The role and benefits of IT function

The role and benefits of IT function
The IT function in Terra Firma is considered as the main supports of the company to enable Terra Firma to meet its goals. The IT Function supports the company’s researches, developments and testing activities to enable the company to provide value to its customers.
Current IT function
Terra Firma company provides its 180 full time IT employees different kind of hardware and software including Microsoft desktop and IBM AS/400 servers to run Edward software. The Information Technology and operations departments were working well until Terra firma has a significant network crash in March 2011, which made the company frustrated and lost money. Terra Firma took this issue as an opportunity to change their way of thinking and focus on the management of the IT investments and other operational activities in the company such as accounting, manufacturing, human resources and procurement.
The business IT had a matrix reporting structure, which was improved and linked with global management and cross-functional management to fix the weakness in these areas. The four product and service divisions work with Corporate Administration group, which has corporate finance, legal and regulatory affairs, and strategy. The tasks of these teams are to gathering requirements and improve solutions including a new application or enhancements to an existing system.

The IT Steering Committee in Terra Firma allocate NZ$150 million annual IT budget to invest in several services. PC support and Email were funded on a cost recovery basis through taxes on each department and corporate-wide functions such as financial reporting’s were funded through the annual budget as well as tentative projects such as videoconferencing. Application development and deployment, purchasing and maintenance were funded directly by the internal business unit itself, keeping in mind that the committee was to supervise the use of external service providers. The Steering Committee decided on generating a set of architectural standards for developments and process’s of Terra Firma’s IT architecture, infrastructure and the demand of business needs. IT acts as a resource which enables Terra Firma to monitor, communicate and record its ongoing business values and deliverables.

Basic End-User IT services Utility Warranty
PC support
 Regional HQ help desk
 Corp. HQ Help desk
Call center supports regular and critical issue Available 24 hours
Email/ Calendar
• MS Exchange / Outlook
• Mobile devices Connect services and personal devices like MS Exchange/ Outlook with mobile devices Fixable and Convenient because Email and Calendar can be used through multiple tools
Videoconferencing Connecting several field offices to HQ via ISDN. Availability and flexibility of communication
File sharing Sharing data from all over the company Security and Availability of data
Social Media Allow employees across the company to communicate each other Available and easy to use