Dixons Store Group International shares its ROI achievements in implementing the Cobent LCS learning management system

Dixons Store Group International (DSGi) is one of Europe's leading specialist electrical and computing retailers and is the owner of many major retail brands including Curry's, Pixmania and PC World, employing over 40,000 staff, across 1,300 stores in 28 countries.

As part of their FSA compliance requirements, DSGi conducted all financial product assessments via a 1-1 telephone system. It was felt that this was not an efficient or cost-effective way of assessing staff, and learning management technology was identified to be the best approach to achieve both business and training requirements. To meet compliance regulations, the system also needed to be highly secure, robust and reliable.

Cobent's Learning Compliance Suite (LCS) was chosen after rigorous investigation, for its credibility and ability to meet compliance requirements with e-signatures, highly detailed reports and auditability. LCS's flexibility also meant that it could be configured to meet existing work-processes and expanded to meet future requirements. The system has also been integrated with Microsoft's Active Directory to enable single sign-on and Oracle's Peoplesoft HR System.

Since moving to a centralised electronic training process with Cobent LCS, DSGi has:

Replaced telephone assessments
DSGi has replaced its telephone assessment system with Cobent LCS. Training and assessments are now conducted online, and as a result DSGi has saved an estimated £500,000 in training and administration costs.

Improved control over all training processes
Both online and classroom based training is centrally managed through Cobent LCS in a formal and streamlined process, allowing the company to easily train, manage and report on its 20,000 current users with only 4 part-time system administrators.

Expanded into new training
Training has expanded from financial product training into other commercial areas such as sales, support and product training. DSGi will also launch a new Health & Safety training course across the organisation; the course is expected to reduce accidents by 40%.

DSGi is now working with Cobent to roll out the new training platform to its other brands across Europe. They are also looking to integrate Cobent LCS with other internal systems. The consolidation of DSGi's training processes throughout the entire group will mean further significant cost-savings, increased efficiency, competitive advantage and improved services.

DSGi has significantly reduced operating costs through efficient and effective training with Cobent LCS.

"Cobent has been an excellent investment for DSGi. The support received from Cobent has helped us to deploy the system across the UK business with speed realising savings ahead of schedule in phase 1. We are now in phase 2, moving our entire store learning onto Cobent and we are looking forward to a substantial business benefit and experience for our store colleagues."