Nowadays, many other industries like financial services and banking sectors are also actively interested on data analysis and Lean Six Sigma tools to improve processes.
Rod Toro is a business process improvement manager at Edward Jones. In this article, he talks about a Lean Six Sigma project for the service division of his company to improve customer satisfaction.
Toro says, "We were faced with understanding how we can better meet increasing service demands and give better overall customer service,"
With an increase in service calls, the main challenge was to provide timely, accurate, professional and highly customized service to the customer.
The main focus was to identify various metrics to distinguish the right associate for the right skill, also to streamlining the process in a more efficient manner.
To know more about how the whole process was taken care of through Design of Experiments (DOE) tools in Minitab please follow the link below: 

http://blog.minitab.com/blog/real-world-quality-improvement/hello-how-can-i-help-you-a-look-at-quality-improvement-in-financial-services

Offshore outsourcing will make sense only when customer needs, business requirements and offshore supplier's capabilities are properly aligned. In an article, "The Hidden Costs of Offshore Outsourcing", it was noted that around 72% of stated cost savings on offshore projects was lost at the start-up stage, transition, productivity and maintenance phase. DFSS can effectively reduce the risk of offshore outsourcing failure by quickly deploying a road map. Combination of various tools and behaviors are designed to reduce defects and cycle time to complete the requirement phase of a typical software project. Design for Six Sigma provides a structure, a strong deployment option to better manage business plan for profit maximization. Please go through the link for more details: http://www.sourcingmag.com/content/c060301a.asp

In the second quarter of 2014, we are going to see shift of communication tool from e-mail to audio-visual, scope of mistakes will minimize and use of cloud computing are likely to increase. Moreover, there is going to be a sharp rise in demand for Agile Projects.

To know more about the new trends, kindly refer to the below mentioned link: -  http://www.sooperarticles.com/business-articles/project-management-articles/5-hot-project-management-trends-2014-1321635.html

Decision trees can be generated based on project schedules. This article shows how to use decision tree analysis in project management as part of quantitative risk and decision analysis.

Please go through the link for more details: http://www.intaver.com/Articles/Article_DecisionTree.pdf

To attain success in a project we must follow few simple steps (which are also termed as basic steps). Keeping things simple, accepting changes, dividing the work into small steps and being time specific are few of them. To know about 6S for success, please visit Cécile Bérubé’s article link at: To know more kindly refer to the below mentioned link:http://www.pmhut.com/6s-for-success

In words of Mahatma Gandhi:
“Satisfaction lies in the effort, not in the attainment, full effort is full victory”.

In sync with the above said words we find a case study which describes the efforts which were taken by a hospital to enhance its efficiency and productivity by using Lean & Six Sigma. Through this, management was able to reduce average door-to-physician time, outpatient length of stay and overall satisfaction level of their patients.
Please go through the link for more details: http://www.projmasters.com/project-management-consulting-services/project-management-case-studies/enhance-hospital-operation-using-lean-six-sigma/

For the long term purpose, Predictive analytics will be very significant for healthcare organizations and providers. With the advancement in technology and complexity in healthcare sector, predictive analytics must be implemented as it will make the work easier and reliable for the providers.
In order to avoid risk and uncertainty and for taking quick decision,
predictive analytics will be of a great substitute to a traditional business intelligence practices.

Please go through the link for more details: http://www.predictiveanalyticsworld.com/patimes/what-can-predictive-analytics-do-for-healthcare-reform/

Data complexity is a major challenge faced by the healthcare industry. Now healthcare industry is going through a transformation phase. So companies like General Electric, 3M CO, Siemens and Xerox Corporation are taking initiatives to gain insights for making healthcare processes more efficient by the use of predictive analytics.

Read more at: http://www.nasdaq.com/article/analytics-a-shot-in-the-arm-for-healthcare-analyst-blog-cm337055

Many marketers find themselves faced with overwhelming amount of data and organizational complexity, rapidly changing customer behaviors, and increased competitive pressure. Data or information has always been the USP, but now people are not using that USP in their advantage. If an investment is made in big data, one can extract only the relevant information and analyze it to transform the business decisions for the future.

Please go through the link for more details:http://www.marketingprofs.com/charts/2014/24321/marketers-and-big-data-in-2014-barriers-budgets-and-opportunities

Communication is an absolute essential entity to allow successful improvement in healthcare industry. Effective communication will allow relevant and correct flow of data through the organization. With more relevant data, analysis will also be more accurate and will automatically lead to improvement in the healthcare industry.

Please go through the link for more details http://healthcareanalytics.info/2012/03/successful-healthcare-improvement-requires-analytics-and-effective-communications/#.UyhlIqIyX4s

Healthcare organizations are becoming proficient at creating and storing terabytes of data each month. Unfortunately, their skills to transform that data into knowledge and useful information are not quite so impressive.

The major primary obstacles to widespread analytics adoption are:-

·         Culture does not encourage sharing information.

·         Lack of understanding how to use analytics to improve the business.

·         Ownership of the data is unclear or governance is ineffective.

Please go through the link for more details:

http://healthcareanalytics.info/2013/11/three-main-barriers-to-widespread-analytics-use-in-healthcare-organizations/#.UyhkhqIyX4s

In USA, approx. 8o% of hospitals are using electronic health records, due to which it is possible to gather useful information for research & development. Now healthcare industries are actively looking for transformation of its major areas by meaningful use of analytics.

To know about its challenges and impact, please go through the link: http://ehrintelligence.com/2014/03/17/for-healthcare-analytics-you-need-to-have-goals-in-sight/

 “The future is like a corridor into which we can see only by the light coming from behind”, well said by Edward Weyer Jr..  Like that, to analyze anything, the first step is to collect relevant data and develop predictive score for each element, the second step is to assess these predictive score and then implement it into a model. Finally prediction and conclusion can be made accordingly.  The book, Predictive Analytics: The Power to Predict Who Will Click, Buy, Lie, or Die by Eric Siegel explains how predictive and other insights associated with predictive analysis work.

Please go through the link for more details:

http://www.amazon.com/Predictive-Analytics-Power-Predict-Click/dp/1118356853

Steven Rust, Ph.D., “the Battelle’s Inventor of the Year”, developed and demonstrated a very useful analytical tool which can predict risk associated with a patient in such a way that it can be prevented in an early stage.

 Please go through the link for more details:http://www.battelle.org/media/press-releases/rust-is-battelle-inventor-of-the-year

It is estimated by the research firm, Gartner, that in the year 2014, healthcare providers of India will spend approx. $1.08 billion specially to improve technological supports and IT infrastructure. R Chandrashekhar, President, Nasscom, said healthcare sector will focus more on implementing information technology to enhance their value chain.

Please go through the link for more details: http://www.dnaindia.com/money/report-healthcare-to-contribute-1-billion-to-it-sector-in-2014-gartner-1966870

To find new opportunities and minimize current problems, it is important for an organization to collect and use big data efficiently. On a day to day basis, Excel is a common tool. But when it comes to analyze huge data, sometimes Excel becomes inefficient. The probability of errors are always there in spreadsheet, especially when data set is more complex. A blog by Renat Stewart, Banking Officer at M&T Bank, talks about how to utilize Excel spreadsheet in an efficient manner.

Please follow this link : http://www.riverlogic.com/2013/05/data-complexities-prove-excel-spreadsheets-difficult-to-maintain/

A blog by Carlos Centurion, President, River Logic Solutions, talks about the third phase of analytics i.e. prescriptive analytics. Prescriptive analytics helps not only to anticipate what will happen and when will it happen, but also why will it happen.

Healthcare providers are using various tools of prescriptive analytics to enhance their performance and efficiency.  It also helps the provider to take better decisions. To know more about Prescriptive Analytics in Healthcare Provider Industry, please follow this link:

http://www.riverlogic.com/2014/02/prescriptive-analytics-healthcare-provider-industry/

Working at a stretch of 8 hours is tiresome and that too sitting at the same desk. So, TIBCO Software Inc., a US based company, developed TIBCO Spotfire Mobile Metrics, a highly accessible and user-friendly Business Intelligence tool. With the help of this tool, employees can monitor the pulse of the business instantly and business leaders can act on business opportunities and problems using personalized key performance indicators.

Dashboards offer a unique and powerful solution to an organization's need for information. Nowadays it has become a very powerful tool to gather inner facts for decision making.  One can find various ways to create effective dashboards from a visualization and interactive perspective, but there is a need to understand the psychological aspect also. By taking into consideration the various psychological factors, we can develop more effective and informative dashboards. The three most important psychological factors are:

1) The curious nature of humans.

2) An eye for style.

3) The need for autonomy.

 To take a closer look at each point, Please follow this link: http://www.dundas.com/discover/article/the-psychology-of-dashboards/

Well, nowadays retail banks are more focused in implementing data analytics techniques and models into their day to day decision making processes. Data analytics not only provide solutions to attract and retain profitable customers but also by the help of various tools and techniques like data discovery and visualization, it is possible to analyze the various aspects which are associated with customers. Retail bankers are trying to discover the relationships and correlations in large amounts of data using customer intelligence derived from analytics. Big data analytic enable them to track customer behavior and preferences to achieve higher level of customer satisfaction which definitely helps to achieve stakeholder’s wealth maximization. For more information, please go through the link: http://spotfire.tibco.com/blog/?p=22990