Learning Resources increases warehouse labor efficiency by 15% and more than doubles order intake capacity using Microsoft Dynamics 365

For more than 35 years, Learning Resources has offered educational toys for hands-on learning in school and at home. Facing increasing demand, the company wanted to modernize its systems to streamline order fulfillment, improve inventory management, and support continued growth.

Learning Resources adopted Microsoft Dynamics 365 to upgrade its business processes and supply chain capabilities and Microsoft Azure to unlock better analytics. As a result, the company has significantly enhanced order throughput, inventory visibility, and demand planning while reducing costs and meeting all service-level agreements (SLAs) with its customers.

Scaling enterprise resource planning and removing 30 integrations

Learning Resources sells educational toys through big box retail stores, online, and directly to schools in more than 80 countries. With close to 5,000 products for sale, the company has complex order fulfillment needs. Learning Resources determined that it needed to replace its aging enterprise resource planning (ERP) system with an agile, cloud-based system that would support increasing demand and continued growth while maintaining operational excellence.

The company also wanted improved data and analytics capabilities to better position itself to meet the specific needs of large retail and publishing customers. Manual processes resulted in data discrepancies between systems in different warehouses, so Learning Resources chose to facilitate automation and efficiency. “We wanted the company to become truly data-driven,” says Ed Stassen, Chief Financial Officer at Learning Resources. “We weren’t as responsive as we knew we needed to be in the current marketplace.”

After evaluating multiple products and providers, Learning Resources selected Dynamics 365 because it offered a complete solution that would handle supply chain and warehouse management, finance, and customer relationship management (CRM). “Dynamics 365 is a comprehensive system,” says Ken Platt, Chief Technology Officer at Learning Resources. “ERP, warehouse management, and CRM are all using one database and one system.” By adopting Dynamics 365, the company removed more than 30 custom integrations it was using to communicate between third-party tools, reducing its operational workload and removing discrepancies.

Learning Resources had already been using Microsoft 365 and the analytics and data storage capabilities of Azure, so its users were immediately comfortable with the Dynamics 365 interface. “One of the big benefits to anybody doing a Dynamics 365 implementation is that your user community already understands how to navigate through the product,” says Platt. 

Quadrupling order processing capacity by migrating to Dynamics 365

By using the features, flexibility, and order processing capabilities of Dynamics 365, Learning Resources automated key workflows to improve its efficiency. Now, the company is processing more than 40,000 orders from the warehouse phase all the way to shipping in a single eight-hour shift—more than four times as many orders as its previous capacity.

The company also significantly increased the capacity of the order-picking module that handles orders as they are placed, so the order fulfillment process begins more quickly for more customers. “We literally doubled the throughput of order intake from no more than 3,000 to up to 7,000 per hour,” says Stassen.

Meanwhile, Learning Resources has improved warehouse labor efficiency by 15% and improved inventory management. The company uses Microsoft Power BI and the analytics capabilities of Azure to enhance its visibility. It monitors the number of employees in each warehouse, the time each shift begins and ends, and other metrics and connects them to the transactional data stored using Azure Data Lake Storage. Now, both employees and customers have better data, deeper insights, and the ability to make data-driven decisions.

The company has turned a demand planning process that used to take days into an automated task it can run multiple times per day. It has also automated global direct shipping instead of first importing customers’ orders to its warehouses. “Now, products go from overseas directly to our customers,” says Platt. “That was a capability we actually didn’t have before. It was very manual, but that’s all automated now.” Learning Resources is also better positioned to continue expanding globally through acquisitions. Using Dynamics 365, the company can connect newly acquired companies to its existing systems more easily.

In 2024, the company expects to reduce its inventory costs by 15%, saving millions of dollars. Learning Resources also uses this visibility to be proactive. “We’re no longer getting a call to say there’s a problem,” says Platt. “It’s a call to say that there’s a potential problem. You’re ahead of the game.”

Strengthening security while meeting all SLAs

Learning Resources is expanding its business with new locations and enhanced offerings. The company has been offering custom education bundles for years, but with its improved efficiency, it has improved the bundles’ price and quality. “We’ve been able to significantly increase our market share,” says Stassen. “There’s no question that the reliability in terms of our ability to supply not just standard items but also custom educational bundles has been greatly enhanced with the new ERP solution.”

With its ERP and analytics systems running in the cloud, Learning Resources can meet all SLAs, even as its business and the size of its warehouses grow rapidly. Additionally, it has strengthened its security posture using Microsoft Defender. “We’re cloud-based now,” says Platt. “With the old system, we would not have been able to put in place what we have today with Defender.”

Expanding modernization to optimize global operations

Learning Resources has used Microsoft technology for years and plans to continue adding new capabilities using Dynamics 365 and Azure. The company is exploring emerging applications of AI to optimize its global operations and improve lead generation.

Learning Resources is positioned to continue growing while providing better customer service and strengthened operational efficiency. “We’ve tripled the size of our warehouses, and we’ve increased our capacity,” says Platt. “Dynamics 365 supports our ability to accommodate all that growth.”