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A gap analysis is the process of identifying the difference between where a business is and where it wants to be. It typically takes the form of comparing the current state of strategy, structure, capabilities, processes, technologies, practices and services with a target state based on an organization's goals. The following are illustrative examples.
StrategyAn ecommerce company looks at the gaps between its strategy and the structure of the firm. It discovers that the firm has a stated goal to improve customer satisfaction but has failed to scale support technology and staffing with revenue, resulting in declining customer service levels.PracticesAn airline performs a gap analysis considering customer service practices and culture. They interview both employees and customers with particular attention to dissatisfied customers. They determine that front line employees need more authority to grant certain exceptions. The also recommend that managers be freed from dealing with exceptions to focus on serving customers to lead by example.
ProcessA telecom company performs a gap analysis to understand why a number of orders have been delivered late to customers. They map out the current process and identify manual steps, redundant work, overly complex dependencies, bottlenecks, technology pain points and process risks and document them as gaps. The gap analysis also produces an optimized target state process that cuts days from order provisioning time, reduces cost and mitigates risks.
CapabilitiesA retail bank requires hundreds of capabilities across dozens of products and channels. A gap analysis delivers a heat map that shows the status of each capability for each product and channel combination. For example, it shows the status of a capability such as fraud detection for a product such as credit cards for a channel such as telephone banking.|
Type | Business Analysis | Definition | The process of identifying suboptimal or missing strategies, structures, capabilities, processes, practices, technologies or skills and recommending steps to optimize for an organization's goals. | Related Concepts | Systems ThinkingSwot AnalysisMece |
Business Analysis
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