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Gap Analysis for Excel, Google Sheets

Conduct thorough assessments of your current state vs. goals with this free gap analysis template.

    Download Free Template

    Available for Excel & Google Sheets

    Template Highlights

    • The template is available for download in Microsoft Excel or accessible in Google Sheets.
    • Breaks down the current state, desired state, and the gap, enabling a straightforward assessment of the gap's impact and possible solutions.
    • Includes easy-to-use drop-down menus for the "priority" and "status" sections, making it hassle-free to input repetitive information.
    • Allows you to assign responsible individuals to each gap, set deadlines, and add notes for more details, ensuring accountability and tracking of gap resolution progress.

     

    What is a gap analysis?

    A gap analysis allows organizations to thoroughly compare their actual business performance against potential or targeted performance levels in order to highlight shortcomings, deficiencies, or gaps that may inhibit their success.

    Gap analysis examples

    Here are some common types of gap analyses:

    • Business technology and capability gap analysis: Evaluates limitations in current technical infrastructure, software, analytics, innovations, or overall abilities compared to industry benchmarks or standards needed for growth.
    • Business process gap analysis: Assesses bottlenecks, pain points, and workflow or process weaknesses in current operations that actively hold back productivity, efficiency, and overall effectiveness.
    • Employee training gap analysis: Identifies gaps in expertise, knowledge, or skills within existing staff and leadership. Determines development areas required to elevate talent and address deficiencies that undermine individual or organizational performance.

    Benefits of using a gap analysis template

    Essentially, a gap analysis helps assess where a company stands now against where it aims to reach in any capability or objective critical to its strategic goals. Using a template for your analysis helps standardize the process and offers the following benefits:

    Clarifies business objectives

    By structuring assessments around predefined strategic goals and performance indicators tied directly to desired outcomes, a gap analysis template keeps the most critical business objectives as the central focus. This prevents wasted effort evaluating irrelevant metrics or factors disconnected from top priorities.

    Provides universal understanding

    Standardizing gap examinations into a consistent outline brings shared clarity across leadership and staff teams. This process informs all stakeholders, so the entire organization understands exactly which deficiencies require addressing, enabling a unified commitment to resolutions.

    Drives data-based strategizing

    Over 91% of organizations achieved measurable value from data-driven investments in 2023. Quantifying exactly where and how the company falls short of benchmarks grounds solutions in research rather than assumptions. Fact-based gap awareness guides effective planning to address where improving weaknesses is most likely to drive desired growth.

    Frequently Asked Questions

    Yes, our gap analysis template is completely free to download and can be customized.

    The template should include an overview of current state performance, clear definitions of the future state goals, quantified gap descriptions between them, a root cause analysis of shortcomings, a system to prioritize gaps, and data-driven recommendations to address them.

    Comparing actuals to targets in metrics reporting, analyzing customer feedback versus expectations, process mapping to surface workflow inefficiencies, and conducting staff interviews to uncover bottlenecks are all methods to identify performance gaps.

    While leadership often conducts company-wide analyses, individual department heads focused on narrower goals can benefit from a local gap analysis.