Management Support System

The purpose of the management support system is to assist the managers at different levels in an organization, in the controlling and the management of the business. Management support systems provide different kinds of reports, such as summary report, sales report, and customer balance report. They also assist the managers in the decision-making process by generating projected reports like projected sales report etc. Management support systems also provide information to the executives related to the overall operations of the organization, the overall growth, profits, its performance etc. Moreover, for any of the reports, it also provides a detailed report specifying its internal details, if required.

Management Information System (MIS)

MIS is a collection of people, procedures, software, databases, and devices that provides information to managers and decision makers.

MIS provides information to the managers to help them make informed decisions. MIS supports the managers in the decision-making process and enhances their productivity and performance. For example, MIS may generate information related to the sales of a product in a month and the inventory status during that month. It can also monitor the performance and maintain coordination between the different functional areas, like purchase and accounts payable, in an organization.

MIS works with the transaction processing system. MIS uses the data generated from TPS as input, and converts them into meaningful aggregate form.

MIS generates different kinds of reports like summary report, exception report, and detailed report. Summaries are for the high-level management and give statistical information to the managers. Exception reports provide information about the activities that are different from the normal functioning. Detailed reports generally provide operational level reports.

A MIS dashboard for senior management

The different kinds of MIS reports are either scheduled to be generated at fixed intervals of time, may be event-driven and generated when an event occurs, or may be generated in an ad- hoc manner, for a particular query. Scheduled reports are periodic reports that are generated weekly, monthly, or quarterly. Ad-hoc reports are generated on-demand, whenever information is required by the managers.

· MIS can also generate customized reports, where managers can select from different data, sorting options, and display choices.

· The focus of MIS is operational efficiency. The reports generated by the MIS helps the managers in controlling the operations of the organization and in the decision-making process.

Decision Support System (DSS)

· DSS is a collection of people, procedures, software, databases, and devices that supports problem-specific decision making.

· DSS support the middle level managers in the decision-making process. They supplement the decision-making power of the manager with the information technology.

· DSS facilitate decision making by applying mathematical or logical models and interactions to solve problems. For examples, a large number of mathematical and logical calculations are required to be performed on data which may be more than million in number, in order to generate information that helps in the decision-making process.

· DSSs are user-friendly and highly interactive.

· DSS focuses on the decision-making effectiveness.

· DSS use data from the TPS and MIS, and, also any new data from external sources, such as current share prices or prices of competitors.

· DSS provides comparison of alternatives and recommendations of a preferred option. DSS provide powerful models and tools for simulation, optimization etc. to the managers so that they can evaluate from several alternatives before making a decision. For a particular problem, the managers can use DSS to get outcome of several different scenarios, and then compare them to arrive at the right decision.

Executive Information System (EIS)

· EIS provides a generalized computing and communication environment to senior managers to support strategic decisions. It provides summarized information in a convenient form to the top-level managers.

· Unlike DSS, they are not designed to use analytical models for specific problem solving. EIS is designed to facilitate access to information quickly and effectively, for the senior managers.

· EIS is used by the senior managers to identify a problem, an opportunity, or a trend which affects the organization’s future growth. The middle level managers use DSS to suggest solution to the problem or analyse the opportunity.

· EIS takes data from the TPS, MIS and allows communication with external sources of information.

· EIS has menu-driven user-friendly interfaces, interactive graphics to help visualization of the situation, and telecommunication links to connect to the external information, if required.