Performance Management: Gap Analysis of University Help Desk

This report presents a gap analysis of a nationally recognized university's help desk, examining its current state and desired state to identify performance deficiencies. The analysis reveals shortcomings in expertise, data reporting, asset management, and technology usage. The report evaluates existing resources and proposes alternative strategies, including establishing key performance indicators (KPIs), implementing tiered support systems, and providing training programs to address the identified gaps. Furthermore, the report suggests performance management strategies such as employee training, tiered help desk levels, and potential sponsorships for research and development. The recommendations provided in the assignment are correct and compact to change the future implications of the help desk department of the organization. The conclusion emphasizes the importance of gap analysis for organizational improvement, highlighting the significance of the findings and recommendations in enhancing the university's help desk capabilities and overall performance. This gap analysis helped the organization to find out the mistakes within the organization and a way to change those mistakes.

Running head: GAP ANALYSIS
Performance Management
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author note

1GAP ANALYSIS
Table of Contents
Introduction..........................................................................................................................3
Current state of organization...............................................................................................3
Desired state of the organization.........................................................................................3
Existing performance deficiencies.......................................................................................4
Evaluation of the existing resources....................................................................................4
Alternatives that are available to eliminate the gap.............................................................5
Performance management strategies...................................................................................5
Substantial rationale.............................................................................................................6
Conclusion...........................................................................................................................6

2GAP ANALYSIS
Introduction
Gap analysis, in the words of management literature, is a comparison between the actual
performances of the company with the potential or desired performance. The ability of any
organization to use its resources, investments in capitals, and technology in the best way possible
determines compliance between desired and actual performance. if any company does not
utilizes the above mentioned resources in a proper way, a gap between desired and actual
performance is found and analysis of such gap is known as Gap Analysis (van Ittersum et al.,
2013). This assignment is going to describe the gaps found in the nationally recognized
universities help desk facility and their capabilities.
Current state of organization
The university is state recognized and therefore, it has a large pool of students registering
every year for different courses. The college help desk runs 24X7 and has a multiple IT desk for
helping different students. The help desk collects reports and records data of each student and
their complaint however, they use obsolete mechanism to store the data such as emails or call
volumes (Performance Gap Analysis, 2018). The organization administration completely
depends on Microsoft office service for the conduction of their daily official works. Students are
utilized in rotational shifts and the help desk authority is not trained in their work. However, the
other departments of the organization are performing well and hence; gap analysis was
performed based on help desk and its capabilities (Czegel, 2015).

3GAP ANALYSIS
Desired state of the organization
A committee namely help desk committee was set up in the leadership of the director of
communication and technology and the purpose of this committee was to set up gap analysis and
understand the desired state of the organization. As the organization was serving a diverse pool
of students, it is the responsibility of the organization to provide the students with a premier
educational and research institution environment. The desired state of the organization is lowered
and controlled risk and budget of the helpdesk, higher focus on the research and development
section and implementing advanced technology in the institute to make historic changes
(Performance Gap Analysis, 2018).
Existing performance deficiencies
To find out the existing gap in the organization, the help desk committee visited four
centers in the organization, such as College of Engineering, administrative computing service,
network operations centre and network and client services. The gap, which was identified by the
help desk committee, represents opportunities for the university to lower the operational costs
and to improving the service and productivity. The gaps were lack of expertise in the help desk,
lack of management data reporting, multiple Tier 1 help desk, very weak Asset Management and
Limited tools or technology used in the research and development (Mineraud et al., 2016).
Evaluation of the existing resources
The organization has the capability to mend the gaps thorough the usage of its existing
resources. The organization can finish the help desk related problems by responding to the
problems through program driven responses. The organization has primitive machineries in the
call-networking unit, which is in reactive mode. Changing this department into proactive mode

4GAP ANALYSIS
can help to change the image of the department. The organization can use remote diagnostic and
monitoring tools to temporarily fasten the service, as technological changes need research and
development (Performance Gap Analysis, 2018).
Alternatives that are available to eliminate the gap
To mend the gap present in the data reporting management, the committee recommended
establishing key performance indicators to align the business objectives and the expectations of
students. These KPIs were established to measure the current performance organization against
the best service. As the students had multiple numbers of options while having an IT related
issue, the committee recommended setting up three different level of support that is tier 1, tier 2
and tier 3. This would help students to share their problems while seeking assistance from the
help desk (McAfee, Brynjolfsson & Davenport, 2012). To combat with the third problem that is
the lack of help desk expertise, committee recommended training programs and skill
improvement program. To mend the lack of technology in the research and development
program, self-planning and self-learning opportunities were created.
Performance management strategies
There are different performance management strategies available for the university. The
first strategy was to improve the helpdesk system by providing training to the employees. This is
important as without expertise in related field, they wound not be able to fulfill student
requirement. For example, Google is a multinational organization that provided training to its
employees to mend the gaps present in the organization performance. Further dividing the help

5GAP ANALYSIS
desk related problems in three tiers will help students to identify the level of their problem and
associated department to seek help. The organization can seek sponsorship from government or
private organizations for research and development as it can pull multinational students into the
institution, which can provide revenue for the technological changes (Cummings & Worley,
2014). Furthermore, the organization can increase the level of automation to decrease the
expertise related problem in the organization.
Substantial rationale
The university is nationally recognized and the number of students associated with it is
form different regions of the country. Therefore, the helpdesk system and capability should be
compact and punctual. However, as per the gap analysis, there are lack of technology, expertise,
training and understanding of the level of problem. Furthermore the organization uses obsolete
databases to store its information, that is the prime reason if the loss of data. Therefore, the
recommendations provided in the assignment are correct and compact to change the future
implications of the help desk department of the organization. The University of Tampa did such
changes in its help desk changes to ame3nd the financial loss and therefore, these
recommendations are rationally correct (Sanberg et al., 2014).
Conclusion
Finally, it can be said that for any organization, understanding it’s gaps are of big
importance as it can help the employees and the authorities to understand the level of hard work
and technology required to achieve success. This assignment completed the gap analysis of a
nationally recognized university and found several gaps in the help desk and its capabilities.
Further, a committee was developed to find the gaps and recommend possible changes that can

6GAP ANALYSIS
change the loss of the university in profits. The assignment also provided the performance
management strategies and then provided rationale for it. This gap analysis helped the
organization to find out the mistakes within the organization and a way to change those mistakes.

7GAP ANALYSIS
References
Cummings, T. G., & Worley, C. G. (2014). Organization development and change, 10th Edn, pp:
256-279, Cengage learning. https://books.google.co.in/books?
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=onepage&q=How%20sponsorship%20can%20change%20the%20organization&f=false
Czegel, B. (2015). Help desk practitioner's handbook, 1st Edn, pp. 12-34, John Wiley & Sons.
https://books.google.co.in/books?
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%20desk%20should%20work%20properly&f=false
McAfee, A., Brynjolfsson, E., & Davenport, T. H. (2012). Big data: the management
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Mineraud, J., Mazhelis, O., Su, X., & Tarkoma, S. (2016). A gap analysis of Internet-of-Things
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Performance Gap Analysis. (2018). Wayback Machine. Web.archive.org. Retrieved from
http://web.archive.org/web/20110124155440/http://www.p4performance.com/
ITHelpDeskCaseStudy.pdf
Sanberg, P. R., Gharib, M., Harker, P. T., Kaler, E. W., Marchase, R. B., Sands, T. D., ... &
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Van Ittersum, M. K., Cassman, K. G., Grassini, P., Wolf, J., Tittonell, P., & Hochman, Z. (2013).
Yield gap analysis with local to global relevance—a review. Field Crops Research, 143,
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