Iekmasolutions

sudhansu sekhar dubey  Web designer & Developer
iEkma Solutions

In many companies, the place to start evaluating the support function is through a formal organizational definition. Depending on the size of your company, the formal definition could be at the company, division, department, group, or team level. This process helps you think through and gain agreement on the fundamental nature of your organization and how the support function fits within it. This process is very valuable for new organizations. It is also valuable for an existing organization to sharpen its focus and validate the work that it is currently performing.

This information from the organizational definition is used to define a logical organization. Once this information is in place, you will actually start to bring in people to fill the various roles and responsibilities. At that point, you are building the physical organization.

The value of defining a logical organization is twofold.

You gain clarity and agreement on what you are doing and why. This definition should show the value that you provide to the business and why your organization exists to begin with. This information is communicated to external entities and your own staff.

The organization definition provides a framework to guide decision-making in the future. For instance, you would not want to undertake any projects that did not help achieve your organizational goals and objectives, major decisions can be evaluated based on whether they fit into your strategy and the way you deal with people can be evaluated against your organization principles.

Not all of this information is needed for all organizations. Review the definitions and see which ones are most appropriate for your group. The definitions are arranged from the high-level to the low-level. Sometimes you need to start at the top and go down one level at a time. Other times, you may have to jump around. For instance, perhaps there is a clear expectation for the clients, products, and services. Those could be defined first, and then move up to objectives, goals, etc.

It is also very helpful if there are other similar organization definitions from other parts of the company. For instance, if you are starting up a support department within a division, it is helpful to know what the division mission, vision, and goals are. If they exist, they can be used as input for the definition of the new support department. The mission, goals, objectives, etc. of the support group should align with similar definitions from higher organizational entities.

The following areas can be used to create a full logical organization for the support group.
Oct 10th 2012 07:02