Atlas - From the Start
Setting
At Atlas, with subsidiaries in several European Countries, The Americas & Asia, I introduced Shared Services pretty much from the start. Logistics, Sales, Invoicing, Finance were all controlled from the Headquarters in the Netherlands. I had written an application that allowed everyone to immediately check the entire cost and duration of transport from manufacturing site to the ultimate client, whether this client was located in Hungary or southern Texas. The Chart of Account was standardised and reporting was near-instantaneous.
In the beginning there were some hick-ups especially with the treatment of accruals and one-offs, but these issues were soon sorted out.
The only country that could not use our system as the true basis of their local operations was China. Logistics to local customers there had to be arranged locally as the situation was both to fragmented and to prone to break-downs with subsequent delays and work-a-rounds. Also issues like VAT invoices had to be issued by the local tax office. Here our system acted like a shadow-ERP with all transactions booked at both places; while a bit more troublesome, it still allowed for day-to-day control and quick analysis.
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