DSG international case study 

The client: DSG international is one of Europe’s leading specialist electrical retailers. They have more than 1,300 stores and online stores, spanning 28 countries and employing 40,000 people. More than 100 million customers shop in-store and online with them every year.

DSGi’s retail and e-tail brands include PC World, Currys and Dixons.co.uk in the UK and Ireland, Elkjøp in the Nordic countries, UniEuro in Italy, Kotsovolos in Greece, Electro World in Central Europe, Greece and Turkey, PC City in Spain, Italy and Sweden, and Pixmania.com across Europe.

The challenge: DSGi’s own-brand PCs include Advent and Ei-System. They wanted to improve the “out of the box experience” for their customers by de-cluttering the desktop and improving system start up speed. They also wanted to improve up-selling opportunities through the guided use of bundled software.

The solution: We designed and built a WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation) application that allows for the easy categorisation, installation and launching of bundled applications on a new PC.

WPF allows designers and developers to work together to produce software which makes users think “Wow!”. Dot Net Solutions are one of Microsoft’s “go-to” partners when it comes to showcasing and developing applications on the latest Microsoft platforms, so we were a perfect for the job. However, it was our unique design-develop partnership that really sold us to DSGi’s management team.

Together Dot Net Solutions and its design partner worked to create an application that would help users through the often daunting task of selecting and installing the applications they wanted on their new computers. The application needed to be quick to load, intuitive but also visually appealing. Marketed under the brandname “Launch”, the application delivered on all requirements.