Independent retailer Graham Knight's view from the shop floor.

Over the past year, I have written about the improvements I have noticed in each of the businesses owned by DSGi.

Now it has released financial results for the past year and I am pleased to report that DSGi has returned to profit and changed its name back to Dixons.

The firm is a bell-wether for our trade and when Dixons does well, we all do well.

This is quite an achievement as it represents a £226m improvement in the company’s fortunes at a time when other retailers, such as Argos, have been reporting lower profits.

The programme to update the entire Dixons business seems to have really been accelerated after the appointment in January 2009 of Andrew Milliken as transformation director.

Since then, every member of staff has undergone “Fives” training. In previous Knightlines, I have detailed the excellence of the firm’s online product training, which teaches everything from selling kettles to ensuring that customers are given proper advice about the differences between LED and plasma screens.

Dixons now offers a next-day delivery service within a three-hour time slot chosen by the customer and the average repair time for TV sets has been halved to six days. Big organisations measure performance by an RFT figure – this means Right First Time and Dixons is currently achieving a 97 per cent RFT.

The Dixons report also reveals some surprising figures about the stockholding. There was a £43m reduction in stock aged over six months. Stocks have now been greatly reduced, with a consequent improvement in cash flow.

An £18m loss on properties was the same as in the previous year and mainly relates to the closure and time taken to refurbish some stores.

Many stores were updated and the new format of combining Currys and PC World into a single outlet appears to be working well.

Of course, Dixons doesn’t always get it right. In my own town, an old Currys was closed after the opening of a nearby superstore, but for more than a year a handwritten, badly spelt postcard stuck on the door of the deserted store was all that directed customers to the new premises.

The group currently has 685 stores in the UK and, while the transformation programme continues, the financial report does say that Dixons intends to reduce this number to around 500 and that will include just 100 shops in high-street locations.

It cost £8m to close down the operations in Hungary and Poland – they were each sold for a nominal £1. Yet the stores in the Nordic region did very well.

Turkey is another bright spot with John Browett often pictured in the Turkish press alongside local partners. There, Dixons’s Electro World brand is available as a franchise – surely a first for Dixons. Ten more stores will be opened in Turkey this year.

The pension fund deficit remains a huge problem and currently stands at £265m and the scheme has now been closed.

Graham Knight