when organizations aren t making the best use of their resources capital and technology they may not be able to reach their full potential this is where a gap analysis can help 
a gap analysis which is also referred to as a needs analysis is important for any type of organizational performance it allows companies to determine where they are today and where they want to be in the future companies can reexamine their goals through a gap analysis to figure out whether they are on the right track to accomplishing them gap analyses were widely used in the 1980s typically in tandem with duration analyses a gap analysis is considered harder to use and less widely implemented than a duration analysis but it can still be used to assess exposure to a variety of term structure movements there are four steps in a gap analysis ending in a compilation report that identifies areas of improvement and outlines an action plan to achieve increased company performance the gap in a gap analysis is the space between where an organization is and where it wants to be in the future 