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REDMOND, Wash., May 3, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- COMFY, the leading Ukrainian electronics and home appliance retailer, recently deployed a custom warehouse management solution based on Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 to help manage warehouse logistics, resulting in streamlined processes, reduced costs, increased productivity and better space allocation.

COMFY opened its first retail store in December 2005 and by 2011 had expanded to 78 stores in 37 cities throughout Ukraine. This rapid growth made it difficult to maintain a streamlined logistics infrastructure to distribute goods three times a week across all stores.

To help manage warehouse logistics, COMFY needed to improve business processes and automate company operations for sites with different types of storage. In addition, the company needed to make more efficient use of warehouse space, to enable real-time decision-making and increase employee productivity.

COMFY turned to international consulting firm Columbus, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner with retail vertical experience, for a solution. Columbus designed a system to automate business processes and ensure an integrated IT environment with servers running Microsoft Dynamics AX Application Object Server (AOS), and Microsoft SQL Server as a database management system. Microsoft Dynamics AX provides the flexibility for customizing an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system to meet COMFY's industry-specific needs.

"Microsoft Dynamics AX significantly enhances our ability to control processes at the central warehouse," said Andrew Prystavka, director of warehouse logistics at COMFY. "It allows us to quickly identify bottlenecks and find system solutions to address them."

Microsoft Dynamics AX gave COMFY a people-centered, end-to-end solution that helps employees work more efficiently and inspires them to do their jobs better. Many systems today focus solely on retrospective views and data, which can be frustrating and useless when faced with a unique logistical crisis. Microsoft Dynamics AX offers proactive and forward-looking systems that connect people to their work and provide real-time insights that enable better decision-making.

During the first two months after implementing the system using Microsoft Dynamics AX, COMFY increased productivity by 10 percent while reducing operational costs. "We expect to increase employee productivity at the distribution center by 1.5 times and reduce the cost of handling goods in all of our shops," said Andrew Zavizion, logistics director at COMFY.

The custom warehouse management solution, based on Microsoft Dynamics AX, helps automate logistics management processes at the primary COMFY distribution center to improve key business processes, including tracking and delivery of inventory, systems monitoring, and data extraction and analysis, delivering the following benefits:

• Increased service levels, including pick accuracy and deliveries on time and in full
• Reduction in unit cost of inventory turnover
• Greater employee productivity and satisfaction
• Better use of warehouse space and equipment
• Quick and easy identification of storage bottlenecks

Microsoft Dynamics solutions empower your people to be more productive and your systems to last longer and scale as your business grows, while enabling you to derive the insights necessary to respond quickly in an ever-changing world of business.

Information on COMFY's Microsoft Dynamics AX deployment, and additional Microsoft customer implementation news, is available on the Microsoft Customer Spotlight News Center.

Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq "MSFT") is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.

SOURCE Microsoft Corp.