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Purpose - A critical problem for managers in South Staffordshire Council's one-stop-shop customer contact centre, known as South Staffordshire Solutions, was how to assess the achievement of "customer focus" in local services. The purpose of the paper is to view how managers adopted a model of self-assessment to address the problem. Design/methodology/approach - The paper shows how the EFQM Excellence Model enabled managers to effectively self-assess critical performance issues relating to customer focus. It also shows how the assessors used the fundamental concepts of the European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM) Excellence Model to identify a range of service interrelationships affecting customers. Findings - The paper finds that the assessors need to take account of the interrelationships between customer focus, results and learning to assess delivery of value to external customers. The EFQM Excellence Model provided South Staffordshire Council with an effective way of self-assessing customer-related issues. Practical implications - The paper shows that self-assessment enabled managers in the customer contact centre to assess customer focus within the broader context of the Council's Balanced Scorecard commitment to enhancing performance under the Comprehensive Performance Assessment (CPA). Originality/value - In this paper the assessors used the EFQM model to develop a narrative about sustained customer value creation by combining the fundamental concepts of the model with thinking about the unique value proposition offered to customers by the service. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose - This paper aims to describe the work of Staffordshire University in engaging with local employers and local further education colleges in the development of a Foundation Degree in Applied Technology. Design/methodology/approach - Following an outline of current government policy in employer engagement, the paper identifies - from the literature and recent quality reviews of provision - some issues for higher education institutions in developing a work-based learning curriculum with industry. It then outlines a case study of the Foundation Degree in Applied Technology - a collaborative venture between Staffordshire University (the awarding body), Burton College (the deliverer of the award) and JCB (the employer). In conclusion, the paper evaluates the case study. Findings - Evaluation of the case study suggests that the Foundation Degree in Applied Technology, as designed by Staffordshire University and delivered at JCB by Burton College, is a model of good practice in employer engagement. Originality/value - The value of this paper is that the case study illustrates key success factors, for higher education institutions and further education partnerships, in engaging with industry to design and deliver a foundation degree for a major manufacturing employer in the private sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to explore the favoured and almost ingrained way of managing groups of documents in systems, specifically in electronic document and records management systems (EDRMS), namely the folder, considered by many users as a sine qua non to any information system. Design/methodology/approach - The most significant barrier to successful implementation of EDRMS is "culture" rather than cost. Implicit is a willingness of users to employ EDRM as their method of choice to achieve such an end. Anecdotal evidence and a real case example are shared to explore the approach to developing virtual folders to meet user requirements and organisational needs. Findings - Staffordshire County Council's EDRMS does not employ folders. To save a document, users associate it with a level in the Council's functional business classification scheme (BCS); this is achieved through a series of "saved searches". Metadata requirements are embedded within the BCS levels and the user chooses a title and functional association for the record. Practical implications/limitations - This is a way of adopting what exists as standard technology within EDRM systems to satisfy a user need. The vital part is to firstly recognise why the barrier existed in the deployment of a functional classification scheme and further to move beyond the "face value" of why the users performed a particular methodology. More controlled and detailed research is required beyond the work that has been completed. Originality/value - This paper aims to provoke thought around the need to understand perceptions around documents, records and the systems, in particular EDRM systems, that manage them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]