The impact of change on the performance of a high profile finance company

The Information Technology (IT) support team is an integral part of an organization that relies extensively on IT solutions and services to conduct its day-to-day business. It plays a critical role in assuring the uninterrupted and cost effective flow of business, without which productivity would otherwise be significantly reduced.

The IT support team acts as an interface between the Information Technology division of the firm and the experienced end users of the IT systems. The complexities of the IT systems and the variety of specialized tasks that are required to maintain the systems have given rise to the need for a multitude of other teams specialising in various functions and technologies. Coordination between the support team and the specialist teams is crucial for timely service to the end users.

This paper explores the factors that influence the effectiveness of the IT support team in the bespoke environment. A high profile international investment bank will be used for the research. The investment bank employs a variety of complex IT packages in the course of its business. The IT support team provides round the clock services to 500 experienced end users using IT programs.

Confirmatory factor analysis technique is used to determine the effect of dependency on specialist teams on the effectiveness of the IT support team. Further analysis of responses from clients shows that team effectiveness is a combination of five measures viz. innovation, learning-goal orientation, quality of outcome, timeliness and communication, with emphasis on learning-goal orientation and effective communication.

The study shows that effectiveness is found to be a function of the team�s dependency on specialist teams, the organizational context and the team�s outlook. This paper proposes changes to organizational procedures and practices as a broader solution for continuing improvement in the effectiveness of the IT support team.