Gap analysis is done to understand where a company is lagging behind its goals or objectives. It is a form of analysis that evaluates what a company needs to bring its current position into its future dream state. Gap analysis can help you compare the actual performance of your business or project with the performance you had predicted. This way, you can find out what worked for you and what didn`t, what decision you made and what didn`t! A number of tools are available to businesses to facilitate gap analysis. The tools listed below have a purpose that best suits a particular aspect of a gap analysis. Is your product problematic or does your support team need more training to handle difficult calls? You won`t know until you dig in, which means talking to the people involved, collecting data, and reviewing your KPIs. To understand this information and visualize your current status, use a gap analysis tool: a customer journey map, an empathy map, a service plan, or a process flow. A gap analysis, also known as a needs analysis, is important for any type of organizational performance. It allows companies to determine where they are today and where they want to be in the future. Companies can review their goals through a gap analysis to see if they are on track to achieve them. This diagram has the shape of a fish skeleton – the problem / effects are to the mouth, and the associated causes branch out from the spine. This layout gives you an overview of how specific problems are interrelated, so you can decide what to prioritize when developing a solution.

In this blog, we`ll explain everything you need to know about gap analysis, including how it can help your business and some techniques you can use. Ready? Let`s go. This future goal is sometimes referred to as the desired state, the future goal, or the extended goal. To achieve this, you need to think about how you are doing today in your current state (from the first stage) and where you really want to be in a reasonable amount of time. If you are conducting a gap analysis as part of your strategic plan, take a look at the objectives of your plan. These goals can be three to five years, which is ideal. Where are you with them? To answer this question, go back to your current areas of interest. A compliance gap analysis often uses internal audit capabilities and assesses how a company compares to a set of external regulations that dictate how to do something. For example, a company may assess its accounting and reporting functions internally before asking an external auditor to provide an audit opinion on its financial statements. Gap analysis is the process by which an organization monitors its actual performance against its expected/projected performance.

These two terms often refer to the analysis of the performance and risks associated with banks or financial companies. Static gap analysis examines the firm`s sensitivity to changes in interest rates. Dynamic gap analysis examines the company`s gap between its assets and liabilities. If you want to perform your own analysis, you can download our free gap analysis template. As a business owner, you know that you need to improve certain areas of your business to achieve higher goals. But to understand the roadmap on how to get there, you need to understand what`s missing in your operations to do so. This is where a gap analysis comes in. It compares where you are, where you want to be, and explores why a gap exists so you can develop reasonable goals to close it. There are a variety of gap analysis tools and methodologies in the market, and the particular tool a company uses depends on its target objectives.

Here are some common methods for gap analysis: It helps you understand the current state of the organization (performance), your ideal situation (potential) and what needs to be done to move from performance to potential (closing the gap). If you want to know what`s causing customer frustration, you can gather quantitative information, such as your company`s NPS score or the number of negative calls handled each week. You can also view qualitative information such as customer feedback or feedback from your support agents about the current call process. There are many tools to help you bridge the gap. Whichever tool you choose, visualize and document every step of your gap analysis to move your business forward. Going back to our previous example with a marketing team (see step 2), a gap analysis would beg the question: how do we move from an entangled brand voice to one that is consistent and under our control? Another example could be a warehouse that has to meet certain safety rules, but production and human resources managers decide they want to do more than stick to them. Their ideal would be to go above and beyond to attract and retain more talented and engaged employees. Gap analyses were widely used in the 1980s, usually at the same time as ongoing analyses. A gap analysis is considered more difficult to use and less common than continuous analysis, but can still be used to assess exposure to various term structure movements. Clearly state your goals, i.e. what exactly you want to achieve with your business/project and where you want to take your business.

The clearer your goals, the easier it is to understand how to achieve them and perform a gap analysis. While gap analysis methods can be concrete or conceptual, gap analysis models often have the following basic elements in common. Because gap analysis can be used in a variety of ways, it has a variety of advantages. Each service listed below can only relate to a specific type of gap analysis. Nevertheless, companies can perform a gap analysis: if you want to perform a more in-depth analysis of your market environment, try a PESTLE analysis instead, as it adds legal and environmental factors to the PEST analysis. Basically, a gap analysis examines why the company is not reaching its potential and how the situation can be changed to achieve the intended objective. The next step is to analyze current processes by collecting relevant data on performance levels and how resources are currently allocated to these processes. This data may be collected from a variety of sources, depending on what is being analyzed. Examples include reviewing documentation, measuring key performance indicators (KPIs) or other measures of success, conducting stakeholder interviews, brainstorming, and observing project activity.

Companies must constantly evaluate the products they offer, the customers they serve, the market needs they meet, and the efficiency of their operations. However, there may be times when a more formal gap analysis is warranted. These times include: A gap analysis is the process that companies use to compare their current performance to their desired and expected performance. This analysis is used to determine whether a company is meeting expectations and using its resources efficiently.