Gap Analysis Harrison-Keyes

Running head: GAP ANALYSIS: HARRISON-KEYES

Gap Analysis: Harrison-Keyes

University of Phoenix

Gap Analysis: Harrison-Keyes

The advent of the internet has spawned a great deal of opportunities for companies to expand into other markets. Shifts from traditional methods of purchasing consumer goods like music, videos and goods have reshaped the market and companies that are able to adjust to these shifts have not only survived, but also flourished. Harrison-Keyes (HK) is at the threshold of this opportunity, but before it can move into the digital age, it must identify the underlying issues and effectively implement change processes for it to improve the company's overall situation.

Situation Analysis

Issue and Opportunity Identification

Harrison-Keyes is a well established publishing company specializing in scientific, technical, business books and journal as well as educational materials for professionals and consumer markets. Despite Harrison-Keyes' past success, the company is experiencing a decrease in profitability as is most of the competition in the industry due to much larger distributors. Harrison-Keyes recently hired CEO Meg McGill, with the expectations of revitalizing the company; however, her lack of efficient leadership skills and understanding of the company's needs lead to an unsuccessful venture into e-publishing. Despite her efforts, various complications have given way to chaos. The lack of understanding between departments, dissatisfaction and discrepancies with authors and an inefficient technical infrastructure have produced delays and increased costs. Harrison-Keyes has had to look again at its future and make another change resulting in yet another new CEO, Mr. William Guardo. Mr. Guardo has 30 years in the publishing industry, most recently as president of a competing publisher, he is also having some difficulty in assisting Harrison-Keyes overcome their implementation hurdles, especially that of losing Asia Digital publishing due to massive floods in their country. (UOP Harrison-Keyes Scenario)

Stakeholder Perspectives/Ethical Dilemmas

The stakeholders in this situation are customers, H-K Board of Directors, the leadership team, employees, and global business partner Asia Digital Publishing all have competing interest, rights, and values that need to be considered. The customers have a right to purchase information in a desired format that will be reliable and convenient. To remain profitable Harrison-Keyes must satisfy customer demand by offering information in the requested formats.

The Harrison-Keyes Board of Director's have a right to an adequate return on their investment and the organization has an obligation to the shareholders to remain profitable. The newly appointed CEO wants to ensure the organization is successfully implementing the appropriate strategy that will improve its market position and profitability.

Conflicts occur when management implements projects that are not in line with the current business strategy. The leadership team, tasked with implementing the new e-Publishing strategy, wants to ensure the decisions they make are appropriate for organizational success. Ethical dilemmas occur when management has strong visions for the company but does not consider the needs and rights of its employees'.

Asia Digital Publishing has experienced a rare catastrophic event that has put them out of business. They are now in an undesirable position as they cannot fulfill the contract commitment to provide the digital formatting for the e-books. Conflicts occur because management did not develop a contingency plan to deal with unforeseeable situations. The employees have a right to be fairly rewarded for their job performance and are concerned with job stability. Employees also have a right to know that they are adequately meeting company expectations. A vision can now be created describing what the company should look like in the end and goals can be established to achieve the end-state vision.

End-State Vision

The end-state vision of Harrison-Keyes is to maintain its stature in the Publishing industry by providing its authors new and innovative venues with which to market their products and to satisfy their customers demand for the information and entertainment they seek in new and evolving technologies. "Organizations that are forward looking and progressive in their strategic plans continually work to improve performance in achieving sustained success in both ongoing and operations and managing projects" (Levin & Rad, 2005) Today's project managers must develop baseline plans, measure progress and performance, compare the plans against the actual and then take any required action to ensure the organizations survival and success. (Gray, 2005) For Harrison-Keyes it is essential that they choose a new Project Management Structure, Establish their project priorities, Define the scope of the project and work on creating a new organizational culture that is conducive to expansion and maintaining a high standard to all the stakeholders involved.

Gap Analysis

The goal of gap analysis is to identify the disparity between the optimized allocation and integration of the inputs and the present level of allocation. (Marketing Teacher, 2000) At the present time Harrison-Keyes lacks the guidance necessary to successfully implement the team's e-publishing initiative. By implementing 5 key components of strategy Harrison-Keyes can achieve their full potential. By implementing a Project Management Structure that is aligned with the companies strategic plans Harrison-Keyes will have a method to evaluate where the company is and where it's going. "Project management provides people with a powerful set of tools that improves their ability to plan, implement, and manage activities to accomplish specific organizational objectives." (Gray, 2003) By establishing project priorities each area of the project can be organized to meet schedule deadlines. "Establishing project priorities allows managers to make appropriate trade off decisions." (Gray, 2003) The third component is to define the project scope. At the present time H-K has problems in all departments and is in complete chaos "Organization begins with planning and defining the project scope." (Haag, 2005) Harrison-Keyes has been through three CEO's