Gap Analysis: Harrison-Keyes

Gap Analysis: Harrison-Keyes

A global publisher of print products, Harrison-Keyes specializes in scientific, technical and business books and journals, professional and consumer books, textbooks and other educational materials for all levels of study. In recent years, Harrison-Keyes has suffered the woes plaguing the entire industry. As competition from low-cost retailers eats into profits, publishing companies are finding success -- or even survival -- a challenge. In an effort to revitalize the company, the Harrison-Keyes has started an e-publishing initiative to capture market and increase profits. This paper will scan the internal and external environment to identify potential challenges and opportunities with this initiative, will identify all key stakeholder perspectives and any ethical dilemmas. This paper will identify the gap between the current state and the desired end state. This paper will develop a set of goals that will define the desired future state.

Situation Analysis

Issue and Opportunity Identification

Table 1 provides list of issues and opportunities identified during analysis of the current situation for Harrison-keys e-publishing initiative. For Harrison-keys, there is a huge gap between projected and actual sales figures from e-publishing initiative. Initial market research indicated wide adoption by business and tech users and marketing team geared their campaign towards this skew. Slow sales could be related to faulty market research or customer non adoption of e-publishing model. Implementation team has missed production timeline two times due to Asia Digital vendor issues. Due to massive floods, Asia Digital is out of business for the foreseeable