Every manager knows his or her team could be more productive. Time could be saved by new methods of working, the right software could shorten the working week and costs could be cut by a good overall shake up.

But who has the time? Most managers are so stretched that they can barely get their work in the hours of the day and good intentions to implement change go to the wall.

Enter Business Improvement Services. For a fee, consultant Jack Durner will walk into your business and find way to make things work better.

"There are many ways a business can be improved through more efficient and effective business practices," said Mr. Durner, who has just set up the company to help businesses better themselves. "The goal is to understand how the business works, both from a processing perspective and an information perspective and to use that understanding to develop better business practices and solutions which will enhance your business in the future."

Mr. Durner has more than 30 years of experience in the consulting business and has worked in businesses across the US from the Smithsonian to top of the range financial companies to retail and government.

He moved to Bermuda a few months ago after falling in love and then marrying his Bermudian wife, who he met in 1999, after his first wife had passed away.

After a slow start and few years of a long distance relationship from the US, the couple tied the knot and Mr. Durner moved to Bermuda to be with his wife.

"It seemed obvious to use the skills and techniques I had been using for three decades in the US here in Bermuda," said Mr. Durner. "So my wife and I set up this business here and so far the response has been very good."

Mr. Durner said that both small and large businesses can benefit from work from professionals like him - as there are all kinds of inefficiencies that mangers and workers do not see from where they sit.

Mr. Durner offers consulting, training and "facilitation" as part of the package he has put together for the Bermuda market.

"Emphasis is put on transferring skills to internal staff so they might be more productive on future similar efforts," he said. "Experienced trainers are available to teach and transfer the appropriate skills to client staff as required.

"And professional facilitators are available to guide the development of business solutions in a much shorter timeframe. The benefit of using facilitators is diverse and divergent viewpoints can be rapidly brought into consensus, a solution which all the participants agree with."

He said common problems faced by businesses included staff wasting time to find information, processing delays, staff not having timely access to accurate information, lack of information sharing between departments, no tested continuity plan in place, projects not done on time or within budget, unproductive meetings and implementing solutions that do not solve the actual problem.

"Most businesses have a lot of these problems or a combination of problems, many of which can be very expensive for a company. Most people ask me how much money I can save them, and I always laugh. It is not a question I can answer. But if there are inefficiencies then it is costing the business money," he said.

He said large and small corporations sometimes suffered from the same problems - such as outgoing mail being passing through too many hands and pockets of information being kept in isolation in different parts of the company.

Another huge problem in today's workplace is information overload, said Mr. Durner.

"One of the dilemmas facing us all is how to manage the piles of information we deal with on a day-to-day basis. Every organisation, whether large or small, faces an ever increasing accumulation of information in running the business.

"Whether it's a retail store, food distributor, bank, shipping company, insurance company, brokerage house, government agency, hospital, political party, non-profit agency or any organisation of any size, the potential for the problem exists."

He said we don't always know what to do with all that information, so we file it "somewhere" and then have a terrible time trying to find it later.

Finding and sharing information in and with other departments can magnify the problem, he added. And he said that computerising the information does not necessarily mean that the information dilemma will go away.

"There have been too many cases where a poorly thought out computer solution doesn't come close to solving the problem, and in fact, often makes the situation even worse. This usually happens because very little analysis was done or the analysis that was done found the symptoms of the problem and then focused on buying a software package or developing a custom solution to "fix" the symptom of the problem, not the root cause. The result is a lot of money was spent, everyone's jobs were changed and the problem still exists."

And Mr. Durner believes his company has the expertise to fix the problem.

He said the key is to get to the people who make the organisation work, those working on the floor of a retail store, delivering mail, building houses, unloading containers, creating insurance policies, trading stocks, or any number of other important activities to make the operation run. He said everyone else, including management, process information.

He said the first step in the process of managing information is to recognise information is a resource which some say is as important as the financial resources.

"Think about it. If your organisation lost its key information files, what would be the impact? How much time, people and money would it take to recreate the lost information, if that's even possible. People like to think it can't happen to them or simply don't take the time to stop and think about those sorts of disasters. They do exist and do happen."

He said that the first step is to develop "information architecture", a method that provides a graphic roadmap of the knowledge and information that exists within an organisation and the information acquired from outside of an organisation.

"Information architecture also defines the business processes that use it, where it is used, when it is used, what technology is used to deliver or retrieve it, what rules exist about who can do anything with it and so on. In other words, it's a knowledge base about your information resources," added Mr. Durner.

But once the information architecture is initially completed, the process of selecting the projects to proceed to implementation begins, he said and is just as important.

"Once established, the information architecture becomes the roadmap to implementation for the future business. It also becomes the ongoing knowledge base for the information that is used within the organisation," he said adding that maintenance is key to the programmes success.

"If managed well, the organisation of the future will consist of solutions that are part of an overall plan to consistently and effectively manage the information resource that is so vital to the health of the organisation."

And he said that depending on the size of the business a plan usually takes from a few weeks to a few months to develop.

"The nice part about this approach is that it is completely scaleable," said Mr. Durner.

"It can be started for one part of the organisation, several departments or divisions, one company, or an entire corporation."