Adobe Success Story

DSG international plc (DSGi) is a leading European electrical retailer of consumer electronics with operations in 27 countries. Through its well-known high street brands such as PC World, Currys, currys.digital, and The TechGuys, it provides value to its customers through its range and quality of products, competitive pricing, and high standards of service.

A job to be done
Phil Speight is graphics production manager at DSGi headquarters. He and his team are responsible for the creative design and photography for point-of-sale materials, brochures, and press advertising used across the company’s retail brands. "We provide a service that is similar to a full service creative agency," Speight explains. "The copy comes from an internal marketing department but the rest is up to us."

When the DSGi graphics production team began using Adobe Acrobat in earnest, they were already committed fans of Adobe software having migrated to Adobe Creative Suite when Speight decided to standardise on software applications and versions across his teams. "I wanted to take a strategic approach to software buying, with the decision based on what is best for the business both today and in the future, rather than legacy or tradition being the rationale," says Speight.

Speight has three studio managers, one each for brochures and literature, point of sale, and photographic. The team decided to move all three studios to Apple Mac OSX and Adobe Creative Suite, with Adobe Illustrator CS, Adobe InDesign CS, and Adobe Photoshop CS becoming the tools of their trade and Speight praising the tight integration among the Adobe Creative Suite applications. The teams also work with 30 to 40 freelancers who have also started to use Adobe Creative Suite. "Our previous graphics package was in a state of decline. Adobe Creative Suite is the industry tool for today and the future. It is now much easier to find freelancers and exchange illustrations and designs both in the U.K. and Europe," says Speight.

Benefits

• Eliminated potential downtime
• Established a new professional and efficient workflow

Project Details

A solution needed, fast
The Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) and Adobe Acrobat were key decision factors as well. "We needed to start using an Adobe PDF workflow, creating and delivering print-ready files whenever possible," says Speight. But a devastating oil explosion at a major fuel depot opposite DSGi’s headquarters acted as a catalyst for the team to use Adobe Acrobat more extensively. Previously, point-of-sale briefs would be worked on face-to-face and in many cases this was no longer possible. Speight needed to find a way to ensure that work continued as normal even though the teams were now geographically dispersed.

Speight explains, "Many of the offices were inaccessible for some time and also suffered significant water flooding due to the explosion. Several DSGi teams had to relocate to other premises. For example, the Dixons' Tax Free store team had to move several miles away which meant we had to quickly find a new way to work with them."

Although Speight began testing Adobe Acrobat several months before the explosion, suddenly the business benefits became very clear. "Overnight Adobe Acrobat became a mission critical application, not just a better way of working," says Speight.

The graphics production team all had access to Adobe Creative Suite and Adobe Acrobat but wanted to share artwork and receive comments from people who didn’t have these applications on their desktops. Speight comments, "The fact that Adobe Reader could be downloaded in minutes for free was fantastic."

The team began using Adobe Acrobat Professional to enable reviewers to comment on materials using the latest version of Adobe Reader software. Previously, reviewers needed the full version of Adobe Acrobat software to participate in online reviews. Acrobat Professional removes this limitation because now only the free Adobe Reader software is needed to add electronic comments to documents.

At DGSi, a brief for artwork now comes into the graphics production team electronically as a Microsoft Word document. Once created in Adobe InDesign or Adobe Photoshop, the first draft of artwork is then uploaded as an Adobe PDF file to a secure intranet site. Reviewers can then download the PDF file, use Adobe Reader to make comments and mark-up changes, then upload the Adobe PDF file back onto the intranet site for the creative team to collect and make the changes.

A better way of working
"Working this way has been very efficient. Although we aren't able to meet our customers face-to-face, they can quickly and easily articulate their thoughts about a piece of work," says Speight.

As a result, the team will be rolling out the same process more extensively across the DSGi brands. "We are already working this way with PC World in Ireland. I intend for the team to use Adobe Acrobat more and more, especially as DSGi expands further into Europe and our internal clients become more remote. There are DSGi retail brands from Iceland to Italy, and we will be providing increased levels of support and co-coordinating activities from the U.K.," he says.

"Adobe Acrobat and Adobe PDF provide a professional and efficient way to communicate across separate sites. As we create artwork in specialist applications it has been difficult, and sometimes impossible, to share work electronically," says Speight. "However, Adobe PDF is a very stable file format and Adobe Acrobat makes it easy to produce reliable, print-ready Adobe PDF files. Plus, by creating a PDF with Adobe Acrobat, reviewers can open and, more importantly, review the document with the free Adobe Reader."

Speight concludes, "Adobe software provides a one-stop-shop solution. We have the best creative tools within Adobe Creative Suite and now, with Adobe Reader and Adobe PDF, our business workflow is also sorted."