To be truly effective in the field of networking, you need to start by understanding networking from the corporate perspective. Why are networks important to companies? What do they accomplish for the company? How can networking professionals more clearly meet the needs of the company with the networks that they build and maintain? It's important to realize that there are no single correct answers to these questions. Every company will have different needs and expectations with regard to their network. What is important is that you learn the relevant questions to ask about networking for your company and arrive at the best possible answers to those questions for your particular company. Doing so will ensure that the company's network best meets its needs.

What does the company need?

There are many possible reasons that a company might need or benefit from a network. In order to understand your particular company, you should start by exploring the following questions. You may need to ask a variety of different people in the company their perspective on these questions. Some of the officials that you may need to interview include the chief executive officer or owner, the chief financial officer, and the heads of the various key departments within the company, such as manufacturing, sales and marketing, accounting, purchasing and materials, retail operations, and so forth. The range of managers that you interview will depend on the type of business in which the company is engaged.

It's important that you first start by understanding the business and the business oriented perspectives of these different individuals and those in their departments. Consider the following questions for each of these key areas:

What is their function for the company?

How do their objectives tie into the company objectives?

What are the key goals for their function in the coming year? How about in the coming five years?

What do they see as the chief challenges to overcome in achieving their objectives?

How might information technology (IT) play a role in supporting their objectives?

What sorts of automation do they think might help them accomplish their objectives?

How is the work in their area accomplished? For instance, do most of the employees do mechanical work, like on a production line, or are most of them so-called "knowledge workers" who generate documents, analyze information, and so forth?

Your objective in asking these questions, and others that may occur to you, is to get a good understanding of each functional area: what it does and how it does it, as well as what it wants to be able to do in the future. With those understandings in hand, you can then start to analyze the impact that the network - or improvements to the existing network - might have in those various areas.

Beginning from a business perspective is absolutely essential. Networks are not built and improved "just because." Instead, any particular network or network upgrade needs to be driven by the needs of the business. Justification for networks or improvements to existing networks should clearly show how they are necessary to the proper functioning of the business, or how they will play an important role in the company achieving its objectives, consistent with the total cost and effort involved.

After getting a good understanding of the company, its objectives, and how it accomplishes its work, you can then analyze different ideas that you may have for the network, and how those ideas will benefit some or all parts of the business. In doing so, you need to consider the following areas:

Are there any areas in which the lack of a network, or some failing of the existing network, is inhibiting the company from realizing its goals or accomplishing its work?

Are there capabilities that you could add to the network that would provide benefits to the business?

What other automation plans exist that will require the support of the network?

What needs to be done to the network simply to maintain it?

Obviously a list such as the above one can't be exhaustive. The important point is that you need to approach the job of networking first from the perspective of the company and its needs. Within that framework, use your creativity, knowledge experience, and accrument to propose and execute a plan for the network.