A gap assessment is an evaluation and assessment of current performance. It identifies the differences between your current business state and your future goals. You can boil it down to a few questions.
- Where are you now?
- Where would you like to be?
- How will we close the gap?
An analysis of gaps can help you improve the efficiency of your business, your product, and your profitability. Once the gap analysis is completed, you can better target your resources and focus on those areas that are needed to improve.
What Do Gap Analysis Templates Mean?
The gap analysis template shows the difference between reality in your organization and what you want. It makes it easy for employees to see where there are still opportunities to improve. ISO Gap Analysis Template is a great way for your organization to see your data, and where it is struggling or thriving.
Steps to conduct a gap analysis: four steps to completion
Step 1. Identify The Current Status In Your Department
You may find this overwhelming, but please keep with me. Do you have either a Strategic Plan or a Balanced Scorecard in place? First, identify your priority for the plan or scorecard.
Let’s say, for instance, that your bank wants to increase growth by 30% per year. However, it has been growing at 8%/year. So your current state is 8% growth. Maybe you work in a manufacturing business that has $180,000 per employee. You want to make it $250,000. You would then be at $180,000 per worker.
Be aware that your current state is not required to be financial. Your current state might be 10,000 meals served per week by your nonprofit to the homeless. A municipal government might have 200 safety incidents per 100,000 citizens each year.
Step 2 – Identify Your Desired Position With Your Department
This is also known as a future goal, future target, or stretch goal. This will help you to assess your current status (from step 1) and the future you desire to reach within a reasonable timeframe. Look at your strategic plan targets to help you do a gap assessment. Ideal targets could be three to five decades away. How are you doing with them? Go back to your current focus areas.
- Future state for the bank: 30%
- The future state of your manufacturing organization: $250,000 in annual revenue per employee
- Future state for your organization: 20,000 meals per day.
- Future state for your city: 100 safety incidents every 100,000 people per year.
- You can even trace it and see a clear representation of the future and current state.
Step 3 – Identify The Gaps Within Your Department
Once you have identified the current and future needs of your organization, it is time to fill the gaps.
Don’t be vague about the gap. For example: If you have $70,000 less in revenue per person than you had planned, what is the problem? What is the problem with your customer relations, pricing, or how you work?
Look deeper to determine the reasons for this gap. This is done by asking questions and examining the answers. Until the root causes are clear, you can do this by asking questions.
Step 4- Identify And Implement Improvements That Will Close Any Gaps In Your Department
Now that you know why there is a gap in your department, it is time to plan the best course of action.
To ensure solid improvements, follow these guidelines:
All future improvements will be based upon the information you have collected while identifying gaps.
Your team may get too involved in custom work and find it difficult to think of a new product. It might help your team to create a product that can be scaled for your new clients by stopping taking on custom work for a few weeks.
Consider the cost to implement each solution. It is possible that you cannot stop working with existing customers. Is it possible to outsource the development of a new offering? Partner with another organization.