GAP ANALYSIS

Company take Atlassian an IT company from Australia 

Introduction

Gap analysis can be defined as the method of identifying the differences in the business performance in order to find out whether the business meets the requirements of the market or not. Therefore, in this paper, the gap analysis will be conducted for the chosen Australian IT company named Atlassian. In order to analyze the present situation of the company, the attributes of their business, overall performance and competencies of the employees will be focused and compared. Along with this, the impact of all these factors in the future productivity of the company will be considered as well. 

Background of the chosen company

Atlassian is a software development company that is based on Australia. In 2002, the company started the business operation by launching Jira 1.0 (Atlassian, 2020a). It is a software for bug tracking and agile project management. In 2005, Atlassian had only 1000 customers in Australian market and now the company has around 150,000 customers. The headquarters of the company is situated in Sydney, Australia. Otherwise, they have offices in other international cities like New York, Bengaluru, Amsterdam, San Francisco and in others.   

Atlassian majorly provides software service to their customers. The products of Atlassian are Jira, Confluence, Hipchat, Bitbucket server, Bamboo, Trello, Crowd Jira align and other software. In 2020, the revenue of Atlassian is around $1.61 billion (Atlassian, 2020a). Currently, they have 4.907 employees to manage their business operations. In 2015, Atlassian listed on the NASDAQ under TEAM. Atlassian has around more than 4000 software applications in the market place which provides competitive benefit to the company. The company has concentrated on the CSR strategy as well and donated 1% of the profit for charity (Atlassian, 2020a). 

Gap analysis

Present situation of the company

Atlassian is one of the fastest growing software development companies in Australia. The company has successfully established their position by launching different and useful software applications in the Australian market. The present situation of Atlassian has been discussed below in details:

Attributes

• Useful software applications products

Atlassian developer application to keep in mind the customer demands and needs in Australia. The company has entered the market by launching Jira 1.0 which tracks the proprietary issues in product development and allows it to track the bugs and agile in project management (Atlassian, 2020b). The company has a number of tools such as Trello, Opsgenie, Code barrel, Fort, Agile craft and others for different purposes. Trello is used to be connected with the teams in place and helps by providing real time updates to the end user. The Cloud of Atlassian delivery cloud-based and fan-favourite products to the customer. 

• CSR strategy 

In order to add more value in the business, Atlassian has concentrated on the CSR strategy highly. As mentioned by Wang and Sarkis, (2017), Corporate social responsibility enables organizations to take part in philanthropic causes and provides positive social value to the Organization. However, from the beginning of their business, Atlassian has a proper CSR strategy as they spend 1% of the overall profit of the company for social value (Atlassian, 2020b). In 2013, Atlassian spent $40,000 for charity cause. The company publish ews transparency reports for their customers regularly to build trust in them regarding their business. Along with this, the authorities consider the proper maintenance of privacy and security in their developed products. Apart from this, Atlassian integrates diversity and equity among their employees as well. 

• Competitive benefit

Atlassian is the leading single investment software development company of Australia. However, the software development market of Australia is highly congested as a number of companies run their business in the market. Some leading software development companies in the market are Agridigital, Telstra, Autodesk Australia, SAS, Infotrack, Ansarada, Adobe, Netapp Australia and others (The martec, 2020). However, with the proper strategy and significant products, Atlassian has grabbed their competitive position in Australia. Besides this, they have partnership with Accel partnership as in 2013, the company has invested $60 million in Atlassian (Atlassian, 2020b). It has helped them to develop their products with more benefit.   

Performance

The performance of Atlassian is noticeable as within very few years they have achieved their desired revenue in business. In 2016, the annual revenue of the company was around $457.1 million (S2. q4cdn, 2020b). on the other hand, in 2019, the revenue has reached into $ 1.2 billion (S2. q4cdn, 2020a). It indicates the sustainable business growth of Atlassian in Australian market. The products of Atlassian have performed well in the market. In 2016, the marketplace sales of Atlassian products were more than $150 million (S2. q4cdn, 2020b). in 2019 this figure was more than $ 300 million (S2. q4cdn, 2020a). 

From 2002 to 2020, Atlassian has launched several tools like Jira, Trello, Opsgenie, Code barrel, Fort, Agile craft through which it has become possible to develop their business performance in Australia. In order to improve the overall business performance more, Atlassian has expanded their business in the international market by opening a global office. Therefore, it can be mentioned that the present business performance of Atlassian is significant as it is noticed that the revenue of the company is increasing every year.

Employee competencies 

From the view of Sharma and Yarlagadda, (2018), skills and competencies of the employees matter highly when it comes to achieving desirable profit in business. Currently, they have more than 4900 employees to manage their business operations in different international cities. All the employees of Atlassian are highly skilled and have vast knowledge on their respective field which has helped the company to sustain the productivity and the profitability of Atlassian. Presently, to recruit appropriate employees, Atlassian uses three types of approach such as virtual interviewing, hiring and onboarding. The company provides opportunity for the internship to the new employees. 

In most of the cases, Atlassian employees work in a team with the help of Cloud based software. Apart from this, through technology, the company-maintained coordination among the activities of their different offices around the world. In order to motivate the employees more in their work, Atlassian provides several perks and benefits to their employees. They have flexible time hours, interesting events, financial support for achieving tools for work and others (Referred to Appendix 1). They consider the wellness and good mental health of the employees while working in the company. Apart from this, they invest huge amounts every year for arranging training and development for their employees on a regular basis. Due to all these purposes, the employees of Atlassian are highly effective and competent in their field. 

What Atlassian wants to be in future

The gap analysis of Atlassian will be discussed by considering the future planning of the company. It has been observed that the owners of Atlassian have several plans with their business which could help the company to sustain their business profit and to achieve competitive advantage in the market. Below, they are discussed in details:

Attributes

• Focusing on the privacy and data security of the software applications

Atlassian will develop their software in future by considering the gap of the market in Australia. One of the major issues that customers are facing is data breach from the software applications. As mentioned by Kumar et al., (2018), it has been observed that customers are facing data breach issues with the software due to unauthorized access, malicious codes, botnets and others. For this purpose, in their future software applications besides benefits, the company will concentrate on the development of data security as well. 

• CSR strategy

In order to establish Atlassian in the leading position, the marketeers have defined their future CSR strategy accordingly. Therefore, Atlassian has decided that by 2025, they will run all their business operations with 100% renewable energy. As per the view of Hildén et al., (2017), climate change is a threat for mankind and without any intermediate intervention, it can disrupt the society, economy and the environment as well. Through this strategy, Atlassian has aimed to consider the sustainability of the environment and their business profit. As a part of the strategy, they have also decided to achieve non-net zero carbon emission within 2050 and have set a target to limit the warming to 1.5°C (referred to Appendix 2). Therefore, through this, it can be said that the CSR strategy will help the business of Atlassian to increase the sustainable factor in future. In this way, it will be possible for the company to grab the attention of the customer and to increase their productivity and profitability.  

• Competitive benefit

It has been discussed already that the Software development market of Australia is highly competitive. Therefore, Atlassian will emphasize on the marketing of their products in order to achieve more customers in their business. From the marketing, they receive a high amount also as in 2019, they earned $268,356 (S2. q4cdn, 2020a). Therefore, the marketing strategy needs to be developed to grab the customers attention easily towards their business. 

Performance

In order to grab the software applications marketplace, Atlassian will concentrate on developing their business performance by increasing the revenue and annual profit. For this, they will concentrate more on product development. One of Atlassian's biggest opportunities is their cloud products and platform. Due to high quality and immense benefits, it has provided Atlassian to develop their market in fiscal year 2020. In their cloud-based products, there are around 100 million monthly active users which is why the long-term sustainable performance of Atlassian relies on cloud offerings. They have planned for serving larger customers with their cloud offerings and will help the existing customer as well to migrate in the cloud applications. 

Employee competencies 

In order to fasten up their business operations, Atlassian will recruit more employees in their company. It has been observed that Atlassian has global offices in different cities. In the Bangalore office of the company, they have 200 local employees, therefore, the company has decided to recruit more employees and strengthen the workforce. In order to develop the skills and competencies of the employees, Atlassian will invest more on the training and development programme. Through improving the competencies of the employees, it will be possible to prevent the security breaches from their applications. Along with this, qualified sales forces are appointed to provide proper training to the employees. 

In the workplace of Atlassian, several events are arranged to provide networking opportunities to the employees. Apart from this, perks and benefits are equally provided to the employees in order to motivate in their work. However, in future, to develop the competencies of the employees Atlassian will concentrate all this area along with the ‘webinar’. As per the view of Bound et al., (2019), to enhance the productivity, companies need to improve the competency level of their workers. That is why, the technical skills of the existing employees will be developed through training programmes to improve the productivity of Atlassian. Along with this, in the recruitment of new employees, besides technical skill, innovation skill will be considered. 

Conclusion

The entire discussion is based on the gap analysis of the business of Atlassian. Therefore, it has been figured out that Atlassian is one of the leading software development companies in the Australian market. Through proper product development strategy, they have achieved the growth in business and maintain their sustainable performance. Along with this, it is observed that the employees of Atlassian are highly skilful and experienced in their work area. With the help of the competencies of the employees, Atlassian has gained success in their business and competitive advantage within very few years. 

From the beginning of their business, Atlassian has provided importance on the CSR strategy. It has been observed that Atlassian has decided to switch their business operations with renewable energy completely to reduce Fordyce carbon emission from the environment. This strategy will help the Atlassian to add sustainability factors and to increase their customer base in the market. Therefore, through proper strategies in future, Atlassian will be successful to sustain their competitive position in the market.