What are the role of manager in management information system within an organization?

In any company with more than two employees, computers and technology systems play a vital role. In the modern world, all aspects of business are becoming more and more data-driven, virtually stored and persistently available on a global scale. Information systems are critical to the day-to-day operation of any business, and in many instances, these systems are so ubiquitous that they are invisible to both employees and management. No one wonders how the company-wide email system works until it doesn’t; no one asks where the files for the website are stored until the business’s internet presence disappears.

It’s easy to think of IT as a group that works out of the basement, and no one goes down there unless they’ve lost a bet among their peers. Moreover, no one in IT likes to have to explain to non-IT employees the difference between a router, a switch and a hub. However, a business that fails to have technology and management working together is bound to underperform.

Who Has Your Data?

Most successful companies make decisions based on the data they collect. Since companies are digitizing and storing all data electronically (locally, in the cloud or on a server farm), the ability to access, retrieve, utilize, preserve and protect that data falls under the broad definition of IT — information technology — and IS — information systems. A top concern for companies is maintaining privacy in order to avoid losing customer trust, experiencing product theft or dealing with expensive litigation. As technology becomes more and more complex, business management must learn how to navigate the often-complicated relationship that involves technology and management working together. It isn’t just within your internal data structures where you’ll find a variety of information systems; as businesses become more active on a global scale, the interaction between IT and marketing becomes more and more vital to the success of the company.

A company’s leaders should understand the structure and mechanics of a business’s IS strategy. Where the business’s data is stored, how it is stored in that location and the costs associated with access and retrieval of that data all impact the business. While many managers may dismiss the technical jargon they see in IT presentations, the critical availability of data — as well as the ability to utilize that data readily — are critical to the day-to-day operations of a business. If it takes you six weeks to deliver a product to a market, you don’t want to have to wait six months to mine results from that market’s customer data.

Back to Front

While IT has traditionally been a “back office” aspect of a business, recent data mining technologies have allowed IT and marketing to more readily derive real-time data results from queries into the available customer data. If you know what your customers want almost as immediately as they do, you can more readily deliver products in a timely fashion. With technology and management working together, an agile business can improve the transaction time with each customer, as well as ensuring informed persistence in future communications with these customers.

Fields, Not Silos

According to CMS Wire, the “benefits of cross-functional collaboration cannot be overstated. When teams work together, they achieve higher margins and greater levels of customer loyalty than organizations that don’t work together as well.” In the past, information services and information technology were distinct “silos” within an organization. However, as companies grow, the need to share data across divisions and within projects becomes more important than these individual protectorates. Why would you want to store a single customer’s information across three different divisions of your company? Why not store it in one place — one central field of data — and, with a proactive relationship involving technology and management working together, your business will be more efficient: better able to build products, adapt the pipeline of available products and change various marketing strategies as the marketplace and your customers’ needs change. That’s where success lies. Not in wondering where the punch cards for the antiquated HR system have been stored this week.

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ROLE OF MANAGEMENT INFORMATION SYSTEM

The role of the MIS in an organization can be compared to the role of heart in the body. The information is the blood and MIS is the heart. In the body the heart plays the role of supplying pure blood to all the elements of the body including the brain. The heart work faster and supplies more blood when needed. It regulates and controls the incoming impure blood, processed it and sends it to the destination in the quantity needed. It fulfills the needs of blood supply to human body in normal course and also in crisis.

The MIS plays exactly the same role in the organization. The system ensures that an appropriate data is collected from the various sources, processed and send further to all the needy destinations. The system is expected to fulfill the information needs of an individual, a group of individuals, the management functionaries: the managers and top management.

Here are some of the important roles of the MIS:

i. The MIS satisfies the diverse needs through variety of systems such as query system, analysis system, modeling system and decision support system.

ii. The MIS helps in strategic planning, management control, operational control and transaction processing. The MIS helps in the clerical personal in the transaction processing and answers the queries on the data pertaining to the transaction, the status of a particular record and reference on a variety of documents.

iii. The MIS helps the junior management personnel by providing the operational data for planning, scheduling and control , and helps them further in decision-making at the operation level to correct an out of control situation.

iv. The MIS helps the middle management in short term planning, target setting and controlling the business functions. It is supported by the use of the management tools of planning and control.

v. The MIS helps the top level management in goal setting, strategic planning and evolving the business plans and their implementation.

vi. The MIS plays the role of information generation, communication, problem identification and helps in the process of decision-making. The MIS, therefore, plays a vital role in the management, administration and operation of an organization.

IMPACT OF THE MANAGEMENT INFORMATION SYSTEM

MIS plays a very important role in the organization; it creates an impact on the organization’s functions, performance and productivity.

The impact of MIS on the functions is in its management with a good MIS supports the management of marketing, finance, production and personnel becomes more efficient. The tracking and monitoring of the functional targets becomes easy. The functional managers are informed about the progress, achievements and shortfalls in the activity and the targets. The manager is kept alert by providing certain information indicating and probable trends in the various aspects of business. This helps in forecasting and long-term perspective planning. The manager’s attention is bought to a situation which is expected in nature, inducing him to take an action or a decision in the matter. Disciplined information reporting system creates structure database and a knowledge base for all the people in the organization. The information is available in such a form that it can be used straight away by blending and analysis, saving the manager’s valuable time.

The MIS creates another impact in the organization which relates to the understanding of the business itself. The MIS begins with the definition of data, entity and its attributes. It uses a dictionary of data, entity and attributes, respectively, designed for information generation in the organization. Since all the information systems use the dictionary, there is common understanding of terms and terminology in the organization bringing clarity in the communication and a similar understanding of an event in the organization.

The MIS calls for a systematization of the business operations for an effective system design. This leads to streaming of the operations which complicates the system design. It improves the administration of the business by bringing a discipline in its operations as everybody is required to follow and use systems and procedures. This process brings a high degree of professionalism in the business operations.

The goals and objectives of the MIS are the products of business goals and objectives. It helps indirectly to pull the entire organization in one direction towards the corporate goals and objectives by providing the relevant information to the organization.

A well designed system with a focus on the manager makes an impact on the managerial efficiency. The fund of information motivates an enlightened manager to use a variety of tools of the management. It helps him to resort to such exercises as experimentation and modeling. The use of computers enables him to use the tools and techniques which are impossible to use manually. The ready-made packages make this task simple. The impact is on the managerial ability to perform. It improves decision-making ability considerably high.

Since, the MIS work on the basic system such as transaction processing and database, the drudgery of the clerical work is transferred to the computerized system, relieving the human mind for better work. It will be observed that lot of manpower is engaged in this activity in the organization. Seventy (70) percent of the time is spent in recording, searching, processing and communicating. This MIS has a direct impact on this overhead. It creates information –based working culture in the organization.

IMPORTANCE OF MIS

It goes without saying that all managerial functions are performed through decision-making; for taking rational decision, timely and reliable information is essential and is procured through a logical and well structured method of information collecting, processing and disseminating to decision makers. Such a method in the field of management is widely known as MIS. In today’s world of ever increasing complexities of business as well as business organization, in order to service and grow , must have a properly planned, analyzed, designed and maintained MIS so that it provides timely, reliable and useful information to enable the management to take speedy and rational decisions.

MIS has assumed all the more important role in today’s environment because a manager has to take decisions under two main challenges:

First, because of the liberalization and globalization, in which organizations are required to compete not locally but globally, a manager has to take quick decisions, otherwise his business will be taken away by his competitors. This has further enhanced the necessity for such a system.

Second, in this information age wherein information is doubling up every two or three years, a manager has to process a large voluminous data; failing which he may end up taking a strong decision that may prove to be very costly to the company.

In such a situation managers must be equipped with some tools or a system, which can assist them in their challenging role of decision-making. It is because of the above cited reasons, that today MIS is considered to be of permanent importance, sometimes regarded as the name centre of an organization. Such system assist decision makers in organizations by providing information at various stages of decision making and thus greatly help the organizations to achieve their predetermined goals and objectives. On the other hand, the MIS which is not adequately planned for analyzed, designed, implemented or is poorly maintained may provide developed inaccurate, irrelevant or obsolete information which may prove fatal for the organization. In other words, organizations today just cannot survive and grow without properly planned, designed, implemented and maintained MIS. It has been well understood that MIS enables even small organizations to more than offset the economies of scale enjoyed by their bigger competitors and thus helps in providing a competitive edge over other organizations.

What is the role of managers in managing information system?

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