Setting Up a Management Information System: Seeking Ideas for Effective Report Formats

Hi,

I have been assigned the responsibility of setting up a Management Information System in my organization. We are an international e-marketing firm with offices in India and the UK. The system I have to set up should provide all necessary information to the company management in the UK.

I do know the basics of such a system; however, I would appreciate it if all of you could help me out with some ideas regarding the format of the system. I would also be interested in the format of reports that can be generated from the system and the possible reports that can and should be generated.

Any and all ideas, suggestions, and help are welcome and appreciated.

Thanks & Regards,
Gaurang S

Hi Gaurang,

It is indeed sad to see no replies to your post. I am sorry as I do not have any idea of MIS. Now that you must have done it, can you please share your inputs with me so that there will be somebody to help us understand what MIS is, how it is made and used? What are the advantages and drawbacks of the same?

Hope you can do this for me.

Sireesha Deol

An 'MIS' is a planned system of collecting, processing, storing, and disseminating data in the form of information needed to carry out the functions of management. In a way, it is a documented report of the activities that were planned and executed. According to Philip Kotler, "A marketing information system consists of people, equipment, and procedures to gather, sort, analyze, evaluate, and distribute needed, timely, and accurate information to marketing decision-makers."

The terms MIS and information system are often confused. Information systems include systems that are not intended for decision-making. The area of study called MIS is sometimes referred to, in a restrictive sense, as information technology management. That area of study should not be confused with computer science. IT service management is a practitioner-focused discipline. MIS also has some differences with Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) as ERP incorporates elements that are not necessarily focused on decision support.

Professor Allen S. Lee states that "...research in the information systems field examines more than the technological system, or just the social system, or even the two side by side; in addition, it investigates the phenomena that emerge when the two interact."

At the start, in businesses and other organizations, internal reporting was made manually and only periodically, as a by-product of the accounting system and with some additional statistics, and gave limited and delayed information on management performance. Previously, data had to be separated individually by people as per the requirement and necessity of the organization. Later, data and information were distinguished, and instead of the collection of a mass of data, important and to-the-point data that is needed by the organization was stored.

In their infancy, business computers were used for the practical business of computing the payroll and keeping track of accounts payable and accounts receivable. As applications were developed that provided managers with information about sales, inventories, and other data that would help in managing the enterprise, the term "MIS" arose to describe these kinds of applications. Today, the term is used broadly in a number of contexts and includes (but is not limited to): decision support systems, resource and people management applications, project management, and database retrieval applications.