Gap Analysis And Operations Management Practices: Case Study

Gap Analysis

What is case project organization? Explain about the operations management practices. 

According to van Ittersum et al., (2013), gap analysis can be defined mostly from two dimensions namely marketing and management. In terms of marketing the gap analysis is defined as the type of desire for the for specific goods by the consumers along with complementary features provided in the selected products or services. The purpose of gap analysis is to show the differences between consumer fulfillment and expectations. In terms of the management perspective, gap analysis is defined as the gap between objectives of a company and realized performance. It also shows the difference between desires and quantified missions with an intention to bring up the performance level to match the goals of the company (Santini et al., 2014).

The fundamentals of implementation of the gap analysis involve the following process:

• Identification of the current state for the purpose of analysis.
• Describing the objectives, specifications and description of the gap.
• Analysis of the prevailing business process based on the performance data of the company.
• Bridging the gap is done on current and future states by taking various initiatives such as hiring of additional employees and launching of corporate programs for increasing the diversity and resources of the company.
• Ordering and prioritization of the requirements to fill the gap.                                                                                              

According to Sevkli et al., (2012), in order to identify the differences between goals of HP and the realized expectations, a GAP table has been performed an analysis to know about the various external and internal environment of the company that is knowing the strengths, opportunities, weakness and threats of the company. The areas where the company lags in compare to Apple has also been illustrated with the help of the gap table (Hollensen, 2015)

GAP Table Save Time On Research and Writing Hire a Pro to Write You a 100% Plagiarism-Free Paper. Get My Paper	Hewlett Packard	Apple Inc.
Strengths	Ø  Brand name Ø  Development of own hardware and peripheral devices. Ø  Large variety of innovative products to choose from.	Ø  Strong global brand image. Ø  Strong media content Ø  Known for superior customer service
Weakness	Ø  High Debt Level Ø  Meek investment policies in Research & Development. Ø  Absence of in-house consulting division. Ø  Wrong decisions in terms of acquisitions.	Ø  Death of Steve Jobs Ø  Dependency on third party manufacturers
Opportunities	Ø  Wireless printing technology Ø  Faster printing performance Ø  Wide range of products related to IT services.	Ø  Transformation of Mac platform Ø  Increasing number of retail outlets Ø  Developing nations
Threats	Ø  Decreasing customer demands Ø  Increased competition through quality and price. Ø  Compatibly issues with non HP products Ø  Lesser coverage in the international market than the competitors.	Ø  Dependency on specific suppliers. Ø  Declining sales in Mac desktop Ø  Uncertain economic conditions in third world countries.

Thus we can observe the various differences through the S.W.O.T. analysis based on the selected company for benchmarking that is Apple Inc.  Both the organizations belong to the same departments but due to intense competition in existing in the industry the experience shared by  both the companies have differed in terms of pricing, quality and servicing of the products. The gap analysis also suggests the present financial positions of both the companies. The major focus of the GAP analysis is considered by mainly considering the weakness and threats, the various problems and strength analysis in the gap table also suggests the solution to various issues (Ayub et al., 2013)

The main differentiating component between the two brands is the choice of customers based on the products design. Whether it is IPod shuffle, Mac book or smart phones, Apple is known for its aluminum body style of design in all its products. This provides the products with better rigid strong body in lowest possible weight. It makes the products more reliable than use plastic body (Cohen & Feigenbaum, 2014)

Marketing and Management Objectives

HP offers aluminum body only on its premium products such as Envy series of laptops. Despite of using aluminum as a component in their electronic components the company has been unable to design with lower weight in compare to Apple (Buscarino et al., 2012).

According to Jensen, (2013), Apple products have a reputation for setting higher price tags for all its products. A 15inch Apple Mac book pro is priced at $1800 when buying from apple authorized retail outlet while same features can be availed in a HP laptop within $1250. Hence there is always a price gap of 40% in the products of Apple. These gap further increases with an increase in the other higher end products such as 3D laptops by HP are sold at $1600 whereas an apple Mac book pro 17 inch is priced at $2500. This suggest a gap of almost of 56% (Nair, 2014). 

According to Allen, (2014), the most prominent performance delivery in the products of HP has been noted for its improved battery life especially in the higher segment of the products. It has been also observed that HP is able to deliver better video playback service when streaming of high definition videos.

In terms of operating system the OSX lion used by Apple offers an enhanced intuitive computing services and provides better support for hardware and peripherals. The windows operating system offered by HP is widely compatible with most of the latest technological components but it lags behind in terms of speed and bug free computing (Haslam et al., 2013). 

According to Grainer et al., (2014), the service quality provided by Apple has continued to excel in terms of customer satisfaction by providing technical support via phone. In a survey conducted on the telephonic interview in the year 2012 it had been observed that out of total support calls 64% customers of Apple had been more satisfied with the experience in compare to 47% of the HP customers who were satisfied with the solution provided via phone. Hence it has been observed that Apple Inc. is known for providing a more prompt and friendly assistance to its customers. The increasing number of intricacies involved in packaging and designing of the products calls for an effective customer service, as most of the customer queries are related to packaging of the products (Kim & Ko, 2012)

The line of electronic items offered by HP is known for using Intel based model for its processors while apple uses Ax series of processors in its products. The major difference is observed in terms of clock speeds, cores and GPU clock speed. Although Intel based processor excels in all the mentioned items, Apple “A” series of processors has better potential in terms of cooler computing experience (Freitas et al., 2013).

Pricing Strategy

HP has been responsible for parts deficit to replace the electronic parts in its products. It has been unable to feed its servers business clients with the required amount of parts for replacing the faulty parts. This is due to low supply of the electronic parts in the year 2015. It should also put more focus on the type of reporting which the tech support is trying to achieve. It should provide free demo facilities to solve technical hindrances faced in general. It should also explore the codeless program designers. The company needs to significantly improve the software services for its owned products such as “Cool sense” along with various other products so that they are compatible with  the latest version of the operating system. 

The increasing level of debt will have a detrimental impact on the financial performance of the company.  In order to control its debts the company should plan its debts based on the budget and improve the debt equity ratio. The company should learn from the competitors strategy for acquisitions of other companies. It should acquire more number of Government bond in order to improve its present situation. Moreover the weaker profit margin set by the company has led to declining revenues. If the company increases its products prices of the most popular products then it will be able to significantly improve the high increase in the debt amount. The company needs to further improve the leverage ratio and earnings before interest and taxes. According to a survey done by Bloomberg in the previous year the EBIT generated in the last twelve months has declined for straight quarters to $ 13.7 billion.

HP lacks in a major way in terms of providing a strong body of the electronics items. It needs to implement aluminum chassis among all its products and update its existing models of plastic body. It also needs to make lighter products, which will increase the unique selling proposition and usability of the products. Improving the design and ergonomics will ensure the company to sell more products in the products and gain a larger share in the market. 

Prioritizing products based on digital advancements

HP needs to focus on its strengths and opportunity which it possesses in terms of providing smart printing solutions via wireless means. HP should put an augmented effort in its marketing strategies to promote the sales of HP photo smart printer. This is one of a kind printer available in the market and the company will be able to earn huge amount of revenue through popularizing this product.

Service Quality

Selecting the appropriate acquisition service

It has been observed that the acquired serviced partners of HP such as Compaq. This decision of the company has led to weaker computer demand. The company needs to acquire services from strong third party sources to improve the present market situation (Wiener et al., 2015). 

Conclusion

The study conducted on both HP and Apple suggests that various differences prevalent in the superior organization such as Apple. The best benchmarking data provided by Apple and HP also suggests that in spite of the higher price level set by Apple Inc. the company is able to gain more sales of its products. This is mainly due to superior product design, features and customer service aspect of Apple. Due to these reasons Apple has been able to stay as a top priority among the customers. HP is also facing serious issue regarding debt crisis which needs to improve through better negotiations with its suppliers and clearly of the payments held. The study also focuses on the importance of buying of Government bonds to reduce the debt service gap by safe investing options.

The outcomes of the gap analysis also suggest the improvements which needs to be incorporated by the company for improving its position based on the competitors strategies.  It has been observed that most crucial element of the defining and solve the gap issues can be done through improving the customer service. The information collected on both the company weakness and threats are based on secondary data collection method and the various strategies and recommendations suggested for the improvement of the present problems of HP are best to the industry standards.

Reflecting the experience is an component fo the professionals involved in the information technology market. The increasing number of quality employees and improved handling of the service reflects a positive team spirit. Although reflection is a team process the companies are aware of using strategies to deal with the various problems to gain a better commitment towards the goals of their team. Development of team building activities has an important role in defining the work roles of other members of the team (Ukko & Saunila, 2013).

Team reflection plays a vital role in signifying the team work. It is important to understand the importance of team for the purpose of simplifying the various operations in Hewlett Packard. Team work can be hard to assess from the people belonging different culture, place and language in order to attain a common goal. The various issues related to the competitors threats and weakness of the company directly influences the members of team working in the company. The self reflection is brought on the basis of comparing with the benchmarking results. Self- reflection can be brought by identifying the various drawbacks in compare to the competitor’s policies towards business strategies.  The company should emphasize on the positive work situations. The negative work situations are reflected by the drawback comparison of the benchmarking company. It should be noted that self reflective development can be brought about by work related tasks. Hewlett Packard should perform a team reflection of the implemented strategies through questionnaires in all the three situations. The positive team reflection should include the questions such as “what factors led to success of the pricing policies?” How did the company manage to stay ahead interims of performance than Apple?” The evaluation of these questions will help company in quantifying its strengths.  The negative team reflection questionnaire should include questions such as “What are the loopholes in the present design of the products?”, What is reason for decreasing sales of products of HP?” , “What is reason behind the existing debt crisis ?” Some of the team reflection related to the work related tasks is associated with the learning objectives. The questionnaires to be included in the team reflection based on the work related task includes, questions such as: “How is the present debt condition of the company improving?”, “How is company coping with the changing marketing environment?”, “How is the company dealing with present customer service improving the parts deficits”. Based on the learning objectives of the company it is able to know about the ongoing activities of the company and analyze the results of the improvement process (Schippers et al., 2015). 

Features and Specifications

Reference List

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