An Introduction to MIS

First day in class today was quite interesting. We were introduced with a new way of learning by Assos. Prof. Dr Zaidy on Management Information System (MIS). His style of teaching is different from other lecturers who have thought our eMBA class. This put everybody under stress-free mode and enjoyed the class. His purpose was to get everybody to understand MIS subject as not only from an academic perspective, but also to relate with our workplace and how it could benefit the organization.

Maybe some of us might not think of the importance of MIS to their organization. MIS is a great tool to communicate all levels in an organization for specific purposes in more effective and efficient ways. According to Wikipedia, “A Management Information System (MIS) focuses on the management of information systems to provide efficiency and effectiveness of strategic decision making.” The term MIS may sometimes be interchangeable with information technology, e-commerce, information and computer science.

MIS involves the collection of information from various systems in an organization for management’s decision making. MIS will also act a tool to speed-up a process. Some of the various systems in an organization will include human resource management system, budgeting system, inventory system, customer service system, sales system, logistics system and many more. These systems will stand on its own specific purpose for better efficiency or to be collectively gathered by management for decision making process.

For example, in human resource management system (HRMS), an employee can submit his annual leave for approval by his supervisor online. This will act as a specific purpose to the employee to speed-up his leave application process via online platform. However, in view of the fact that HRMS will also cater for employee’s trainings and e-learnings, medical and emergency leave, claims and performance tracking, this will help the management during appraisal process.