ERP Business Analyst in Atlanta

Plants and offices that report to a parent overseas

Manufacturers and suppliers from Korea, Japan and Europe have opened plants, warehouses and North American offices across Georgia, from automotive and battery suppliers to equipment and solar makers. The US company must run under US tax rules and usually US accounting, while also sending the parent a reporting package in its own chart of accounts, on its own calendar and sometimes in its own currency.

That double duty creates requirements a generic template misses. I document how each local account maps to the group chart, which entries need a second classification for the parent, how intercompany purchases of parts and machinery are recorded and matched, and which item and customer codes must stay aligned with the parent's master data. Where the parent runs a global ERP template, I record which parts of it suit a Georgia plant and which local needs it does not cover, such as state and local sales tax handling or the handoff to a US payroll provider. Accounting framework and transfer pricing questions belong to your accountants and tax advisors; I make sure the system can produce what they decide.

Interviews often involve expatriate managers and local supervisors with different working languages. The engagement runs in English, a bilingual colleague from your team joins where it helps, and any requirement text in another language is written or checked by your own staff.

Participation goals on public and airport contracts

Contractors and suppliers working for public owners in the Atlanta region, including the city, the airport and state agencies, often face goals for participation by small, minority-owned or woman-owned businesses. Winning the work is only the start. The prime contractor then has to show, period after period, which participating firms were committed, what they were paid and whether payments flowed through as promised.

When this lives in spreadsheets, each report becomes a scramble through invoices and bank records. As a business analyst I write the requirements that move it into the ERP: subcontractor records with their program eligibility and its renewal date, commitments by contract and scope, links between subcontractor invoices and the owner's pay applications, retainage held and released, and proof of payment that can be attached to each report. I also capture the owner's report formats and deadlines so they can be produced from system data.

The program rules belong to the owner and your compliance staff, and I ask them to confirm the requirement list before vendors see it. The construction side of this work connects to the construction ERP requirement areas, and the requirement method itself is described on the requirements gathering page.

Airport concessions: sales reports, landlords and joint ventures

Restaurants, newsstands and shops inside Hartsfield-Jackson typically operate under concession agreements rather than ordinary leases. Agreements of this kind commonly tie part of the rent to reported sales, require regular sales reports in a set format and allow the landlord to audit them. Many concession units are also run by joint ventures that bring together an operator and local partners, each with its own share of profits and obligations.

Those terms become precise requirements. I document how sales are captured by unit, concourse and category; which items the agreement treats differently, such as taxes, employee meals or voids; how point-of-sale data reconciles to reported sales and bank deposits; and how the system keeps the evidence an audit would ask for. For joint ventures I capture how results are shared between partners, which costs are charged into the venture and what each partner needs to see. Airport operations add their own cost lines, such as staff badging and delivery handling, that finance wants to track per unit.

Your agreement and your advisors define the rules; the requirement set makes sure the ERP and the point-of-sale system can follow them. The restaurant ERP page covers the wider operational requirements for food service.

Records behind state incentive claims

Georgia offers incentives to film and television productions and to companies that add jobs or invest in new facilities. Whether a business qualifies, how much it may claim and what a reviewer will examine are questions for your tax advisor. The analyst's part is to make sure the data those questions depend on is captured as work happens, not rebuilt from receipts when the claim is due.

For a production company, that may mean tagging every purchase and rental to a production, recording where each vendor is based and where the work took place, and keeping clear lines between costs paid directly, costs that run through a payroll service and costs shared across shows. For a manufacturer or distributor opening a site, it may mean headcount and wages by location, capital spending by asset and site, and the point at which equipment was placed in service. I write each item as a required field or report, agree the list with your advisor, and check during vendor demonstrations that it can be captured without manual workarounds.

This keeps a claim from depending on one person's memory and a folder of spreadsheets. National requirement topics such as sales tax and vendor reporting are covered on the US ERP business analyst page.

Acceptance tests built from the reports outsiders receive

Requirements prove their value during testing. For an Atlanta company with outside reporting duties, the strongest test cases are the reports themselves. I collect the last period's parent package, participation report, concession sales report or incentive schedule, together with the transactions behind it, and turn them into test scripts.

During user acceptance testing, your team enters or migrates those transactions in the new system and produces the same reports. Every difference is logged against a requirement number, then fixed in configuration, explained by a deliberate change, or recorded as a gap with an owner. Only when the reports match, or the differences are understood and accepted, does finance sign off.

Alongside the test scripts you receive the documents that carry the work: process maps of today and of the target design, a requirements document in which every line has its own number, a fit-gap matrix that rates each platform on the shortlist, and a data dictionary for the fields outside parties depend on. Any implementer can pick them up. The testing and UAT service describes the test method, the Atlanta ERP consulting page shows how this fits a full project, and the Atlanta freelance ERP consultant page explains the independent advisory role. All of it runs remotely.