Concepts and Scope of Management of Information Systems in Business - Essay Example

PURPOSE & SCOPE OF MIS Information Technology today in any organization has become one of the important areas to deal with the functionalities of the work functions of the company. Information Technology is mainly concerned about the application of technology in managing information of the organization. Information Technology or IT deals with the usage of the computer software to manipulate the information. One of the important sections which could well become the core development of the future business organization is Management of Information Systems (MIS). MIS is part of the IT spectrum which deals with people, information, technology and business. MIS can be a key aspect in the decision making and the task analysis of the company which is dealing with technology and business. Now let's move our discussion to Information Systems and types of Information System. An Information System can be defined as a collection of hardware, software, people and data and which are integrated to generate information which caters the need of various organizations and which support various day-to-day activities. Information can be classified as two sections: internal information systems and external information systems. Internal information systems as the name imply deals with information pertaining to the details of the company. It talks about how the internal data of the company regarding various activities can be managed and manipulated. And further it talks about how it affects the state of the business details of the economy of the company. External System talks about the integration of information details of the company and its other external business process. The major point is that the external information systems talks about the concept of Business to Business Solutions (B2B) An external system can work well if it follows work flow steps for a process to operate at B2B level. A company should receive and validate the request message which is destined for an external IS to fetch business data. It should select as particular IS and based on it should run orders, manage interactions with external IS. Thus this way company stands at better position to handle the information and as such can place itself in a better strategic position in the market. Thus Internal & External Information Systems are very essential for the up gradation of the information level of a department in a business organization. Now that we know about Information Systems, Lets move ahead by discussion managing information through information management. Information management can be defined as handling or managing of the information which has been gathered from various sources in order to optimize the accessibility of the information which is used by the various departments of the organization. One of the major advantages of using Information system for management as tool is that it is very effective and efficient and thus these factors propel the growth of the company in a positive manner. One major limitation of information management is that the amount of information present and usage of tools and techniques to manage information has lead to the problem of information overflow and thus it makes us understand that we need to adopt effective strategies in order to overcome the limitation. In general whenever we talk about the information systems and its types, we come across five different types of IS. They are: Office Automation System: Office Automation System or OAS helps the people working in the office workspace to process personal and organizational data, create documents and perform calculations in an effective manner. They are useful because they increase the productivity of the whole system. The subparts of OAS are communication systems and groupware systems. Example for OAS could be a word processing software, spreadsheets etc. Departmental Systems: As the name implies Departmental Systems deals with individual departments present in an organization. These could be Manufacturing and production systems, Sales and Marketing systems, Financial and Accounting Systems and Human resources systems. All these systems pertain to a particular department in a company and hence cater to needs of that departmental area. Knowledge Work Systems: These can also be known as KWS. These are used by the technical staff of the organization. KWS use modeling functions to convert design specifications into graphical designs. This whole procedure may also include tools like Computer Aided Design/Manufacture (CAD/CAM) Executive Support Systems: It is also known as ESS. An ESS is designed to aid senior management in making strategic decisions. It gathers, analyzes and summarizes the major internal and external information used in the business environment. It can be a strategic partner for the management team to decide decisions and thus develop the structure of whole organization in an effective manner Transaction Processing Systems: Also known as TPS, these are designed to collect, store, modify and retrieve the transactions of organization efficiently and accurately. To be considered for TPS a computer must pass the ACID test (Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation and Durability.) We know that management of a company is performed on three levels: Strategic, tactical and operational. Now let's understand information management on these levels. Strategic Information Management embeds the ideas of records and information management and knowledge management. This whole technology makes its easy to create, store and access the information in a better manner, thus helping management executives of the company to take better decisions in the functioning of the organization. Another level is Tactical. Information Management can use the tactical concept in the form information Dissemination Management (IDM). It provides information at the right place and in right format. This can enhance the productivity of the whole organization. Another level which can adapted as a part of IM is operational, here we are talking about the area of the company which deals with goods and services and information details regarding them. It also ensures that business operations are effective. This is done by gathering all the information and managing this information in an efficient manner. Now let's talk about the various classification schemes of data and computers Classification of computers can be done in the following manner. They are super computer, mainframes, mini computers, personal computer and notebook computers. Classification of data is also done. Data can be classified according to its frequency of usage or according to its critical value to the existing problem. It can be presented to the user in the form of high level data or low level data. Data can be of analog data or digital data or hybrid. Similarly data storage is done on various devices like magnetic tapes, floppy disks, hard drives, CD-ROMs and DVD devices. Now let's talk about Communication Technology. Communication Technology along with IT has changed the face of the technology in the present day situation. Together they are known as ICT (Information Communication Technology) .ICT covers any product that will store retrieve and manipulate information electronically in digital form. ICT covers three aspects. They are information, Communication and Technology. Blending all the three resulted in the development of new age Information technology companies which believes in ICT and use ICT to develop to achieve their goals. Today every one has realized the importance of IT. Many new avenues have opened in the fields of IT. New technologies like BT (Bio-Technology) have revolutionized the boom of IT. IT is being used in many verticals like Banking and Financial Services, Entertainment Sector, Health care services and hardware and semiconductor technology. Thus this way we can say that Trends and future developments in IT look bright and could prove beneficial to the mankind. Conclusion: Having seen the concepts and scope of Management of Information Systems, we can say that MIS is boon to management team leading a technology firm. Through the concepts of MIS a manager can understand the technical details involved in a particular project and so the decision making capability of the manager can become more effective and accurate thus enhancing the productivity of the company. MIS can be thus used as weapon in understanding the information systems details for the top level management and can be effective tool for them to make decisions of the company. Thus MIS should be made part of every business organization which deals with technology or information directly or indirectly. References: 1. Avdesh Gupta (2005) Management Infromation Systems. New York:Firewall Media 2. Versha Mehta (1999) Management Information Systems :Concepts. Mumbai:Anmol Publications 3. Leonard Garret (2001) Management Systems. London:Irwin Publications Read More