Management Information

System
Presented To: Presented By:
Mr. Amit Johri Yash Jani
Roll No 18
Q.1/A) Define and explain the term MIS. State its objectives. Explain
the use of Information (information from MIS-functional areas
accounts, finance, HR, Sales, production) for competitive advantage
• The MIS is defined as a system which provides information support for decision-
making in the organization
• The MIS is defined as an integrated system of man and machine for providing the
information to support the operations, the management and the decision making
function in the organization
• The MIS is defined as a system based on the database of the organization evolved
for the purpose of providing information to the people in the organization
• “MIS is the Information System(s) developed by an organization to run its
management system (comprising management functions, business functions and
decision making processes)”
• Data->Process->Information->Good Decisions->Efficient Task->Successful goal
achievements
Objectives of MIS:

• The objective of MIS is to provide information for decision making on planning,

initiating, organizing, and controlling the operations of the subsystems of the firm
and to provide a synergistic organization in the process.
• It facilitates the decisions-making process by furnishing information in the proper
time frame. This helps the decision-maker to select the best course of action.
• MIS provide requisite information at each level of management to carry out their
functions.
• MIS provide a system of people, computers, procedures, and interactive query
facilities, documents for collecting, and storing, retrieving and transmitting
information to the users.
Use of Information for competitive advantage:
To survive and thrive, an organization must create a competitive advantage. A
competitive advantage is a product or service that an organization’s customers
place a greater value on than similar offerings from a competitor. Unfortunately,
competitive advantages are typically temporary because competitors often seek
ways to duplicate the competitive advantage. In turn, organizations must develop
a strategy based on a new competitive advantage.
When an organization is the first to market with a competitive advantage, it gains a
first mover advantage, significantly impacting its market share. FedEx created a
first mover advantage several years ago when it developed its customer self-
service software allowing people and organizations to request a package pick-up,
print mailing slips, and track packages online.
• As organizations develop their competitive advantages, they must pay close attention to their
competition through environmental scanning. Environmental scanning is the acquisition and
analysis of events and trends in the environment external to an organization. IT has the
opportunity to play an important role in environmental scanning. For example, Frito Lay, a
premier provider of snack foods such as Cracker Jacks and Cheetos, does not just send its
representatives into grocery stores to stock shelves – they carry hand-held computers and record
the product offerings, inventory and even product locations of competitors. Frito Lay uses this
information to gain business intelligence on everything from how well competing products are
selling to the strategic placement of its own products.
• Organizations use three common tools to analyze and develop competitive advantages:
1. The Five Forces Model Michael Porter Helps determining the relative attractiveness of an
industry – Buyer Power, Supplier Power, Threat of substitute products or services, Threat of
new entrants, Rivalry among existing competitors
2. The three Generic Strategies Once the relative attractiveness of an industry is determined and
an organization decides to enter that market, it must formulate a strategy for entering the new
market – broad cost leadership, broad differentiation, a focused strategy
3. Value Chains Once an organization enters a new market using one of Porter’s 3 generic
strategies, it must understand, accept and successfully execute its business strategy. Every
aspect of the organization contributes in the success or failure of the chosen strategy. The
business processes and the value chain they create play an integral role in strategy execution.
Q.1/B) Why is MIS looked upon as a strategic need of management
today? Explain the concept of decision making. Write classification of
decisions. Describe Herbert Simon’s model of decision making.
MIS is looked upon as a strategic need of management today. Because of following
reasons:
• Increasing complexity of Business – Greater size, Complicated forms of
organization, Environmental restraints, Accelerating changes in technical and
information aspects
• Technological Revolution – In transportation, communication, agriculture,
manufacturing. Changes will continue and will demand giant steps in improved
management
• Research & Development – The product life cycle has become short and by its
very nature Research is a gamble – but the only risk that is greater than doing
research is not doing it.
• Product Changes – Customer sophistication
• Information Explosion – Information fatigue syndrome, Information obesity:
More information but less knowledge
• Over a period of time, the concepts of end-user computing using multiple
databases emerged. This is decentralization of the system and the user of the
information becoming independent of computer professionals.
• The concept of MIS changed to a Decision making System. MIS thus provides
computing facility to the end-user and gives a variety of decision making tools to
the user of the system.
Concept of Decision Making:
• “the action of carrying out or carrying into effect”
• Decision making involves the selection of a course of action from among two or
more possible alternatives in order to arrive at a solution for a given problem”
• Principles: assign priorities, set a time frame, gather and review up-to-date, cold,
hard facts, paint a scenario of desired outcome, Weigh the pluses against the
minuses in getting where we want to be, explore the ramifications for all
involved, use your wisdom/have courage/go with your gut instinct and decide,
put the decision into action, evaluate the outcome of the decision and steps of
action
• Each decision we make has risks associated with it. Never risk more than you can
afford to give, Never risk more than you have, Never risk more than you can get
in return, follow your intuition.
• And finally, a decision is a commitment and it should be one you are willing to
trust and abide by. Good decisions are those that open up more possibilities for
future choices.
Types of decisions:
Structured Decisions:
A decision in which all the steps are well structured. For structured decision , it is
easier to design DSS/MIS. Normally deals by Operating Management level
managers.
 Unstructured decision:
A decision in which none of the steps are structured. Researchers &
mathematicians are trying to adopt AI system to provide support for unstructured
decision to give simulation. Normally deals by Top Management level managers.
 Semi structured decision:
A decision in which some steps are structured & some are un structured. Here
DSS gives alternatives only . Normally deals by Middle management level
managers.
Herbert Simon’s model of decision making:
Herbert Simon made key contributions to enhance our understanding of the
decision-making process. Decision making is a process with distinct stages. He
suggested for the first time the decision-making model of human beings. His
model of decision-making has 3 stages:
1. Intelligence which deals with the problem identification and the data collection
on the problem
2. Design which deals with the generation of alternative solutions to the problem at
hand
3. Choice which is selecting the ‘best’ solution from amongst the alternative
solutions using some criterion.
Intelligence Phase

The first step in which the decision-maker identifies/detects the problem or

opportunity. A problem in management context is detecting anything that is not
according to the plan, rule or standard. Problem: detection of sudden very high
attrition for the present month by a HR manager among workers. Opportunity
seeking on the other hand is the identification of a promising circumstance that
might lead to better results. Opportunity- a marketing manager gets to know that
one of his competitors will shut down operations(demand being constant) for
some reason in the next quarter, this means that he will be able to sell more in
the market.
We see that either in the case of a problem or an opportunity, initiating the
decision making process and the first stage is the clear understanding of the
stimulus that triggers this process. Intelligence phase involves:
a. Problem searching
b. Problem formulation
• For searching the problem, the actual is compared to some standard. Differences
are measured and the differences are evaluated to determine whether there is
any problem or not.
• When the problem is identified, there is always a risk of solving the wrong
problem. In problem formulation, establishing relations with some problem
solved earlier or an analogy proves quite useful.
The search process involves an examination of data both in pre-defined and in ad-
hoc ways. IS support should provide both capabilities. The IS should itself scan all
data and trigger a request for human examination of situations apparently calling
for attention. Various models should be incorporated in the scanning and report
layouts. Either the system or the organization should provide communication
channels for perceived problems to be moved up the organization until they can
be acted upon
Design Phase

• Design is the process of designing solution outlines for the problem. Alternative
solutions are designed to solve the same problem. Each alternative solution is
evaluated after gathering data about the solution. The evaluation is done on the
basis of criteria to identify the positive and negative aspects of each solution.
Quantitative tools and models are used to arrive at these solutions. At this stage
the solutions are only outlines of actual solutions and are meant for analysis of
their suitability alone. A lot of creativity and innovation is required to design
solutions.
• The ISs should contain decision models to process data and generate alternative
solutions. It should assist with checklists, templates of decision processes ,
scenarios etc. The models should assist in analyzing the alternatives.
Choice Phase

• It is the stage in which the possible solutions are compared against one another
to find out the most suitable solution. The best solution may be identified using
quantitative tools like decision tree analysis or qualitative tools like the six
thinking hats technique, force field analysis etc.
• Each solution presents a scenario and the problem itself may have multiple
objectives making the choice process difficult. Also uncertainty about the
outcomes and scenarios make the choice of a single solution difficult.
• An IS is most effective if the results of design are presented in a decision-
impelling format. When the choice is made, the role of the system changes to the
collection of data for further feedback and assessment.
Q.2/A) What is a difference between a Function and a Process. Write
about computing architecture you know of.

Difference between Function and Process:

• Business Function: Related sets of specialized activities carried out by an
organization. For efficiency – keeping people who do the same thing together,
often called department.
• Business Process: The way in which the work is organized and coordinated in an
organization to add value.
• A process is a structured, measured set of activities designed to produce a
specified output for a particular customer or market. It implies a strong emphasis
on ‘How’ the work is done within an organization, in contrast to a Product Focus
emphasis on ‘What’?
• The set of activities performed across the organization creating an output of
value to the organization (or to the Customer – Internal or External)
• Every process has a customer – Internal or External to the organization
• The scope of process runs across the department and functions and ends up in
substantial value addition which can be measured against the value expectation
of a customer.
• According to Davenport: “A business process is a set of logically related tasks that
use the resources of an organization to achieve a defined business outcome”
• A process has a clear beginning and an end, and clearly identified inputs and
outputs. Processes are cross-functional and not restricted within a single function
Computing Architectures:
• The components which implement functionality of these layers can be coupled
either tightly or loosely.
• Loose coupling brings: 1. greater flexibility in developing and deploying
components separately in networked environment in distributed fashion 2.
flexibility in interconnecting heterogeneous systems and platforms and 3. better
scalability and maintenance of information systems.
• The ISs which have all these layers managed by a single computer program is
called single-tier system.
• While ISs that have separate programs/systems to implement individual
functionality are called two-tier (client-server) or three-tier systems. In some
systems, business logic may be implemented using multiple programs/systems,
are called n-tier systems.
• As single-tier app may be fine for personal apps. But what if there are multiple
people-say employees of company who have to access –that is read and update-
the same common data? A sales order created by one employee must be
available to others.
This is where you bring in multi-tier apps:
• In a 2-tier architecture, the data is separated from the app and stored on a
different platform. Each user has a copy of the app on his own machine, the client
machines but the data is stored on the server. All these machines are connected
by a network and can “talk to” or exchange data with each other.
• 3-tier architecture The app here is split into: 1. One part handles only the UI- the
screens, option menu-on the client machine 2. the other part has the business
logic-compute salary, generate invoice, record ledger transaction- is stored at a
central, common location. This means any change to the app has to be done only
once at the central server and NOT at each location. This is the application server.
The app is partitioned – business logic kept centrally, presentation logic kept
locally, data transfer over network minimized.
Q.2/B.) Explain the concept and attributes of services. What are the 7 Ps of
marketing? “All services are bound by process steps and each step adds
value in the service”. Write a note on Service Process Cycle and Analysis.
Concept of Service:
• Service is an identifiable, intangible activity or a process designed to fulfill certain
expectations of the customer.
• Kotler: Service is an activity or a benefit that one part can offer to another which
is essentially intangible and does not result in the ownership of anything. Its
production may not be tied to a physical product
Attributes of Service:
• Intangibility
• Inseparability of Receiver and Provider
• Storage
• Inconsistency
7 Ps of Marketing:

• Product
• Price
• Place
• Promotion
• People
• Process
• Physical Evidence
Service Process Cycle and Analysis:

All services are bound by process steps and each step adds value in the service. The
stages are;
• Initiation of service
• Transition to service
• Pre-service
• Service
• Post-service
All service stages are applicable in every kind of service in every environment. The
customer satisfaction is best achieved completing these steps. The people who
drive the service are to be supported by tools, information and system assistance
so that the customer interaction is quick, responsive and pleasant and leave a
feeling of comfort and confidence of service delivery
The service can be quick if the steps are mechanized and/or automated with the
help of technology. The service can be highly responsive, if at each stage the
information support is available in shortest possible time. The responsiveness of
the service would increase with:
• Faster data capture and processing in every interaction
• Access to various databases and services
• Error free transaction processing and updating
• Application processing at each state of service cycle
Q.3) A mobile company has decided to computerize its operations.

A.) Data entry screen for generating bill

B.) Service wise customer report
C.) Format of pending bill