Within every organization, management is required to bring together the data gathered through its functional activities and to analyze that data to help management decision making.

What is management information system?

A management information system (MIS) is a computerized database of financial information organized and programmed in such a way that it produces regular reports on operations for every level of management in a company. It is usually also possible to obtain special reports from the system easily.

Objectives of MIS

The goals of an MIS are to implement the organizational structure and dynamics of the enterprise for the purpose of managing the organization in a better way and capturing the potential of the information system for competitive advantage.

Following are the basic objectives of an MIS:

Capturing Data: Capturing contextual data, or operational information that will contribute in decision making from various internal and external sources of organization.

Processing Data: The captured data is processed into information needed for planning, organizing, coordinating, directing and controlling functionalities at strategic, tactical and operational level. Processing data means:

• making calculations with the data
• sorting data
• classifying data and
• summarizing data

Information Storage: Information or processed data need to be stored for future use.

Information Retrieval: The system should be able to retrieve this information from the storage as and when required by various users.

Information Propagation: Information or the finished product of the MIS should be circulated to its users periodically using the organizational network.