Does your company need an IT department? Is it really necessary to have a separate department for IT-related people? Well, the answer to these questions is yes. Nowadays, everything is going digital and it is required for any business or company to stay in the race with its competitors, otherwise, it would be left behind.

An IT department is necessary for any business or company in this today’s age because of different reasons. The IT department has several responsibilities that it must complete in order for a company to stay on top.

Let’s have a look at some of the responsibilities of the IT department and why your company should have a separate IT department:

1. Provide Technical Support

This is one of the top reasons why your company needs to have an IT department. Most employees and customers when found themselves in a difficulty then they interact with the IT department. This is the job of the IT department to provide technical support to both the customers and the staff members with the technology that is being used at the company.

This may include training people to use a new software, answering a technical question, setting up a new user account, changing or resetting forgotten passwords, etc. This is a job that only a technical person having sound knowledge can perform and that is why it is necessary to have an IT department.

Most IT teams use a ticketing system to track and manage requests of both the users and staff members. They usually respond to troubleshooting technical issues and get them fixed but their responsibility is not limited to these things only. They also perform various other tasks such as problem analysis, incident analysis, etc.

2. Implement And Manage IT Infrastructure

One of the most important responsibilities of an IT department is to develop, implement, and manage the IT infrastructure of a company. This may sound like a small thing but it isn’t. Depending on the size of the company and its business’ complexity, it can take quite some time to fully develop and implement IT infrastructure.

Since it has become mandatory for every business to have an online presence, there are a few things that are required including computing hardware which includes computers, laptops, and mobile devices, wireless devices & routers, plus other services such as Amazon and its AWS (Amazon Web Services) offering, etc. All of these things are required for an IT & digital infrastructure.

This may also include other things such as the kinds of softwares that your company needs, who should have access to the softwares, is there an online database for the business, does the business need a website, does the business already have a website that needs to be overlooked? The list goes on & on and there are so many things that the IT department needs to consider and overlook to implement a proper IT infrastructure.

3. Maintaining IT Security

Maintaining IT security is also the responsibility of the IT department and IT team. Imagine if all of your business data gets stolen or your customer data gets compromised just because you didn’t have an IT department. This would lead to you losing all of the important data and also losing your credibility.

This is one of the prime reasons why it is necessary to have an IT department in your company. There is so much involved in considering and taking care of the security of the company & its networks. This can include things like who can access the network, how to detect hackers and prevent them from entering the network, how to keep business data secure, how to meet all the standards of privacy and compliance, etc. All of these things are related to IT security and these cannot be maintained unless your company has an IT department.

Along with this, it is also the job of the IT department to make sure that the wireless routers and their default gateway addresses such as 192.168.0.1, 10.0.0.1 or 192.168.1.1 are secure and protected against hackers.

4. Execute IT-Related Projects

Another thing that an IT department or IT team does is that it executes IT-related projects. Anything that includes technology is an IT project and examples of such a project may include launching a company’s website, doing digital marketing to improve the online presence of the business, etc.

Usually, the projects that involve technology are complex and include something that cannot be done by an ordinary person, therefore, it is necessary to have technical experts who can execute the project accordingly and deliver the required results.