Today  I was debugging the logic written for Custom AIF services  using X++ job before deploy it as AIF service, I got strange error

“Stack trace: ‘unchecked’ cannot be called on the client.”. 

It was due that Service class was set as run  at “Called from”, Only solution is to change run at to Server. Job will successfully run.

will all CRM instances be online is the future?

Why haven’t I worked on more CRM online projects?

I was contemplating the questions above reading the white paper about creating solutions for CRM online

Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online patterns & principles for solution builders

It’s a white paper highlighting the limitations of CRM online and how Solutions architects will need create solutions to work with the strengths of CRM online and work around the weaknesses.

Is CRM Online the future of Microsoft Dynamics CRM?

Microsoft would like to think CRM projects are all heading online, Microsoft is spending lots of money creating data centres , bringing their top software offerings to the cloud(Exchange, Sharepoint, Dynamics CRM, Azure, Office, etc etc etc).  Making it easy for all the software to work together on-line (e.g. removing barriers)

Microsoft acquired online products to extend Microsoft Dynamics CRM

• Parature
• Social Engagement
• MDM – Marketing

From a cost point of view (looking at it holistically), it seems sensible use massive data centres which are maintained and look after, rather than individual companies having to host servers, hire skilled people to maintain them.

Hosk experience of CRM online

So far I have only been involved in small/simple projects successfully working with CRM online.

The majority of projects I have worked on and have known about have been with CRM On premise.  I wonder if I have worked on complex CRM projects because I am a CRM developer, it’s perhaps more likely the projects I work on will involve complex customizations and with the previous versions of Microsoft Dynamics were better suited to CRM on premise.

I have heard of projects moving from CRM online back to CRM on Premise but no projects moving from CRM On premise to CRM online.

CRM online is growing?

Microsoft Dynamics CRM online is growing in popularity.  I say it but I couldn’t find much information to back that up

Good Momentum For Microsoft Dynamics CRM Reported At Their Fall Analyst Event

The Dynamics product is doing well. The numbers speak for themselves: 12% revenue growth in FY13; Dynamics AX and CRM growing by double digits worldwide and 30% in the Americas and Asia; and CRM Online growing by 80% in FY13, with two out of every three new customers opting for cloud. Microsoft Dynamics has 359,000 customers and 5 million users, while Microsoft Dynamics CRM has 40,000 customers and 3.5 million users.

The post is a few years old but I’m going to going to assume Microsoft Dynamics CRM online is growing.  I will assume Microsoft will actively continue to grow the Microsoft CRM online offering, which will result in more CRM online projects for CRM Developers to work on.

It’s easy to envisage a future where companies pay for virtual cloud servers and services instead of paying for skilled IT guys to look after their own servers.

At the moment my personal view is big CRM projects and complex CRM projects are not a good fit for CRM online.

Limitations of CRM online

Below are some of the limitation of CRM online

Indexing

A lot of CRM projects I have worked on have involved SQL indexing.  I understand indexes are not automatically added because when indexes need to be added it has to be in a specific area which needs a performance improvement.

How does indexing work with CRM online?  how do you find out where the SQL server is running slowly?

The white paper says you can get Microsoft engineers to look at indexes through a support request but I wonder how this works and how effective it is?

Increasing performance – How?

CRM on premise infrastructure is designed to allow more resources to be added in a modular way.  e.g. if you need more performance in the SQL server, you can add more SQL servers.  If you need better performance on the CRM front end, you add more CRM front end servers.

How does this get managed on line?

Data privacy

Some companies don’t want to their data in the cloud no matter how secure Microsoft says it’s is.

Sandboxed plugins

Sandboxed plugins can’t access any 3rd party dll’s, which can be quite limiting

Custom ASP.NET pages

Custom ASP.NET pages can’t be done in CRM online, so no iFrames showing custom pages.

Reports are FetchXML

CRM online reports can only be written in FetchXML because CRM developers have no direct access to the CRM database.

Size of database

Online database charge by the gigabyte.  CRM databases can grow pretty quickly but how do you shrink POA table if gets to big.

The emphasis will be on CRM support engineers to reduce the POA table size but the Microsoft as a company do not benefit from this (because they charge by the GB), so there is conflicting goals.

Reading the document has made me aware of techniques to move data out of the CRM database into services like SharePoint (or similar) but database management could be a full time job.  The alternative of course is there will be so much space available in the future where database size is not an issue.

The current relationship between megabytes and gigabytes could be the same relationship between gigabytes and terabytes in the future and the talk about database size seem silly.

Hosk Thoughts

if Microsoft keep investing in the Online infrastructure and products and more companies use CRM online then I will inevitably get increased exposure to CRM online.

I view CRM Online similar to CRM mobile in the fact it’s the direction the industry is moving but currently this seems to be a slow process and I expect the majority of CRM project to be CRM on premise.

I’m not sure why Microsoft are delaying service updates to CRM on premise?  It’s going to make CRM developers and resellers life increasingly complex and frustrating, delayed enhancements don’t seem appearing enough to change peoples suitability or desire for CRM version.

In my experience big or complex CRM projects are more suited to On Premise solutions and it would be extremely difficult to do these projects online with CRM onlines current limitations.

If Microsoft changed the online version to host servers online and the CRM developers could access the servers then it would be a very compelling argument, a half on line/on premise solution.

Understanding how CRM Online solutions can work

Reading the paper for the first time, I felt it was unusually worded because it highlighted a lot of limitations but portrayed them as benefits

Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online patterns & principles for solution builders

This line jumped out at me

Everybody has felt a little guilty when they wrote some bad code in the past. Well, in Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online, the temptation to write icky code has been removed in a lot of places, especially where it comes to resource utilization.

Thinking about the document it raises some good points because Solution architects will need to design different solutions for CRM Online than they would if their were designing a CRM solution for a CRM on premise.

Developers don’t like being limited but if more CRM Solutions and customizations will be in deployed in the cloud it’s knowledge CRM developers will need to have.  Part of a CRM Developers work practise is to adapt to new versions of CRM and CRM online is a different version to CRM On Premise.

The part of the document I found worrying is the areas it mentions lack of resources which might be available to you.

My experience with CRM performance issues has involved a lot of investigation around infrastructure (networks, resources, etc), SQL database performance (query performance, adding indexes).  Code optimization and database locking investigation.  I will give an honourable mention to the POA table and security configuration as potential causes of poor performance.

Considering the above any investigation would rely heavily on Microsoft support engineers, this is must be a potential concern for any organizations considering large CRM projects online.

These two quotes from the document, which discuss the potential downside of CRM online

no portion of these shared resources are dedicated strictly to the instance running your solution – they’re shared. That means that you must design your solution to accommodate potential scenarios where these resources don’t perform your requests immediately.

Also, be aware that while there are no strict limits on the amount of workflow jobs you can send to the queue, if you or any of your neighbors sharing the resource are using an inordinate amount of resources, you may have a governor placed on your usage

Hard limits with CRM online

Where the document is really useful is it focuses on how you should construct CRM Online solutions to utilize the strengths of the CRM online offering.

If you have large long running processes then you can create services in Azure to do this work and take the heavy work load, nicely avoiding hitting any of the hard limits set in a CRM Online solution.

I have no experience of CRM Online using Azure so it was interesting to read the methods to  deploy code as

Azure Iaas

Deploy code to IIS in the cloud running in a virtual machine (VM).  The same as hosting a webservice on your own server or usually in a new web application on a CRM server.

Azure PaaS

I’m not quite sure how this works, it seems you don’t configure IIS but just deploy your code and deploy it as a cloud service.  This seems to be more like a windows service (but in the cloud).  The code needs to be written in a certain way to be run a cloud service.

Configuration over code

Microsoft in recent versions of CRM have been steadily improving the no code solutions with improvements giving improved functionality to mobile devices and more customization choice for CRM Online

Code                  GUI Customizations

Javascript     –     Business Rules

Plugins         –      Real time workflows

Managing Storage

CRM online charges by the Gigabyte/per month fee.  CRM Developers need to manage the CRM database size by storing information in other cloud services such as Sharepoint online and azure storage (Microsoft naturally recommend their own products).

The conclusion of white paper

Creating solutions for the cloud is different. It requires thinking about the system architecture in a different way. But making this leap is an imperative for almost anybody selling business or government solutions today. Keeping up with the market requires us to make the necessary adjustments, and allows us to embrace the attendant benefits of building solutions for the cloud.

Initially I thought highlighting the limitations of CRM online was an odd thing to do.  Looking at the document again it’s seems like a good idea because it’s important CRM Developers know the limitations.

Offering advice and techniques to work around these limitations shows you what is possible.  The white paper points to techniques, software and services CRM developers will need to become more familiar with in the future with CRM on line projects continuing to increase in size and complexity.

The increased complexity of CRM online solutions will need developers to create CRM customizations using no code tools such as business rules and real time workflows in conjuction with code deployed and running in Azure services.

This may explain the raft of new synchronization enhancements added into CRM 2015 SP 1, which I talked about in the blog post below

What’s new in CRM 2015 SP1 for developers, customizers and admins

The white paper won me round in the end, highlighting ways around some of the major limitations with CRM online.

Many CRM Developers will have no experience of deploying code in azure and consuming it within CRM.  I would say not just CRM developers but many CRM resellers won’t have experience of creating solutions using code deployed in azure.

This were my thoughts on CRM online, please leave your thoughts, experiences in the comments

I have worked with several customers whom have experienced errors when running AX 2012 reports involving Multicurrency transactions where the error message reflects:

"An exchange rate cannot be found for exchange rate type ZZZ between currencies XXX and YYY on exchange date."

At initial glance, the error message does not appear to be appropriate and it is difficult to determine what is causing the error message. What typically happens when this error message occurs is that the SSRS report uses the ExchangeRateHelper class and the ExchangeRateHelper class expects there to be a record in the EXCHANGERATE table with a blank VALIDFROM date as the following type of query will be executed:

SELECT TOP 1 T1.EXCHANGERATECURRENCYPAIR,T1.EXCHANGERATE,T1.VALIDTO,T1.VALIDFROM,T1.MODIFIEDDATETIME,T1.RECVERSION,T1.RECID FROM EXCHANGERATE T1

WHERE

 ((EXCHANGERATECURRENCYPAIR='5637144576')AND((VALIDFROM<='1900-01-01 00:00:00')AND(VALIDTO>='1900-01-01 00:00:00')))

The report will typically error out in a scenario where this query does not return a valid record from the EXCHANGERATE table. What this means is that from the Currency exchange rates form in AX 2012 for the Exchange rate type that is assigned to the Legal Entity's Ledger that is having the problem, you need to have a Exchange rate defined where the Start date is Blank. For example, to fix the problem, take the following steps:

1.  Go to General ledger | Setup | Currency | Currency exchange rates to open the Currency exchange rates form.

2.  In the Currency exchange rates form, select the Exchange rate type that is assigned to your Legal Entity's Ledger, and then select the appropriate From currency\To currency pairing.

3.  In the Display valid exchange rates for the date range area of the Currency exchange rates form, enter a Blank From Date, and enter today's date in the To date field.

4.  Scroll to the top of the exchange rates listed. Click on the first exchange rate, click the Add button, and then add the following line:

Now that this Exchange Rate line is added to the Exchange Rate type, the AX 2012 Report that leverages the ExchangeRateHelper class will now find a record in the EXCHANGERATE table having a blank VALIDFROM date field. You should now find that the AX 2012 Report will run without the error message occurring. It should be considered 'Best practices' to have an initial Blank line assigned to your Currency pairs in your Exchange Rates Types so that AX 2012 can always find an exchange rate.

With LCS (Life cycle Services), Microsoft have taken steps to introduced the APQC (American Productivity & Quality Center) Process Classification Framework as one of the business modelers.

Microsoft have also created some flowcharts to visualize the APQC processes in dynamics AX.

In some Dynamics AX implementation projects it have been decided to use the APQC model, and the participants(including me) was struggling connecting the APQC model to actual tasks and activities performed in DAX. So I started on a small mental journey to better understand how to use APQC model, and to be able to connect the dots from the classification framework into dynamics AX swim lane process maps.

First I thought that is was possible to take some level 4 APQC try to draw them. It is possible to draw the small and simple activities, but I was struggling drawing an end-to-end processes. Like order-to-cash. I quickly realized that I cannot use the LCS-APQC model to explain end-to-end DAX processes, since end-to-end processes often will involve many different departments, functions and processes.

To visualize a complex processes in an end-to-end process like order-to-cash using APQC classification model I could imagine looking something like this.

Here we see the involved processes visualized with the APQC classification. And it makes sense. But it does not tell you how to use AX in in this process, because that is described using the level 4 (or 5) in APQC. Like in 8.2.2 Invoice customers, would be a specific process, that we can visualize in Dynamics AX/LCS.

The other thing I realized was that APQC is not about implementing a ERP system, like DAX, but it’s about improving the processes you have(regardless of what systems and applications you have). Some of the activities may be handled in DAX, but many is just how to improve the actual steps the company actually does. Very often it can be the working procedure, involving many systems and internal working processes. So you don’t ask “How does this APQC process look in DAX ?”. You should rather ask “What APQC processes is involved in the selected DAX processes (like order-to-pay).

The APQC model will therefore not tell you how to use and setup Dynamics AX. It will just help you to have a common language to classify your processes and to improve them. When it comes to visualizing Dynamics AX processes in swim lane flowcharts it can be a good idea to use the APQC identifiers as process identification.

My tip when using LCS, is to understand the APQC process identification model, and use it as a repository and building blocks when you create your own processes.

By referring to APQC on your own business model you can start on process improvement project for that specific process. You will can also evaluate to implement the benchmark indicators as APQC exemplifies.

My quick summary is therefore;

1. Do I like LCS, and will use it à Yes, and I will use it for implementation and DAX process visualizations.

2. Do I like APQC à Yes, and I will use it for classification, benchmarking and process improvements.

3. Do I think that the LCS APQC processes reflect what we see at customers à No

4. What would be nice to have in LCS business modeler à More end-to-end processes, where the APQC process identifiers is used would be nice.

Happy DAX’ing !!

Link to the PDFs: OneDrive

Wer es noch nicht mitbekommen hat, Update 1 für CRM 2015 (formerly known as Spring wave) ist seit zwei Tagen offiziell verfügbar. Und schon ist es Zeit über einige Erfahrungen in der Praxis zu berichten.

Der CRM 2015 Outlook Client– eine Aktualisierung des Clients wurde bislang nicht vorgenommen, da man mit dem CRM2015 Client grundsätzlich auch auf eine Update 1 Organisation zugreifen kann, doch schon nach kurzer Zeit stellten sich die ersten Support-Anfragen in Sachen “Öffnen einer Ansicht” ein. Die Benutzer “beklagten”, dass sich Ansichten nicht mehr öffnen ließen und Sie stattdessen mit der Animationsgrafik “Lade…” beglückt würden.

Nachdem verschiedene Auswertungen der Trace-Files nicht zu entscheidenden Hinweisen auf einen Fehler führten, wurde eine neue Ansicht erstellt und deren Layout anschließend mit Hilfe des ViewLayout Replicator aus der XrmToolBox auf alle Systemansichten übertragen. Et voilà – die Benutzer können alle Ansichten wieder einwandfrei laden. Offenbar hat sich in den fehlerhaften Ansichten ein Problem in der Layout-Definition eingeschlichen.

De- und Neuinstallation des CRM Outlook Clients für 2015 – den Outlook Client bei auftretenden Problemen gleich zu deinstallieren und anschließend neu zu installieren ist insbesondere bei großen PST Dateien wenig ratsam, stellte sich doch heraus, dass der Client nach erfolgter Verbindung zur Organisation beginnt, sämtliche nachverfolgte E-Mails erneut nachzuverfolgen. Dies führte zu einer “Unbrauchbarkeit” von MS Outlook während des gesamten Synchronisationsvorgangs. Abhilfe schafft hier

a) der Verzicht auf eine De- und Neuinstallation, da nicht erforderlich in der Aktualisierung
b) seine E-Mail Anzahl durch sorgfältige Archivierung deutlich zu reduzieren und somit den Synchronisationsvorgang zu beschleunigen.

Die neue Form Rendering Engine / kollabierte Abschnitte mit WebRessourcen / IFrames – wurde die Maske mit kollabierten Abschnitten gespeichert, in denen sich eine HTML WebRessource befindet und diese programmatisch (JavaScript) zur Laufzeit aufgeklappt, so zeigte sich eine falsche Größenberechnung, so dass nur teile des WebRessourcen-Inhalts sichtbar waren. Abhilfe schafft hier derzeit nur

a) ein Workaround, den Abschnitt aufgeklappt in der Maskendefinition zu speichern.
b) die Form Rendering Engine in den Einstellungen auszuschalten und die so genannten Legacy Forms zu verwenden.

Sodann zeigt sich der Inhalt der nachgeladenen WebRessource in der korrekten Breite. Dieser Fehler ist bekannt und es wird bereits an einer Lösung gearbeitet.

Vorhandene Workflow Aktivitäten– Durch einen Echtzeit Prozess mit einer Benutzerdefinierten Workflow Aktivität wurden plötzlich mehrere Datensätze dem Benutzer SYSTEM zugewiesen. Nachdem der Überwachungsverlauf den Prozess als “Übeltäter” entlarvte, konnte ermittelt werden, dass die Workflow Aktivität noch aus CRM 2011 Zeiten stammte und ursprünglich gegen dieses SDK kompiliert wurde. Abhilfe schaffte die Neu-Kompilierung gegen das CRM 2015 SDK und das .NET Framework 4.5.2.

Nutzung des Plug-In-Registration Toolkits– Bei dem Versuch, sich mit der Online Organisation zu verbinden zeigte sich nur ein weißer Bildschirm, obwohl das neueste SDK verwendet wurde. Dies konnte auf mehreren Rechnern nachgestellt werden. Abhilfe schaffte die Löschung des Ordners “de-de” aus dem Plug-In-Registration Toolkit Pfad. Der anschließende Neustart und nach Verbindung zur Online Organisation waren alle Plug-Ins und Workflow Aktivitäten wieder sichtbar / zugänglich.

Spontaner Anstieg des Speicherverbrauchs– grundsätzlich sollte man gerade in der Online Umgebung seine Ressourcen im Blick behalten. Durch Aktivierung zahlreicher neuer Erweiterungen – die offenbar sehr gut angenommen werden – kann sich der Speicherbedarf jedoch erheblich erhöhen. Es ist daher ratsam, sich im Vorfeld einen Blick über die bereits verwendeten Ressourcen zu verschaffen.

Soweit die ersten Erfahrungsberichte aus der täglichen Praxis. Bis zum nächsten Mal…

Finding the right Dynamics GP partner for your distribution business is like looking for a good dentist in a new town. Say you need a tooth implant. Would you go to a dentist skilled in all the arts of straight, white teeth even though he’s never done a tooth implant? What if he assures you that he has studied the procedure? Attended lectures on it?

You would probably keep looking for one who has proven experience. The same is true for your distribution business. You need a Microsoft Dynamics GP partner with proven experience implementing the system at distribution companies. A company that knows from doing, how to fit Dynamics GP to your processes to maximize your success.

CAL Business Solutions team members fully understand the processes. Better yet, some have actually run their own distribution businesses. It would be hard to find a team more qualified to be your Dynamics GP Partner.

Learn more about how the CAL team can help you and see why other distribution companies are happy that they chose CAL for their partner, in this video at:

Watch video

Every Dynamics GP partner says they can do distribution, but you need to look at their customer list.

Hear from some of our current distribution clients and download the white paper “10 Questions Every Distribution Company Needs to Ask Before Buying Accounting Software” at http://www.calszone.com/10questions.

If you are a small or mid-sized distribution company looking for similar benefits, contact CAL Business Solutions. sales@calszone.com or 860-485-0910 x4. We can help you evaluate your current systems, business processes, and goals to determine if Dynamics GP with is the right fit for you.

By CAL Business Solutions, Microsoft Dynamics GP Partner Focused On Distribution Industry, www.calszone.com/distribution

The post Video: Why Choose a Dynamics GP Partner with Proven Distribution Industry Experience appeared first on .

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This is a newly designed window inside Microsoft Dynamics GP that enable users to view related purchasing documents in the same window.  Accessible from the Vendor Maintenance window, many purchasing inquiry windows, Navigation lists and even the Home Page this window will save users time in searching for all relevant information for a purchasing document.  By selecting the checkbox for one document the window redisplays all columns with only the related documents.  For example, select a purchase order and then only the receipts, invoices, payments, and returns related to that PO are displayed.

Link to the PDFs: OneDrive

As you scale and build your SaaS Company there are 7 key areas to optimize in order to ensure stable and long-term growth. It’s important to lay out the foundation, game plan and strategy for these key areas prior to gaining momentum with your growth as an expanding global organization.

This article will cover seven key considerations as you structure your optimal strategic plan for growth and expansion as a Global SaaS company.

1. “Best of Breed” Global & Expandable Cloud Accounting System– One of the most important considerations for a growing, global SaaS company is to have a “best of breed” cloud accounting system as a foundation to run your business. The benefits of a cloud accounting system include flexibility, ease of use, scalability and a lower total cost of ownership as compared to on premise software. Also, as you grow, you will inherently break out of US boundaries and into global markets to expand market share. It will be extremely important to have a core accounting system that will be able to handle this expansion from a global presence of legal business entities as well as multi-currency requirements and global consolidations of your financials for these separate global entities. Therefore, a key consideration here is to have an accounting system that has a multi-dimensional structure to build the optimal shared chart of accounts and target elements of the business to track and report against these dimensions from a global entity basis.
2. Real-time KPI SaaS Metric Reporting– Another critical consideration is real-time SaaS KPI metrics reporting to give you complete visibility into your business. It is important to structure the business with target elements, such as customers, items, and locations, in order to easily report your target KPI’s metrics such MRR, ARR, CAC, LTCV and Churn to make the right decisions at the right time in driving the strategic goals of your business.
3. Collaborative Forecast & Budget Planning– Forecasting and budget planning are essential considerations for a growing SaaS company. This is where you will need to be collaborative, remove the “death by spreadsheet” scenarios, and become very nimble with actionable visibility on key forecasting and budget planning data at the click of a mouse. A cloud-based, flexible, intuitive, easy-to-use solution allows a company to achieve this easily.
4. Stock & Equity Management– As you build value as a company, raise capital funding and incentivize your workforce you will be managing an ever increasing stock cap table and schedule. Automating these processes with best-of-breed cloud solutions and even outsourcing some of the more tedious processes to a trusted partner enables your team to concentrate on more strategic decisions for your growing company.
5. Corporate & Sales Tax Optimization– As you transact and grow globally, the need to handle and optimize tax considerations will continue to increase as well. It will be important to consider how you approach and transact in both the US and abroad as in VAT to minimize tax impacts and prepare in advance of any potential unknowns. Utilizing cloud-based applications that can easily link and leverage your cloud infrastructure enables you to automate and optimize your sales tax transactions, and also, prepare for any future tax audits.
6. Audit & Compliance– Another key consideration as you grow your global SaaS business will be the audit and compliance area. This can range from the governance, risk and compliance around your core financial systems to how you transact with partners, customers and vendors. Planning with this in mind minimizes future audit aches and pains.
7. IPO Readiness– One of the benefits of growing a SaaS company is the eventual liquidity event of going public or being acquired. This is another key area to consider as you move closer to the right spot for your company to be at in terms of valuation and when and if to go public or to sell your company.

As you prepare for global growth and a possible IPO or equity event, it is very important to consider these seven key areas and the possibility of including a strategic partner to guide you through these strategies to optimize your approach and execution.

About Armanino, LLP

Armanino is a Gold Certified Microsoft Dynamics AX, GP and CRM Partner with five California locations (San Ramon, San Jose, San Diego, Santa Cruz, and San Francisco) as well as offices in Portland, OR, Bellevue, WA, and Naperville, IL.

Our team understands the unique business processes, common pain points and compliance issues many high-tech manufacturing and life science companies’ face and can assist you with integration to front or back office systems, deployment, data migration, and training.

We encourage you to call us with questions and let us know about your company and business goals. Visit us online at: http://www.armaninollp.com

The post Essential Considerations to Growing a Global SaaS Company appeared first on goERPcloud.

As you scale and build your SaaS Company there are 7 key areas to optimize in order to ensure stable and long-term growth. It’s important to lay out the foundation, game plan and strategy for these key areas prior to gaining momentum with your growth as an expanding global organization.

This article will cover seven key considerations as you structure your optimal strategic plan for growth and expansion as a Global SaaS company.

1. “Best of Breed” Global & Expandable Cloud Accounting System– One of the most important considerations for a growing, global SaaS company is to have a “best of breed” cloud accounting system as a foundation to run your business. The benefits of a cloud accounting system include flexibility, ease of use, scalability and a lower total cost of ownership as compared to on premise software. Also, as you grow, you will inherently break out of US boundaries and into global markets to expand market share. It will be extremely important to have a core accounting system that will be able to handle this expansion from a global presence of legal business entities as well as multi-currency requirements and global consolidations of your financials for these separate global entities. Therefore, a key consideration here is to have an accounting system that has a multi-dimensional structure to build the optimal shared chart of accounts and target elements of the business to track and report against these dimensions from a global entity basis.
2. Real-time KPI SaaS Metric Reporting– Another critical consideration is real-time SaaS KPI metrics reporting to give you complete visibility into your business. It is important to structure the business with target elements, such as customers, items, and locations, in order to easily report your target KPI’s metrics such MRR, ARR, CAC, LTCV and Churn to make the right decisions at the right time in driving the strategic goals of your business.
3. Collaborative Forecast & Budget Planning– Forecasting and budget planning are essential considerations for a growing SaaS company. This is where you will need to be collaborative, remove the “death by spreadsheet” scenarios, and become very nimble with actionable visibility on key forecasting and budget planning data at the click of a mouse. A cloud-based, flexible, intuitive, easy-to-use solution allows a company to achieve this easily.
4. Stock & Equity Management– As you build value as a company, raise capital funding and incentivize your workforce you will be managing an ever increasing stock cap table and schedule. Automating these processes with best-of-breed cloud solutions and even outsourcing some of the more tedious processes to a trusted partner enables your team to concentrate on more strategic decisions for your growing company.
5. Corporate & Sales Tax Optimization– As you transact and grow globally, the need to handle and optimize tax considerations will continue to increase as well. It will be important to consider how you approach and transact in both the US and abroad as in VAT to minimize tax impacts and prepare in advance of any potential unknowns. Utilizing cloud-based applications that can easily link and leverage your cloud infrastructure enables you to automate and optimize your sales tax transactions, and also, prepare for any future tax audits.
6. Audit & Compliance– Another key consideration as you grow your global SaaS business will be the audit and compliance area. This can range from the governance, risk and compliance around your core financial systems to how you transact with partners, customers and vendors. Planning with this in mind minimizes future audit aches and pains.
7. IPO Readiness– One of the benefits of growing a SaaS company is the eventual liquidity event of going public or being acquired. This is another key area to consider as you move closer to the right spot for your company to be at in terms of valuation and when and if to go public or to sell your company.

As you prepare for global growth and a possible IPO or equity event, it is very important to consider these seven key areas and the possibility of including a strategic partner to guide you through these strategies to optimize your approach and execution.

About Armanino, LLP

Armanino is a Gold Certified Microsoft Dynamics AX, GP and CRM Partner with five California locations (San Ramon, San Jose, San Diego, Santa Cruz, and San Francisco) as well as offices in Portland, OR, Bellevue, WA, and Naperville, IL.

Our team understands the unique business processes, common pain points and compliance issues many high-tech manufacturing and life science companies’ face and can assist you with integration to front or back office systems, deployment, data migration, and training.

We encourage you to call us with questions and let us know about your company and business goals. Visit us online at: http://www.armaninollp.com

The post Essential Considerations to Growing a Global SaaS Company appeared first on goERPcloud.

As you scale and build your SaaS Company there are 7 key areas to optimize in order to ensure stable and long-term growth. It’s important to lay out the foundation, game plan and strategy for these key areas prior to gaining momentum with your growth as an expanding global organization.

This article will cover seven key considerations as you structure your optimal strategic plan for growth and expansion as a Global SaaS company.

1. “Best of Breed” Global & Expandable Cloud Accounting System– One of the most important considerations for a growing, global SaaS company is to have a “best of breed” cloud accounting system as a foundation to run your business. The benefits of a cloud accounting system include flexibility, ease of use, scalability and a lower total cost of ownership as compared to on premise software. Also, as you grow, you will inherently break out of US boundaries and into global markets to expand market share. It will be extremely important to have a core accounting system that will be able to handle this expansion from a global presence of legal business entities as well as multi-currency requirements and global consolidations of your financials for these separate global entities. Therefore, a key consideration here is to have an accounting system that has a multi-dimensional structure to build the optimal shared chart of accounts and target elements of the business to track and report against these dimensions from a global entity basis.
2. Real-time KPI SaaS Metric Reporting– Another critical consideration is real-time SaaS KPI metrics reporting to give you complete visibility into your business. It is important to structure the business with target elements, such as customers, items, and locations, in order to easily report your target KPI’s metrics such MRR, ARR, CAC, LTCV and Churn to make the right decisions at the right time in driving the strategic goals of your business.
3. Collaborative Forecast & Budget Planning– Forecasting and budget planning are essential considerations for a growing SaaS company. This is where you will need to be collaborative, remove the “death by spreadsheet” scenarios, and become very nimble with actionable visibility on key forecasting and budget planning data at the click of a mouse. A cloud-based, flexible, intuitive, easy-to-use solution allows a company to achieve this easily.
4. Stock & Equity Management– As you build value as a company, raise capital funding and incentivize your workforce you will be managing an ever increasing stock cap table and schedule. Automating these processes with best-of-breed cloud solutions and even outsourcing some of the more tedious processes to a trusted partner enables your team to concentrate on more strategic decisions for your growing company.
5. Corporate & Sales Tax Optimization– As you transact and grow globally, the need to handle and optimize tax considerations will continue to increase as well. It will be important to consider how you approach and transact in both the US and abroad as in VAT to minimize tax impacts and prepare in advance of any potential unknowns. Utilizing cloud-based applications that can easily link and leverage your cloud infrastructure enables you to automate and optimize your sales tax transactions, and also, prepare for any future tax audits.
6. Audit & Compliance– Another key consideration as you grow your global SaaS business will be the audit and compliance area. This can range from the governance, risk and compliance around your core financial systems to how you transact with partners, customers and vendors. Planning with this in mind minimizes future audit aches and pains.
7. IPO Readiness– One of the benefits of growing a SaaS company is the eventual liquidity event of going public or being acquired. This is another key area to consider as you move closer to the right spot for your company to be at in terms of valuation and when and if to go public or to sell your company.

As you prepare for global growth and a possible IPO or equity event, it is very important to consider these seven key areas and the possibility of including a strategic partner to guide you through these strategies to optimize your approach and execution.

About Armanino, LLP

Armanino is a Gold Certified Microsoft Dynamics AX, GP and CRM Partner with five California locations (San Ramon, San Jose, San Diego, Santa Cruz, and San Francisco) as well as offices in Portland, OR, Bellevue, WA, and Naperville, IL.

Our team understands the unique business processes, common pain points and compliance issues many high-tech manufacturing and life science companies’ face and can assist you with integration to front or back office systems, deployment, data migration, and training.

We encourage you to call us with questions and let us know about your company and business goals. Visit us online at: http://www.armaninollp.com

The post Essential Considerations to Growing a Global SaaS Company appeared first on goERPcloud.

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