Role of the management information system

ROLE OF THE 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 works faster and supplies more blood when needed. It regulates and controls the incoming impure blood, processes 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 sent 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 the top management. The MIS satisfies the diverse needs through a variety of systems such as Query Systems, Analysis Systems, Modeling Systems and Decision Support Systems the MIS helps in Strategic Planning, Management Control, Operational Control and Transaction Processing.

 The MIS helps the clerical personnel in the transaction processing and answers their queries on the data pertaining to the transaction, the status of a particular record and references on a variety of documents. 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 operations level to correct an out of control situation.

The MIS helps the middle management in short them planning, target setting and controlling the business functions. It is supported by the use of the management tools of planning and control. The MIS helps the top management in goal setting, strategic planning and evolving the business plans and their implementation. The MIS plays the role of information generation, communication, problem identification and helps in the process of decision making. The MIS, therefore, plays a vita role in the management, administration and operations of an organization.