The basic purpose of any company is to create revenues. For this, the companies have to adopt various practices to compete. One such practice is Six Sigma. This article explores the concept of Six Sigma with reference to the banking sector. The case of Bank of America implementing Six Sigma is discussed briefly to substantiate its application effectiveness in banking.

"Unless you have participation from the executive level on down and recognize the importance of using measurements and metrics ... then your program won't stick, and you'll waste a lot of money." The bottom line of any busi ness in today's environment is to increase the revenues, reduce operational costs and target customer servicing. To achieve these, presently the companies are largely investing in technology. But, it is difficult to predict whether these investments generate adequate Return on Investments (RoI) or not. In order to identify what really works and why, these enterprises are turning to process-improvement methodologies like Six Sigma. The concept of Six Sigma is now employed by some of the largest financial institutions to improve their business processes and quality of services to increase customer satisfaction and process efficiency. With this backdrop, the article explores the conceptual aspects with reference to banking sector.

Six Sigma, the brainchild of Motorola, was developed during the 1980s. Originally, it was defined as a metric for measuring defects and improving quality; and a methodology to reduce defect levels below 3.4 Defects Per Million Opportunities (DPMO). But today, the definition of Six Sigma has gone way beyond its original one. It now includes many other factors. It is a methodology to manage process variations that cause defects. It is a highly-structured program for improving business processes. Its main objective is to deliver world-class performance, reliability and value to the end customer. The Six Sigma methodology focuses on eliminating those defects that result in customer dissatisfaction and defection. Implementers of this methodology have established that the fail-safe way to improve performance is to systematically identify the causes of waste, lost productivity, customer dissatisfaction and then adjust the internal processes to eliminate them. These successes have encouraged many businesses to apply Six Sigma to non-manufacturing operations like banking, insurance, healthcare, telecommunication, outsourcing, etc.

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