Management Information Systems

• What is a management information system?

  A management information system is a computerised system that provides management with information to make decisions.
• What are the five types of management information systems?


  • Operational information system

  • Management information system

  • Decision support system

  • Expert system

  • Integrated information system
• What is an operational information system?

  Operational system- focuses on strong information that is related to the day-to-day operations of the business. Data is collected and stored in different departments of the organisation. Types of operational systems:

  a)Finance

  b)Purchasing & Inventory

  c)General Administration

  d)HR

  e)Marketing
• What is a managerial information system?


  Managerial system- the information in this system comes from the operational system and is mainly used by the upper levels of management.
• What is a decision-support system?

  Decision-support system- this system contains information that is gathered from the operational+managerial systems. Most of the information is related to the external environment (information on competitors, the state of the economy and government policies). This information will help managers to make long term decisions.
• What is an expert system?

  Expert system- these are software programmes that are developed by experts in the particular area which is used to make intelligent decisions. It introduces problem solving techniques and can be used by all levels of management. It can be used to make decisions on the following:

  a)finding the best location for a business

  b)selecting the best advertising channel for a product/service or in a recruitment and selection exercise
• What is an integrated information system?

  Integrated system- is a holistic system that satisfies all decision makers at all levels of the organisation and contains information from the operational, managerial and decision-support system.