs and improvement suggestions. VISEO was the French chosen partner to participate in this session and I was the one who went to Bratislava to handle the test scenarios.

I focused on:

-          MRP improvements

-          Batch and serial numbers management

-          Balnket Agreement

SAP Bulding at Bratislava, July 2011

SAP Business One Testing Flour

The testing sessions were manager by Knis Dalibor from SAP. There were partners from all over the world (eg. Sapfire from London) and we were assisted by a 8.82 SAP developer and were also in contact with the solution manager.