A number of local government bodies – councils and the like have been using PROQUIS for a variety of quality improvement purposes over the last few years. This has proved to provide considerable benefits to their management and information. Worcestershire County Council for example have been using the Small Business Systems since the late 1990s until March this year when they upgraded to the web based edition, PROQUIS Enterprise within the Trading Standards Service Section. Although they use many areas their primary usage is in Document Control and they have seen an improvement in the availability of documentation and visibility. Paul White, Information Manager explains:

“The Document Control module ensures that large amounts of advisory information, statutory regulations, leaflets etc are the most accurate and up to date available, and that this material is regularly checked by our specialist officers. Additionally, PROQUIS Enterprise enables us to publish this information automatically to our website, which helps us to reach a wide audience, and gives us confidence that this is always the most up to date and accurate information available: http://www.worcestershire.gov.uk/tradingstandards. The automation of this labour intensive process is one of the major benefits of PROQUIS Enterprise. The Document Control module also ensures we have a complete history of how and why documents have changed, and electronic copies of previous versions required for reference purposes, and allows us to set bespoke renew dates appropriate for the document. Our Quality Manager operated to procedures that are laid down in our Quality Management System. He uses the Document Control module to monitor compliance with these procedures, which helps us to maintain our ISO 9001 Quality Assurance certification.”

Paul Concludes:

“The main benefits of PROQUIS Enterprise to Worcestershire Trading Standards
Service is to automate labour intensive processes, which enables us to re-use staff resources more effectively elsewhere. It also gives us a uniform electronic approach to an effective quality management information system.”

Similarly Calderdale Council are a long standing PROQUIS Small Business System user, having utilized the program since 1997. “We have used various sections of the system over the years”, says Support Services Manager, Mark Dempsey, “and find the Document Control, Audits, Management Reviews, Fault Reporting and Equipment Control particularly useful to administer the quality system within Calderdale Parks and Street Cleaning Section”.