Gap Analysis Overview

Gap Analysis Overview

• 01-10-2024
• Competitive Analysis

Too often, people aim to achieve their goals without a clear plan, hoping that hard work alone will lead to success. But without strategic direction, businesses can find themselves putting effort into the wrong areas. Imagine a company launching a new product without conducting market research or understanding customer needs. They may invest heavily in development and marketing, only to see low adoption because they failed to address the real gap between their offering and customer expectations.

When you don’t take the time to identify where you are and where you want to go, you risk wasting resources and missing out on real growth opportunities.

In today’s video, we discuss the gap analysis process—an essential tool to help businesses move from their current state to their desired outcomes. By identifying what’s causing the gap and implementing the Plan-Do-Check-Act framework, you can build a roadmap to success that is intentional and measurable.

Video transcript

In a gap analysis, we have to be able to translate our current state, which is where we are now, towards our desired state, which is what we want to achieve. The gap in between those two, between where we are today and where we want to be, that’s what we call a gap analysis. This is how we improve, how we’re going to grow. So we’ve now defined, through the last three weeks, the desired state. But we now need to dive into the gap analysis and figure out how we can translate that into actions.

So here’s our process. The gap analysis procedure, how we’re going to drive towards that gap is, first, we need to plan. Follow these major steps here, plan. Now, in planning, there’s three steps. First, you’ve got to figure out what the gap is. We have to identify what drove that gap, what caused it. And then finally, we have to select the actions necessary to help with that. Now, the first part of our time together, I’m going to be walking you through, how do we create and understand that gap in procedure? Now, our last 10 minutes, what we’re going to spend on today, are the next three steps, okay? Really in that green step there. I’ll get to that. But what we need to do in step two is “Do”, which is how do we implement the plan itself. Check it, which is step three. And then finally, adjust, basically, which is act. Standardize and plan continuous improvements we can always grow. Now, in this plan-do-check-act process, this will allow us to be able to identify the gap, know where it’s driving from, figure out actions that we can take to help close that gap, implement them, figure out how it’s moving forward, how we’re continuing to grow, and grow every single day.