Overview of Management Information System (MIS)

The modern management needs new approach to solve basic problems. The present day management needs more advanced techniques for solving its basic requirements. The MIS is a new idea which is associated with Men, Machine, Marketing and methods for collecting pertinent information from the internal and external source and processing these information for the purpose of facilitating the process of decision making of the business.

MIS is not new ; only its computerization is new, Before, computers MIS technique existed to supply manager with the information that would permit them to plan and control business operations. The computer has added one or more dimensions such as speed, accuracy and increased volumes of data that permit the consideration of more alternatives in a decision making process.

For understanding the real meaning of MIS and for the sake of simplicity we divide the definition of MIS into three parts namely :-

• • MANAGEMENT
  • INFORMATION
  • SYSTEM

Management

The term management is defined as the art of getting things done, through people, by dividing them into organized groups and assigning each group a different activity. By assigning each group a different activity, the outcomes of all the activities performed by each group are appended together to accomplish the final goal. In other words, we can define management as the process of achieving the business objective of an organization by making the best decisions that involved optimized combination of manpower, resources and working environment of the organization. The key person involved in the management of an organization is the manager who needs to perform different activities in a systematic way.

The definition of management can also be realized in two manners :

1. In the form of work (Group of activities).
2. In the form of noun (Group of persons).

However, management also can be defined as well organized scientific principles which lead to minimization of input and maximization of output thus increasing the overall efficiency.

Information

Information, the second component in the term management Information System,  is considered a valuable resource required by the management in order to run a business organization. Information is data that is processed in a form which assists decision-makers. It may contain an element of surprise, reduce uncertainty or provoke a manager to initiate an action. Whereas data is a term used for raw facts, figures, symbols etc, that are currently not being used in a decision making process. Data usually take the form of historical record

The information needs to have the following characteristics.

• Information should concern us.
• Information should be time bound.

System

A system is an orderly grouping of interdependent components linked together according to a plan to achieve a specific objective. The element of a system are interrelated and interdependent. Further, every system is said to be composed of subsystems, which in term are made up of other systems. For Example, A business organization may be regarded as a system and a part of a organization (Decisions, department, units etc) are the sub-systems. The set of elements of the system may be understood as input, process, outputs.

Summing, all the three elements / components of MIS ie. Management ; Information, System, the simple definition of MIS can be given as

MIS is a system in which defined data are collected, processed and communicated to assist those responsible for the use of resources. According to T.S. Grewal, “An organized method of providing each manager with all data and only those data which he needs for decisions, when one needs there are in a form which aids in understanding and stimulate his action.

According to Schwartz, “MIS is a system of people, equipments, procedures, documents and communication that collects, validates, operates on transformers, stores, retrieves and presents data for use in planning, budgeting, accounting, controlling and other management processes.

Primary Goal of MIS

The significance of a planned, analysed, designed and maintained MIS are as follows :

1. To provide timely, useful and reliable information that helps in the progress and growth of the business and management infrastructure in a situation of increased business complexities. This information can significantly help the management in taking quick, rational and speedy decisions.
2. To support the business process and operations of the organization. It also help in the globalization and liberalization of the organization, thereby enabling the organization to compete both locally and globally.
3. To provide management information at various stages of decision making in an organization that assists the decision makers in an organization.

The purpose of MIS as understood today, is to raise managing from the level of piecemeal steady information, intuitive guesswork and isolated problem solving to the level of systems insight, system information, sophisticated data processing and systems problem solving.

Need of MIS

1. Cut throat competition : As a businesses are getting populated with its competitors the margins are ever shrinking. This has faced businesses to develop new systems with right information to lower the production costs. MIS process extremely helpful in this context as it enables the business to cut down its production cost by making accurate information flow throughout the organization. With production cost lowered, businesses can now offer the same products at cheaper prices to drive away the competition and still make profit form it.
2. Business are getting global : Most of the big business that we see today exist in multiple countries handling multiple procedures and making multiple currencies. This makes a job of monitoring and controlling the operations difficult. We need specialized support from MIS which helps us in dealing with complexities of different countries. It is important to mention here that all support from MIS should be timely.
3. Think Global, Act Local : With growing complexity, and required competence levels, businesses have crossed geographical boundaries. Thus organization of today are multicurrency, multi-religion and universally present. This has been made possible by many advancements in information technology such as E-commerce and Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) etc. A very important point for consideration is that in order to operate globally local support needs to be present under all situations. “Think global act local” further signifies that the plan of the business has to be formatted as per the local conditions prevailing in the target territory.
4. Information Divide : The winner today is the one who has the right piece of information at the right time or in other words the only criteria that distinguishes between a winner and looser is information have or information have not (Information Divide). The role of MIS ensures that information should reach all possible corners as blood is supplied to all the organs of the body, and does not create a possibility of information have not. Thus , MIS can ensure that we always remain in the winning side or information side.
5. Core Competence : Information is the by product of any business process, it needs to be taken care of in well organized fashion. Only rightfully preserved and manipulated information can ensure that we draw from the information one after extensive. This calls for extensive support (technical, physical, logical, economic etc) for capturing information, processing, disseminating and preserving information, which would simply have been impossible without the support of MIS.

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Anshul Pal

Hey there, I’m Anshul Pal, a tech blogger and Computer Science graduate. I’m passionate about exploring tech-related topics and sharing the knowledge I’ve acquired. With two years of industry expertise in blogging and content writing, I’m also the co-founder of HVM Smart Solution. Thanks for reading my blog – Happy Learning!