Euro Help On Th e Way

or IS managers, getting ready for the European Monetary Union's currency won't be easy. But dozens of IT vendors, including the major providers of enterprise resource planning software, are trying to make it easier by readying their products for the euro.

Clear rules are making the task easier. The Business and Accounting Software Developers' Association, a London trade group that represents 200 software developers, issued euro-compliancy specifications in November for general ledger, order processing, purchasing, historical analysis, and other financial software.

The association's members-which include SAP, Baan, Oracle, and major financial software vendors-are committed to having their software euro-ready by next year, says Dennis Keeling, CEO of the association and chairman of its EMU working committee. "We've [studied] this for 12 months," he adds, "and most of the requirements are well known."

Keeling says that handling triangulation-conversions among two national currencies and the euro-is a huge process. "You'll have to derive a currency using a calculation that's not built into any existing software," he says. "In some cases it will mean a major change to their software."

PeopleSoft Inc. says release 7.5 of its enterprise applications package-due in the second quarter-will support triangulation processing. PeopleSoft 8, due in mid-'99, will further refine triangular processing, as well as parallel processing for accounts payable and receivable, says Martin Mackay, PeopleSoft's European product strategy manager in Reading, England.

The current v ersion of PeopleSoft's package offers parallel running, the ability to operate balances in two currencies at the same time with transaction-level detail. This lets people work in local currencies day-to-day, while having on the same page data computed in euros for reporting and legal purposes.

Similarly, SAP AG recently began shipping SAP Euro, a euro-conversion package that supports the German vendor's R/2 and R/3 client-server enterprise application suites. The package includes software tools to convert all national currency amounts stored in SAP databases into euros. The vendor also offers services to help customers convert their SAP data.

Already, the current releases of both R/2 and R/3 handle the dual-currency phases planned for the euro. Future releases of the two packages, expected early this year, will support euro conversions, the company says.

Although SAP's software will be euro-compliant, the vendor is alerting customers that some EMU issues go beyond technology. The company has a e uro information center and conducts seminars on the monetary union. "The euro is not a question of software functionality," says Michael Klemen, director of cross-application marketing at SAP. "Our customers can get our Euro features for free. But companies have to be ready to react."

Return to story, " The Euro: Are You Ready? "

Back to News in Review

Send Us Your Feedback

Top of the Page