Anthology drives efficiency and growth in educational technology with Dynamics 365 Finance

Anthology, formed from the merger of four leading EdTech companies, faced challenges with disconnected and outdated systems. The company needed to centralize operations and improve data quality to support its growth and acquisitions strategy.

By implementing Dynamics 365 Finance, Anthology consolidated multiple ERP systems, eliminated manual processes, and created a single end-to-end financial solution, enabling real-time data access, improved decision-making, and streamlined operations.

Dynamics 365 Finance resulted in efficiency gains and improved financial processes. Anthology's accounting teams save hours each month and the company achieved a 10-15% efficiency gain in processing time for accounts payable and receivable.

Anthology believes that together, education and technology have the power to open doors that create life-changing opportunities for all. For the Florida-based EdTech leader, “The Power of Together” isn’t just a tagline; it's the guiding principle behind everything the company does. Its suite of AI-enhanced EdTech solutions—including the learning management system (LMS) Blackboard, customer relationship management (CRM) Anthology Reach, student information system (SIS) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution Anthology Student—are offered under the software-as-a-service (SaaS) model. This allows students, teachers, and learning institutions to reach their potential and thrive in a time of fast and unprecedented change. Formed in 2020 from the merger of three companies, Anthology looked to centralize business operations across the three integrated companies, and it turned to Dynamics 365 to integrate and streamline their disparate, legacy CRM and ERP systems. In October 2021, Anthology added Blackboard LLC to the portfolio and by May 2024, they had successfully merged all four companies into Dynamics 365. “With Dynamics 365, we have a fully integrated solution that helps us be more agile. We can bring in new entities more easily during acquisitions, and we have more accurate, updated data to help our business leaders make the critical decisions they need to make," says Jins Varghese, Global CIO, Anthology. Now the company operates more efficiently and is well positioned for future acquisitions and growth.

“With Dynamics 365, we have a fully integrated solution that helps us be more agile. We can bring in new entities more easily during acquisitions, and we have more accurate, updated data to help our business leaders make the critical decisions they need to make.”

Jins Varghese, Global CIO, Anthology

Acquisitions bring patchwork processes and outdated systems

Anthology solutions offer a connected data experience that inspires learners to reach their full potential using technology insights in admission and enrollment management, student success and retention, institutional and learning effectiveness, alumni advancement, and enterprise applications and infrastructure. More than 150 million faculty and students across 3,500 organizations in 80 countries rely on them every day. But behind the scenes, their back-office environment was anything but connected.

Anthology was created through the merger of four of the world’s leading education technology companies: Blackboard, Campus Management, Campus Labs, and iModules. Each brought its own CRM, ERP, and HR systems and ways of operating. The new company found itself struggling with disconnected and redundant processes running on outdated on-premises solutions. As Varghese explains, “It wasn’t just different systems, it was different processes as well. Some of our technology was more than 10 years old and lacked modern features. We had to do a lot of manual work between systems, which was time-consuming and prone to error.”

As just one example, Ramona Desantis, Vice President, Treasury and Financial Systems, says that accounts payable and purchasing processes required employees to spend hours every morning pulling data from two different systems. “It wasn’t efficient at all,” she says.

Anthology’s plans include more acquisitional growth, but it was clear that trying to work with disconnected and disparate technologies was holding it back. “We needed to reduce complexity, streamline processes, improve data quality, and eliminate manual processes so we could be more agile and have a single source of truth for the enterprise,” explains Varghese.

Integration strategy gets a gold star

With the acquisition of Blackboard, internal IT teams and external partners worked together to develop a strategy for integrating the four organizations’ systems and processes. The result was a company-wide IT systems consolidation effort, which consolidated multiple ERP systems, eliminated manual inputs, built out processes that were globally consistent, streamlined transaction processing, and took advantage of cloud-based technology, creating a single end-to-end financial solution to manage reporting, bookings, billing, purchasing, invoicing, and expenses for the entire company. Anthology’s solutions are built on Microsoft’s secure and scalable platform, so Dynamics 365 Finance was the natural choice to serve as the heartbeat of the enterprise. Integrations with a single CRM for sales and compensation, Kantata for project management, OneStream for budgeting, and Avalara for automated tax compliance rounded out the solution.

Anthology leverages the powerful capabilities of Power BI to create interactive dashboards and insightful reports, seamlessly integrating data from multiple sources using Data Lake and Synapse link. This approach allows them to pull real-time data from their various systems. By consolidating this data into a single source of truth in Azure Data Lake, Anthology ensures that their stakeholders have access to accurate and up-to-date information, enabling informed decision-making and fostering a culture of data-driven growth. The visualizations and analytics provided by Power BI help the company to identify trends, monitor performance, and uncover opportunities for optimization across their global operations.

The project’s focus on data migration and system integration resulted in fewer issues and a smooth transition to the new system. “With tremendous support from customers, our leadership and internal IT teams, and our capable partners, we completed the entire project in about 30 months,” says Varghese.

Unified solution makes the dean’s list

Anthology’s IT systems centralization project launched in May 2024, centralizing and simplifying formerly complex, disparate systems. “With Dynamics 365, we globalized and standardized our entire business, streamlining systems and consolidating three different ERP systems into one. That has helped us drive operational efficiencies across our global finance team,” says Ryan Cahill, Vice President, Controller for Anthology.

“With Dynamics 365, we globalized and standardized our entire business, streamlining systems and consolidating three different ERP systems into one. That has helped us drive operational efficiencies across our global finance team.”

Ryan Cahill, Vice President, Controller, Anthology

Many of those new operational efficiencies are particularly enjoyed by the Anthology accounting team. With automated processes and multiple financial systems integrated in Dynamics 365, they perform less manual work and save hours every month. “Our month-end close process used to be difficult because of all the manual work we had to do to compare financials,” Cahill explains. “With the integrations with Dynamics 365, we have saved at least three to four business days during the close process because of the efficiencies we have now.”

Anthology’s treasury department has also benefited from the integrated solution. The manual data transfer work that used to be part of their workday has been eliminated. “Now, at the beginning of the day, our team doesn’t have to spend hours putting files together, adding notes, and reviewing everything because Dynamics 365 has consolidated all that data already. We’ve achieved a 10 to 15% efficiency gain in processing time for accounts payable and accounts receivable as a result,” states DeSantis. Streamlined daily accounts receivable collections and an automated process save the accounts receivable team 13 hours a week. With the increase in processing efficiency, the treasury team can optimize resource allocation. “We’re definitely more productive with Dynamics 365, so we do more work with fewer people,” adds Desantis. And Anthology’s days sales outstanding metric has improved by up to four days year over year.

“Now, at the beginning of the day, our team doesn’t have to spend hours putting files together, adding notes, and reviewing everything because Dynamics 365 has consolidated all that data already. We’ve achieved a 10 to 15% efficiency gain in processing time for accounts payable and accounts receivable as a result.”

Ramona Desantis, Vice President, Treasury and Financial Systems, Anthology

Dynamics 365 Finance streamlined management of revenue from SaaS subscriptions and professional services projects. “Dynamics 365 revenue recognition helps us more easily manage subscriptions and projects,” says Cahill. “One customer might sign a contract for a specific statement of work, and the order might have additional lines for paying a recurring subscription. That recurring subscription line integrates into Dynamics 365 to drive invoicing and revenue recognition based on dates. The entire process is smoother and doesn’t require manual entry every month.”

A budget-friendly solution

Although it wasn’t a primary goal of the IT systems centralization project, lower operating and maintenance costs and reduced resource requirements have been a welcome side-effect. “We moved from three ERPs down to one in Dynamics 365, consolidating and simplifying all our processes,” says Varghese. “That has helped us save money by not having to manage and maintain different systems. We have completely decommissioned our older technologies, which is helping us realize additional cost savings and business efficiencies as we move into the future.”

Looking ahead

With a single, centralized way to manage financial processes and projects, Anthology is better equipped to grow its business. “With Dynamics 365, we have a fully integrated solution that helps us be more agile,” says Varghese. “We can bring in new entities more easily during acquisitions, and we have more accurate, updated data to help our business leaders make the critical decisions they need to make.”