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Key‐safes have become a backbone of community care, enabling formal carers to access the homes of people receiving routine homecare services or emergency services such as telecare. People need to have confidence in their security features if they are to wholeheartedly accept the need for keeping a key available in a safe at all times. A project was undertaken to compare the features of a number of popular key‐safes on the market in the UK, considering security as the most important factor but also including the subjective opinions of a panel of relevant stakeholders on issues such as aesthetics, value for money and usability. It was found that the newest device on the market, the Supra C500, was significantly more secure than its rivals, and was the only model in our trial to satisfy domestic security standards for front doors. It is proposed that all key‐safes should be required to achieve a national standard for resistance to forced entry before they can be considered for use as part of a homecare or telecare package in the UK.

As telecare systems replace traditional social alarms, service providers must change their operating procedures to deal with increasing numbers of people who need emergency responses to a range of different emergency situations. The telecarers or teleresponders will need immediate access to properties that they have probably not previously visited. This must be managed securely using digital access codes that operate either electronic door locks or key‐safes that contain the relevant key(s). This approach must offer a robust and reliable method of gaining access, which is acceptable to insurance companies, to service users and their families and to the emergency services. This paper describes the strengths and limitations of practical solutions, yielding a list of best practice principles, which should be adopted by telecare service providers.

Subject areas are strategic management and marketing management.

This case can be used in strategic management and marketing management courses for MBA students.

This case discusses the future of petroleum business at Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) – whether to stay or exit. This scenario took place between 2001 and 2008. The volatility in the external environment was beyond their control. Or was it so? This case encapsulates the characteristics of innovative strategy formulation, leading to successful differentiation in a regulated and commoditized industry. This case portrays two significant aspects of business strategy by RIL. First is to comprehend the pioneering strategies formulation and implementation by RIL in the petroleum retailing business. Second is the severe impact of external forces on the company’s current and future prospects and what contingency plans could have been made.

This study enables to understand how innovative and differentiation strategies can be successfully applied in a commoditized business; to comprehend the effective application of forward integration and brand extension in a complex, scale-driven industry; and to understand the implication of external threats severely disrupting a growing business.

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CSS 11: Strategy

Many telecare services will in the future rely on service users to subsidise their existence through a charging policy. This will reduce the level of uptake, and hence the economic efficiency, unless services are shown to offer value for money. As part of a wide audit and evaluation of telecare provision in Gwynedd, service users were asked both about the value of the service to them and to their families. The responses showed that the service was perceived to be valuable to the vast majority of services users, but even more so to their families. Most thought that telecare played a valuable role in helping them to maintain their independence. When asked about the financial value of the service, more than half felt that it was worth £4.50 per week or more without a dedicated response team. The majority would not wish to pay extra for a response team.

It is now accepted that a course of personalised, well‐planned support services for up to six weeks can prevent or delay the need for an older person to receive long‐term homecare and other labour‐intensive community services. Telecare can play an important role in managing the risks, both during the reablement period, and in the months following service delivery, irrespective of whether the individual needs long‐term homecare. This paper describes an innovative approach to provision that has been adopted in the Vale of Glamorgan, in which the service has been designed and is delivered by the Reablement Team. It is planned to expand the number of people being offered the service in the future by stratifying them using a new algorithm, and then support them subsequently with a pro‐active telephone calling service called CATRIN.

Nursing and residential care homes provide familiar and safe environments where any risks to individuals are minimised. But equally important is maintaining a sense of independence ‐ a balance that's difficult to strike in a supervised home. So could the latest generation of assistive technology provide safety and reassurance for people in their own homes? This article looks at the issues.