Capability Gap Analysis – Capability Maps, Templates & Examples

Any organisation needs a strong foundation on which goals, objectives, tactics, and strategies are built for strategic planning to be effective. Each business operates in a dynamic environment and they have some benchmarks they adhere to so as to pivot the rest of the organisational functioning around those. These benchmarks help in putting the rest of the business operations into perspective.  A Capability Map is "a model of the enterprise associating the business capabilities, processes, and functions required for business success with the IT resources that enables them." For example, Digital Awareness, Talent Development open innovation, Lean, Business Partnering and anything else that allows an organisation to assess its foundation by determining if there are any exist key components which need to be addressed before implementing a particular strategy or product.

This map is prepared on the most stable elements of a business thus can be quite a yardstick while checking for capability gaps.

The functions and operations of a business fundamental to its goals are discussed in this, which in an organisation remain more or less the same, it is the execution that needs alterations at times to match the business environment both internally and externally. 

Capability Gap Analysis – What It Is & How To Use It?

​Capability gap analysis is derived by checking these capability maps and looking for the places where rectifications are required for meeting the business goals. The revamping of the existing capabilities with respect to the desired capabilities are the crux of undertaking capability gap analysis. A capability gap points out the need for having additional capabilities, revamping the existing ones, doing away with redundant ones and the like for the most optimum running of the organisation.

The process of carrying out a capability gap analysis can be undertaken in the following ways.

These are generic points and are flexible enough to tweaked according to the scope and needs of the organisation.

Following steps can be undertaken

1. Understanding the current scenario or situation of the business
2. To understand clearly what is needed at the end of a project/end goal
3. Elucidate plans to achieve the goal
4. Deliver according to the plan
5. Check the deliverables for any gaps to promote continual development

Capability Gap Analysis Template with Examples:

1. Identify where you are – it is important that one maintains a capability map just to check the current situation and standing of your department for which you are carrying out the gap analysis with respect to your future goals. For example you may carry out capability gap analysis for your sales department. You can check with your capability map how much is each employee contributing the overall sales. This gives us the current prevailing scenario.
2. Identify where you want to be- it is important that you clearly elucidate your desired goals for your organisation so that the comprising departments can structure out their necessary roles. For example you can decide an x amount of profits to be earned at the end of every business quarter.
3. Identify the gaps- once the desired goals for the organisation are set then you can check individual departments to see where the process is faltering. For example through the first step we might know how much is the sales department selling in a quarter. Now if it is lesser than what the company wants to achieve then necessary steps can be taken to either increase the targets of the sales personnel or to employ more sales people to meet the targets.
4. Devise necessary solutions-once the gaps have been identified it becomes easier to devise various strategies to close in those gaps depending upon the resource availability and time availability of the organisation

Above mentioned was a generic template to follow while carrying out capability gap analysis.

Capability gap analysis can be deployed on any department within an organisation. It can even be deployed upon an employee or a team of employees to check in their performance and to appraise them accordingly.

Strategic Gap Analysis With Example

​The main aim of strategic gap analysis to find out the gap between the actual and the desired outcome. With respect to these gaps then operational plans and strategies are devised to close in on the faltering differences. It involves benchmarking the desired outcomes and then comparing the actual performance to it. The main aim here is to devise strategies to achieve the necessary target. For example a business owner might want to triple its sales and for that he might need to introduce other sales channels, adding business partners etc. Devising these strategies to achieve the target is an outcome of strategic gap analysis.

Performance gap analysis refer to checking in the gaps that occur in performance criteria of an individual or a team with respect to the organisational goals and objectives. For carrying out performance gap analysis one could:

• Map the performance- This involves mapping the current efficiency of an individual employee or a team depending upon the need to undertake these analysis
• Market criteria- After mapping the performance it can be checked against desired benchmarks obtained either by researching other successful businesses or through self conceived goals.
• Mending the gaps- once the gaps between the desired performance and the actual performance are noted, remedial actions can be taken to correct those gaps.
• I hope the readers get an idea about how important is to map and analyse the capabilities of the company and its departments in order to ensure a smooth and profitable run in the business.