Gap analysis enables businesses to identify areas of improvement and pinpoint growth opportunities. Business owners can objectively evaluate their current state and implement strategies to move their organization toward its desired goals.
Key Takeaways:
- A process gap can cause inefficiencies, bottlenecks, missed opportunities, and decreased profits
- Process gap analysis helps business leaders identify inefficiencies, devise data-driven improvement strategies, and implement process changes to drive excellence
- Performing process gap analysis can have significant long-term benefits for business operations, such as reducing process costs and process cycle times
- Process gap analysis tools such as SWOT, McKinsey 7S Framework, fishbone analysis, and the Nadler-Tushman model can help identify process gaps and create improvement plans
In today’s fast-paced business world, an organization’s success often hinges on its ability to streamline processes and eliminate inefficiencies. However, businesses often find themselves stuck in a rut, unable to identify and address inefficiencies in their operations. These hidden bottlenecks can hold your business back, leading to missed opportunities, frustrated employees, lowered efficiency, and, ultimately, a loss of profits.
Process gap analysis is an invaluable tool for business leaders looking to identify areas of improvement and address process inefficiencies. It is a systematic approach to process optimization and improvement, which involves a comprehensive review of the current process to identify gaps between desired organizational goals and actual results.
Whether it’s a snag in a workflow process that requires the implementation of a new tech tool or an employee who needs additional training to carry out their duties, process gap analysis can help business leaders pinpoint process issues and get to the bottom of them. Read on to learn more about process gap analysis and how to make it work for your business.
How to perform a process gap analysis
Businesses adept at process gap analysis have a clear vision of their process, the desired outcomes they want to achieve, and the resources (people, technology, and so on) necessary to make that process a reality. They improve business operation efficiency, process effectiveness, cost reduction, and process performance. Here is process gap analysis process:
1. Define the area of focus
Before evaluating a process, you need to know what strategy or activity needs evaluation. You can pick a focus area depending on performance goals, process complexity, time constraints, or process importance. Common focus areas include:
- Customer service
- Product development and innovation
- Financial growth
- Staff training and development
Clarifying your process scope and what process elements you’ll be examining will help ensure your process gap analysis is thorough and effective. Gather relevant data from process documentation, customer feedback and surveys, performance reports, operational data, benchmarking studies, and process flow charts.
2. Identify the current business state
Document your current process, technologies, resources, and process performance. Examine process tasks, flow structure, inputs and outputs, and performance metrics.
- Is the process meeting the expected performance goals?
- Is there any process redundancy or complexity that could be eliminated to improve process performance?
- What process steps take too long to complete?
- Are process stakeholders satisfied with the process performance?
This process helps you define a baseline that you can compare against desired outcomes.
3. Detail your desired future state
Process gap analysis aims to identify inefficiencies and implement process improvements that meet desired performance goals. The key is to define what process success looks like, which process elements need to be improved, and what process changes are necessary to achieve process excellence.
For instance, if your area of focus is customer service, your future desired state could include process improvements such as:
- Reducing process cycle times
- Increasing customer satisfaction scores
- Using automation technology such as chatbots to answer customer queries
A strategic process improvement plan will help you visualize the changes necessary to reach your desired performance level.
4. Analyze process gaps
Now compare your current process performance against the desired future state. Identify and map missing elements in your resources, policies, processes, and technologies that are holding you back from process excellence. For example, process improvements may require additional technology investments, process redesign, workplace flexibility, automation, and training.
5. Establish a process improvement plan
The process gap analysis process should provide data-driven insights to help establish improvements and changes to bridge the process gap. For example, process automation technology and process reengineering could help you reduce process cycle times and process costs. Develop a process improvement plan with specific goals and strategies to help you reach business growth and profitability.
6. Implement process changes and monitor process performance
The last step of a gap analysis process is implementing the changes and monitoring performance. Gather process data to track performance metrics such as cycle time, process cost, customer satisfaction, accuracy, and speed. Evaluate process performance against your desired organizational goals, objectives, and metrics.
With a clear understanding of how process gap analysis works, you can identify inefficiencies in your business operations, devise data-driven improvement strategies and implement process changes to drive process excellence.
Benefits of process gap analysis
Running a successful process gap analysis process can have significant long-term benefits for your business. The process can help you:
- Identify process inefficiencies and process bottlenecks
- Reduce process costs and process cycle times
- Increase process efficiency and customer satisfaction
- Track process performance against process goals
- Develop process improvement plans for business success and profitability
With a clear roadmap and process improvement strategy, process gap analysis positions your business for process excellence. But what tools can you leverage to make process gap analysis easier?
Process gap analysis tools
You can use several process gap analysis tools available on the market to identify process gaps and create process improvement plans. These include:
- SWOT analysis: An abbreviation for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats, this process gap analysis tool helps you identify process performance issues, determine the best improvement strategies, and allocate resources accordingly while avoiding costly process threats and mistakes.
- McKinsey 7S Framework: This process gap analysis tool consists of seven components – Strategy, Structure, Systems, Shared Values, Skills, Style, and Staff – that help you assess how specific business aspects meet expectations and goals.
- Fishbone analysis: As a cause-and-effect process gap analysis tool, fishbone analysis helps you analyze methods, metrics, manpower, time, process, and materials to uncover efficiency issues.
- Nadler-Tushman model: This tool identifies process gaps by assessing a business’s inputs, transformations, and outputs. Inputs include resources, working atmosphere, and strategy. Transformations are existing processes, activities, and human capital, while outputs are the results of process performance.
Leveraging process gap analysis tools can make process gap analysis easier and more effective. Assess your business needs, process objectives, and goals to determine which gap analysis tool best suits your business.
Take the guesswork out of process performance with DOXA
Proper process gap analysis requires data-driven insights. DOXA leverages process mapping and task costing with robust process analytic tools like robotic process automation (RPA) to flesh out process inefficiencies.
With years of process mapping experience, we’ll take the guesswork out of process performance, devise well-thought-out and data-driven improvement plans, and position you for success. Hop on a call today to learn more about process gap analysis and how DOXA can help.
