How an IT Department Creates Business Success

The IT department is often the least understood area of a large business. Employees know that the IT department is important, and won’t hesitate to call when an issue arises, but can’t clearly define what it is that they do.

In a nutshell, the IT department are the fixers of the organization. They identify problems with the technology that helps a business run smoothly and work to correct the issue quickly. Here are some of the key functions of the IT department and why they play such an important role.

Back-End Monitoring

One of the most important roles of the IT department in any organization is to perform back-end monitoring to ensure everything is running smoothly. With the proper application performance monitoring in place read more here, the IT department will be able to identify problems before they impact the workflow of an organization and start working to correct them.

When most people go to work and sit down at their desks, they see a functional application that they can use to get things done. It is presented in a visually stimulating way that is designed for ease-of-use. The IT department sees it from a different angle. If you’re looking at a television screen projecting an image, they’re looking at the wiring behind it.

Governance and Security

The IT department often works with other departments to ensure proper governance and security is in place. These features help protect the organization from fraud, fines from regulatory bodies, and loss of intellectual properties from a data breach.

For example, they might work with the human resources department to ensure the user agreements are up-to-date regarding what an employee is and isn’t allowed to do on the company network. They might even have blocks in place for certain websites– this is common for social media.

It’s also essential to make sure that one person can’t complete a full transaction in the accounting department without approval or assistance from a separate login. Having these security features ensures that a less-than-savory employee will be unable to funnel money into their own account.

The IT department also plays a significant role in keeping the business safe from cyber attacks and data breaches. Just like keeping employee information in a locked filing cabinet is expected, keeping intellectual property and financial information protected from hackers is paramount.

Maintaining and Improving Productivity

Through application developments and improvements, as well as handling any technical issues that arise, the IT department improves employee productivity and the efficiency of business processes.

Their application advances can directly impact employee productivity, by helping applications run faster or become more user-friendly. Alternatively, they work diligently to keep things running smoothly so that employees don’t get frustrated and lose their focus when using applications. Being alerted to issues and taking an immediate, proactive approach to maintenance will help offset the occurrences of stoppage or slowdowns on the production or shipping floor.

Website

The IT department is usually responsible for maintaining the company’s website in partnership with the marketing and sales team. While it’s essential to have an online presence in this modern era, it’s extremely crucial to have it up and running at all times if the company has an e-commerce option.

The IT department may be responsible for coding changes, creating applications to capture data or rearranging how things look to improve the user experience on the site. Generally speaking, the needs of the organization are subjective to the type of business they offer.

The IT department is the Wizard of Oz, working behind the curtain to keep things moving. They have a hand in every department of the business and are an essential piece of the puzzle for large organizations.