Q1. What do you understand by Information processes data?

Ans :- MIS is an Information system which helps in providing the management of an organization with information which is used by management for decision making. A management information system (MIS) is a subset of the overall internal controls of a business covering the application of people, documents, technologies, and procedures by management accountants to solving business problems such as costing a product, service or a business-wide strategy. Management information systems are distinct from regular information systems in that they are used to analyze other information systems applied in operational activities in the organization. Academically, the term is commonly used to refer to the group of information management methods tied to the automation or support of human decision making, e.g. Decision Support Systems, Expert systems, and Executive information systems. During the period of preindustrial revolution most of the data processing was done manually. It was after the industrial revolution that the computers slowly started replacing manual labour. The modern digital computer was basically designed to handle scientific calculations. During the period 1940 to 1960 computers were commercially used for census and payroll work. This involved Large amount of data and its processing. Since then the commercial application exceeded the scientific applications for which the computer were mainly intended for. MIS is an Information system which helps in providing the management of an organization with information which is used by management for decision making. The Basic characteristics of an effective Management Information System are as follows: I. Management-oriented: The basic objective of MIS is to provide information support to the management in the organization for decision making. So an effective MIS should start its journey from appraisal of management needs, mission and goal of the business organization. It may be individual or collective goals of an organization. The MIS is such that it serves all the levels of management in an organization i.e. top, middle and lower level. II. Management directed: When MIS is management-oriented, it should be directed by the management because it is the management who tells their needs and requirements more effectively than anybody else. Manager should guide the MIS professionals not only at the stage of planning but also on development, review and implementation stages so that effective system should be the end product of the whole exercise in making an effective MIS. III. Integrated: It means a comprehensive or complete view of all the sub systems in the organization of a company. Development of information must be integrated so that all the operational and functional information sub systems should be worked together as a single entity. This integration is necessary because it leads to retrieval of more meaningful and useful information. V. Common data flows: The integration of different sub systems will lead to a common data flow which will further help in avoiding duplicity and redundancy in data collection, storage and processing. For example, the customer orders are the basis for many activities in an

organization viz. billing, sales for cashing, etc. Data is collected by a system analyst from its original source only one time. Then he utilizes the data with minimum number of processing procedures and uses the information for production output documents and reports in small numbers and eliminates the undesirable data. This will lead to elimination of duplication that simplify the operations and produce an efficient information system. Q2. What are the uses of Executive Information Systems? Many senior managers find that direct on-line access to organizational data is helpful. For example, Paul Frech, president of Lockheed-Georgia, monitors employee contributions to company-sponsored programs (United Way, blood drives) as a surrogate measure of employee morale (Houdeshel and Watson 1987). C. Robert Kidder, CEO of Duracell, found that productivity problems were due to salespeople in Germany wasting time calling on small stores and took corrective action (Main 1989). Information systems have long been used to gather and store information, to produce specific reports for workers, and to produce aggregate reports for managers. However, senior managers rarely use these systems directly, and often find the aggregate information to be of little use without the ability to explore underlying details (Watson & Rainer 1991, Crockett 1992). An Executive Information System (EIS) is a tool that provides direct on-line access to relevant information in a useful and navigable format. Relevant information is timely, accurate, and actionable information about aspects of a business that are of particular interest to the senior manager. The useful and navigable format of the system means that it is specifically designed to be used by individuals with limited time, limited keyboarding skills, and little direct experience with computers. An EIS is easy to navigate so that managers can identify broad strategic issues, and then explore the information to find the root causes of those issues. Executive Information Systems differ from traditional information systems in the following ways:

are specifically tailored to executive's information needs are able to access data about specific issues and problems as well as aggregate reports provide extensive on-line analysis tools including trend analysis, exception reporting & "drill-down" capability access a broad range of internal and external data are particularly easy to use (typically mouse or touchscreen driven) are used directly by executives without assistance present information in a graphical form

Purpose of EIS The primary purpose of an Executive Information System is to support managerial learning about an organization, its work processes, and its interaction with the external environment. Informed managers can ask better questions and make better decisions. Vandenbosch and Huff (1992) from the University of Western Ontario found that Canadian firms using an EIS achieved better business results if their EIS promoted managerial learning. Firms with an EIS designed to maintain managers' "mental models" were less effective than firms with an EIS designed to build or enhance managers' knowledge. This distinction is supported by Peter Senge in The Fifth Dimension. He illustrates the benefits of learning about the behaviour of systems versus simply learning more about their states. Learning more about the state of a system leads to reactive management fixes. Typically these reactions feed into the underlying system behaviour and contribute to a downward spiral. Learning more about system behaviour and how various system inputs and actions interrelate will allow managers to make more proactive changes to create long-term improvement. A secondary purpose for an EIS is to allow timely access to information. All of the information contained in an EIS can typically be obtained by a manager through traditional methods. However, the resources and time required to manually compile information in a wide variety of formats, and in response to ever changing and ever more specific questions usually inhibit managers from obtaining this information. Often, by the time a useful report can be compiled, the strategic issues facing the manager have changed, and the report is never fully utilized. Timely access also influences learning. When a manager obtains the answer to a question, that answer typically sparks other related questions in the manager's mind. If those questions can be posed immediately, and the next answer retrieved, the learning cycle continues unbroken. Using traditional methods, by the time the answer is produced, the context of the question may be lost, and the learning cycle will not continue. An executive in Rockart & Treacy's 1982 study noted that: Your staff really can't help you think. The problem with giving a question to the staff is that they provide you with the answer. You learn the nature of the real question you should have asked when you muck around in the data (p. 9). A third purpose of an EIS is commonly misperceived. An EIS has a powerful ability to direct management attention to specific areas of the organization or specific business problems. Some managers see this as an opportunity to discipline subordinates. Some subordinates fear the directive nature of the system and spend a great deal of time trying to outwit or discredit it. Neither of these behaviours is appropriate or productive. Rather, managers and subordinates can work together to determine the root causes of issues highlighted by the EIS. The powerful focus of an EIS is due to the maxim "what gets measured gets done." Managers are particularly attentive to concrete information about their performance when it is available to their superiors. This focus is very valuable to an organization if the information reported is actually important and represents a balanced view of the organization's objectives.

Misaligned reporting systems can result in inordinate management attention to things that are not important or to things which are important but to the exclusion of other equally important things. For example, a production reporting system might lead managers to emphasize volume of work done rather than quality of work. Worse yet, productivity might have little to do with the organization's overriding customer service objectives.