Intersect Gap Analysis Gap Analysis:

Intersect Gap Analysis

Gap Analysis: Intersect Investments

The current research is the study of management problems which occurred in company which decided to transform its operation practices after 15 years of successful their implementation. The first part is devoted to stating major gaps between company vision and current state, then singling out potential ethical conflicts in the stakeholder groups, and as the result, the paper presents several urgent end goals for the company.

Situation Analysis

Issue and Opportunity Identification

The company is currently aiming to change its' business model operations as due to numerous research, the company top management believes that in their business it will be more optimal to increase each customer's loyalty which will translate into higher profits. This approach contradicts to that previously implemented within the company approach of trying to reach out as many clients as possible by sales people making more and more reach out calls, while not fixing the clients loyalty and thus selling more and more of company products to them. This is the first problem which has occurred in the organization and which was the reason for which the previous Executive Vice President on Sales and Marketing was laid off: he did not agree with this new business approach to increase revenues. Together with him, some other top managers and lower level employees did not agree with this approach and the company turnover rates have increased drastically.

This misalignment of the strategy and actions of the top management, and not devotion of all top executives to the strategy implementation is a big disadvantage and this issue must be solved in order to implement this transformation. One of the main principles to successful transforms a company or organization, is to have the full understanding of all the members of the team of the reasons and ways in which to achieve it, the members must decide to transform the company.

Another problem in the past which is still causing problems in successful company operations currently, is the long-term established corporate culture and resistance of the staff at different level to change. Nevertheless, there are ways to change and shift this situation to meet the company long-term and short-term goals. Other issues raised and pointed at assessment of employees attitude to the situation within the company, is lack of communication between the departments and understanding by each of them of their precise role in the whole corporate mechanism, and how each of them is interrelated to all the others. The management must be devoted to establishing more understanding of the business model, and the opportunity exists to do so within the business shift model: to involve different departments more in mutual cooperation and precisely work out system of communication between them.

Issue and Opportunity Identification

Issue

Opportunity

Reference to Specific

Course Concept

Include citation)

Concept

The top management of the company did not translate to all the managers and employees of the company the necessity to shift the company business model and sales approach, neither did they explain the possible gains from this shift.

This creates situation in which the vision of some top managers is different from that of the others, and their day-to-day actions are not aligned with the vision and company strategy, which are the key points for successful strategy implementation.

The top management must clearly state the reasons for this business model shift, gains to be achieved from this, and ways in which to achieve this. The top management must ensure to the employees of all levels that top management clearly understands the reasons for the goal, the objective itself and roots to get there, and the top management will help all the employees to adapt and also follow this root. This must be circulated to the employees of all the levels to facilitate the shift.

Successful strategy implementation

Long established corporate culture, believes and the nature the company works, integrated during the course of the last 15 years are difficult to change in such a short-term as 12 months as almost all the employees must change their working attitudes which is time consuming.

From the nearest future, the top management must organize several seminars, workshops to help the staff understand better the new functions expected from them and ways in which to carry them out better.

Staff training

The sample of small business representative letter reveals existing issue within company operations that services department is not aware of the products the marketing department is advertising. Thus, there is lack of internal communication within the departments and overall organization must be improved.

The top management must work out precise goals within the systematic shift of the company approach, roles and functions for each department, and regular cross-section discussions or meeting to update each department on the actions of the others, find out points of improvement and at the next round table to present the results how these issues were dealt with.

Organization culture

Stakeholder Perspectives/Ethical Dilemmas

When setting out goals and vision, the company management must single out existing ethical conflicts and possible conflict areas which can occur within the company transformation process. The reason for this is to in advance settle possible points of misunderstanding.

Stakeholder Perspectives

Stakeholder Groups

The Interests, Rights, and Values of Each Group

Employees of middle management level

Their interests include profitable operations of the company as their payments are correlated with high profits. They have the rights to express their points of concern to the top management by which they can influence the business practices within the company, while they have no rights to personally change any business operations, which sometimes leads to misunderstanding and personnel turnover. This group representatives feel that the top management sets out only the goals which are not achievable and only in the pure interest of top management. Also, these employees do not see the optimal ways to reach these goals. The problem can be solved by more in depth communication between the mangers of all levels and discussion of the current and strategic goals and points of improvement.

A managers of the company

The managers are interested in delivering as many profits as possible to the shareholders of the company and believe the whole business model must be changed. This group has the biggest rights to influence the business operations and success of this process will depend purely on the managers' ability to deliver it.

There are ethical problems with delivering this growth strategy, as some top mangers perceive that it is the best way to fire those managers who do not understand the need and why the business model must be changed, while this can cause ethical problems for all the other staff and lead to generally confusion of the staff and their feeling of security at their jobs. The staff will feel it is unfair after their long-term service within the company to change them when the company decides to shift. Employee turnover is too costly for the company and the management must ensure not to fire people fighting the new business approach, but to get them on board, promote team integrity, and reach mutual understanding of the strategy, vision and steps, together with reasons for this.