The IT department plans, operates, and supports an organization's IT infrastructure to enable efficient and productive business operations. Key functions include planning IT strategies, developing secure networks, managing and securing data, and providing user support. The IT team must balance business and technical requirements while minimizing costs.

1. Five IT Functions in an Organization
A company's information technology department plans, operates and supports an organization’s IT infrastructure, enabling business users to carry out their roles
ef f iciently, productively and securely. The department must meet multiple business and technical requirements, providea secure IT infrastructure and minimize
costs, according to a Gartner survey.
Planning
A senior member of the IT team works with business executives todevelop an IT strategy that supports the organization’s business objectives and helps build a
strong competitiveadvantage. They customize software and other elements of the IT system tomeet the needs of business departments. The team also ensures
that the right levelof IT resources is available to meet changing levels of demand. To increase flexibility and responsiveness, the IT team investigates options,
such as outsourcing management of the infrastructure or renting additional IT capacity from an external provider.
Networking
The IT team dev elops and operates a network to support effective communication and collaboration. Increasingly, they are deploying the latest Internet Protocol
networks with the capability to carry all voice, data, video and Internet traffic on a singlenetwork. IP networks enable organizations toreplace their legacy
telephone systems with an IP-based system, reducing complexity andproviding a platform for deploying advanced unified communications tools. The IT team
dev elops solutions that allow external organizations, such as customers and supply chain members, to securely access thecorporatenetwork.
Data Management and More
IT teams develop tools to collect, store, manage, secure and distributedata toemployees who need access to the latest information to make decisions about
strategic, financial and operational issues. They storecompany information from sources suchas customer records, sales data, market research, financial records,
manuf acturing and inventory data in a single datacenter. The team also sets up links tocollect data from retailers, distributors and the supply chain sothat
managers can make sales, marketing and production decisions basedon the latest information.
Security
Inf ormationsecurity management is now one of the most important IT functions in an organization. IT teams must protect the IT infrastructure and corporate data
against attacks from viruses, cybercriminals and other threats. Attacks on theinfrastructurecan prevent an organization carrying out critical business operations
with a consequent impact on customer service. Data leaks can lead toloss of confidential corporate and customer data, with the risk of fines by legislators and
damage to the organization’s reputation. While IT teams have put stringent security policies in place to minimize the risk and impact of security breaches, they face
an increasingly complex IT environment as employees adopt mobile working or use their personalsmartphones and tablet computers to work on corporate data.
Support
To enable employees to make the most effective use of IT resources, the IT team provides various forms of user support. After installing new softwareor network
f acilities, the team provides trainingso that employees can quickly make productive use of the new resources. The team also provides ongoing support to users
through a helpdesk or self-service facilities on the company intranet.