UNIT-1

By:Mehul Patel Mehul20_march1989@yahoo.in

Functions of Management Information Systems

There are many different functions involved in a successful Management Information Systems (MIS) department. There has to be people skilled in both software and hardware installations. All employees must also maintain good people skills. The Surry County MIS Department deals with every department in the County in some form or another. The MIS department is responsible for all computers that are on the Surry County Network. At the present time the number of PCs that are supported by MIS Department is around 300 and is growing everyday. Not only does the MIS department support PCs we also maintain County servers. These servers control the Tax, Finance, E911, Sheriff, EMS, Fire Marshal, and many other departments' daily activities. Without these servers in proper working order things in Surry County would be a lot different than you know them to be.

A. Breakdown Of Departmental Functions:

There are 10 basic functions of an Management Information Systems department. These functions consist of the following: help desk, support teams, service and support, training, networking, purchasing, installations, research and development, operations, planning, budget.

B. Explaining Each Of The Functions:

Help Desk: Service support calls and help solve problems. All calls entered into helpdesk database for quick update and retrieval. Support Teams: Teams assigned to different department and projects to better offer ongoing knowledge and expertise in any single area. Service and Support: Repair hardware, software support, warranty service. Provide onsite service to all County sites. Provide phone support. Act as liaison between the department head and the vendor support team. Training: Train employees on computer basics, office productivity software and specialized software individual to each department. Provide training facility for vendor use. Networking: LAN / WAN design, implementation and support. File, print, e-mail, www server support. Backup and anti-virus server support. Ethernet, and fiber optic support. Purchasing: Specifying purchasing

specs. Maintaining standards for purchases. Provide quote, assist in maintaining fixed assets, assist in grant proposals. Installations: New hardware and software. Research and Development: Review of current trends in the industry, attend training in new technology, and evaluating new systems. Operations: Daily, weekly, and monthly maintenance such as backups, server auditing, and system usage checks. Light data entry and modifications. Planning and Budget: Maintaining relationships with departments and their priority areas. Planning for long and short-term projects and budget review for future years.

Organization as a System: A 10-Step Process

Table of Contents
Introduction Step 1. Outputs Step 2. Customers Step 3. Environment / Community Need Step 4. Customer Knowledge Step 5. Processes Step 6. Inputs Step 7. Suppliers Step 8. Vision Step 9. Plan to Improve Step 10. Design and Redesign

Introduction
Deming first called attention to the importance of linking a system for production with a system for improvement and tying them to a common aim for the future. He referred to this as "viewing production as a system." Dr. Thomas Nolan, of Associates in Process Improvements, Silver Spring, MD and Dr. Paul Batalden of the Center for the Evaluative Clinical Sciences, Dartmouth Medical School, are responsible for creating this document based on the work of Dr. Deming. This exercise has helped many leaders view their organization as a system. This document is used with permission. All the tools and methods of quality improvement revolve around a basic understanding of "production as a system." Whether the organization produces cars, bank deposits, surgery or education, the principles are the same. Therefore, it is important to read through this section in its entirety being mindful that this will later be part of your project. Deming defined a system as a group of interdependent people, items, processes, products, and services that have a common purpose or aim. A system that is capable of continual improvement can be illustrated as:

To understand an organization as a system of production we must consider: How we make what we make. Why we make what we make. How we improve what we make. This can be depicted as:

By defining a system in this way, we can link the means of production with the aim or purpose of the organization in order to continually improve. "Aim" means the connection to the underlying social or community need. The aim also considers the environmental issues that may effect the future of the organization. General systems theory, originally proposed by Von Bertalanffy and then by others in biology, psychiatry, management, and engineering, is all related. An "open system" is a system that permits continued access from "outside" of the system itself.

Step 1: Outputs
The question we seek to answer is: What do you produce? or What do you make? Tips: List the important ones first (e.g., highest volume, etc.) Be sure you are listing services or products, not the activities necessary to produce them. For example, "lab result reports" is the product and laboratory testing is the process; "organizational policy" is the product and "policy-making" is the process. Manufacturing organizations produce a product. Service organizations produce services. Health care workers commonly produce information, procedures, reports and decisions, patient interventions, services, and a therapeutic environment among other outputs. This is a difficult exercise for service organizations. We are in the habit of describing what we do -- not what we make. Being able to describe what we make is the beginning of being able to figure out how to improve. The answer to this question helps begin the knowledge building activity by focusing on what care, service,or products the hospital produces.

Step 2: Customers
The question we seek to answer is: Who uses or receives these services or products? Tips: List the customers you often encounter. Focus first on the external customers. Be as specific as is practical. Customers are those who need and/or benefit from the products and services you produce. The answer to this question is a clarification of the identity of those who benefit from what you make.

Step 3: Environment / Community Need

The question we seek to answer is: What is the underlying need that those customers have for what you make? Tips: What environmental issues can impact what you provide ? (competitors who have developed innovative approaches, national or international issues, change in Federal laws/regulation, etc.) Focus on the fundamental, underlying needs for your services. "Why do people actually need what you make?" Sometimes it is helpful to take each major customer and carefully ask about their need for what you make. It is often helpful to work with the highest volume outputs and the most important customers rather than initially trying to address the needs of all customers for all services and products. Sometimes it is helpful to ask, "What other services or products might meet that need?" as a means of gaining further insight into the underlying need. Remember that the focus is on the need--not what you or anyone else may do to meet that need. The purpose of this question is to help you gain insight into the underlying need for what you do.

Step 4: Customer Knowledge

The questions that must be answered here are: What measures or characteristics do customers use when they assess and judge the goodness or quality of what you make? What about the customers might prompt or drive their interest in assessing and judging quality that way? Tips: Start with a single customer, identify what you produce for them, and ask how that specific customer assesses quality or "goodness" about that product or service. Now focus on what might prompt each customer (or customer group) to assess and judge quality that way. What are their reasons for that quality characteristic? Connect those "prompts" to the measures of quality with an arrow from the

prompt to the measure. These prompts can be thought of as "drivers" of the measures of quality and goodness. The answers to these questions help develop further insight into the ways in which improvements in what is done can be guided by the specific quality concerns of those who benefit from what you do. The intention here is to build further knowledge of the customers that you serve.

Step 5: Processes
The question we seek to answer here is: What methods or activities do you use to make your service or product? Tips: Arrange the processes in a typical scenario that illustrates what usually happens. This may be the steps of how a patient comes and moves through the major steps in the hospital, or it can be the production of a car. Some processes come together to form the "core" process--or mainstay--of what you do. Other processes support that core process. Both are important. Supportive processes find their way into many steps of the core process. Arrange the steps in the core process in such a way that it is clear that the supportive processes help the core process. If displaying the Post-It notes on a piece of butcher paper, consider turning the sheet on its long side and starting the first step in the core process in the upper left hand corner of the sheet, then list the steps in sequence across the top of the sheet. The supportive processes can be clustered on the bottom one-half of the sheet. The answers to these questions reveal that there are several processes at work to generate what you produce. Some of them are linked to each other. Some of these linked processes form a "core" that represents the basic work of the organization as it constitutes the "mainstay" of what is regularly produced. Further, it will be clear that some other processes are linked in a supportive way to that "main" or "core" process.

Step 6: Inputs The question we seek to answer here is: What comes into your process and is changed by the regular actions of the process to create the services or products? Tips: List the human, financial, material, and information inputs to your processes. Inputs come from internal as well as external sources.

The answer to this question builds knowledge of the needs, skills, materials or goods that regularly enter your system and which form the beginning point for your work.

Step 7: Suppliers The question we seek to answer is: Who or what specific people, departments, or organizations provide the inputs? Tips: For each input in step 6, list the supplier(s). List suppliers of patients, goods, manpower. Sometimes the same person or department can be a supplier as well as a customer of the process. If so, they supply one thing and receive another -presumably your process has added value to what they have supplied. Remember that the concept of supplier applies both inside and outside your organization. The answer to this question identifies those you depend on for what you do.

Step 8: Vision The question we seek to answer is: Based on what you know about the need for what you do, and your knowledge of the customers, what is the vision for the future in your organization? Tips: Your "vision" for what you seek to become should be clearly related to the underlying need in the community and society for what you do, as well as to your knowledge of the customers. Placing those social/community needs and customer knowledge items (the "prompts" behind the way in which people define quality) side by side on a single sheet of paper sometimes allows you to begin thinking about what it might take to become an organization in the future that better meets those needs. Note that your knowledge of the processes of what you do helps inform your understanding of what those processes are able to produce (process capability) in relation to the needs and to the knowledge of the customer. Is the "vision" shared? What is shared is likely to actually inform ongoing efforts. Be as specific as you can. If the "picture" of the future is clear--like a photograph--it is easier for people to know what is meant and, therefore, it is more

likely to be realized. Remember that your ability to clearly state this aim will improve as you keep working on it. Sometimes it is helpful to ask this question for five years from now. "What do we need to become in five years that we are not now, based on our knowledge of needs and our knowledge of the customer?" Some have found it helpful to realize that a vision of the future should permit your organization to be recognized as "responsive" and as "discernible" by those you intend to serve. The ingredients of your shared view of the future for your organization underlie what will be needed to build a shared sense of that future. The shared sense of the future is what every worker needs in order to align what they do and how they might improve what they do with the future of the organization.

Step 9: Plan to Improve The question we seek to answer is: Based on your vision for the future, on your knowledge of the needs, on your knowledge of the customer, and on information from employees involved and knowledgeable about your work, what is strategically important to improve? Tips: Remember that you answer this type of question each time you build a capital or operating budget. Limit number of responses to an important few; certainly less than five. Sometimes it is helpful to think of these as "themes" of improvement. Sometimes it is helpful to think of these as the names of major "gaps" against which the next layer of the organization will be asked to "plan." The answers to this question provide the near-term focus (12-18 months) for work on the improvement of what you do. They integrate the improvement efforts of the organization.

Step 10: Design and Redesign The final question we need to answer is: What specific process(es) will offer you the greatest leverage in securing the strategic improvements you seek to make? Tips: Be as specific as you can. Limit the number of processes to 3-8.

In keeping with your strategic priorities for improvement, you may identify some processes that simply need to be stabilized so that they are more predictable. The answers to this question offer greater precision for the immediate improvement plans and recognize that improvement will occur either by designing some new processes or by redesigning existing processes. Now examine the arrows in the diagram that you first saw in the Introduction. These must be managed in an organization. Who assures that customer knowledge is gathered and translated into a vision? Who monitors the involvement and feeds it back to enhance the vision?

Components of MIS:
The various components of MIS in the project are Data relating to program implementation through community-based interventions. Data relating to processes adopted for the development of Tanks. Administration-related data,

from the roles and responsibilities of the functionaries at various levels Tasks assigned, completed and the output related information. Data pertaining to conducting review meetings with people and those conducted at the block and district levels. Assignments and the Interventions designed by the NGOs for effective participation of the people and CFTs. The data-based reports generated by them. Visits conducted in relation to the development of Tanks at village, Taluk and district levels visit reports on specified indicators. Data relating to various training programs organized/ to be organized to various stakeholders at different levels. Important aspects, as extracted from the minutes of the meeting organized by the TUCs and the issues as raised by the TUGs at the village/ tank level and those addressed by the TUCs. Efforts made by the CFTs (Processes adopted by them) with in the broad framework provided by the JSYS through NGOs process oriented documentation. Data relating to preparation of cost estimates and their follow-up etc. Data relating to project finances including the expenditures made under various heads. Any other related aspect, as suggested or evolved over a period of time with constant interaction and dialogue with the people and stakeholders at various levels.

MIS Activities
The textbook defines an information system as a set of interrelated components that work together to collect, process, store, and disseminate information to support decision making, coordination, control, analysis, and visualization in an

organization. In addition to supporting decision making, coordination, and control, information systems may also help managers and workers analyze problems, visualize complex subjects, and create new products.

Types of Information Systems

Information systems differ in their business needs. Also depending upon different levels in organization information systems differ. Three major information systems are 1. Transaction processing systems 2. Management information systems 3. Decision support systems Figure 1.2 shows relation of information system to the levels of organization. The information needs are different at different organizational levels. Accordingly the information can be categorized as: strategic information, managerial information and operational information. Strategic information is the information needed by top most management for decision making. For example the trends in revenues earned by the organization are required by the top management for setting the policies of the organization. This information is not required by the lower levels in the organization. The information systems that provide these kinds of information are known as Decision Support Systems.

Figure 1.2 - Relation of information systems to levels of organization The second category of information required by the middle management is known as managerial information. The information required at this level is used for making short term decisions and plans for the organization. Information like sales analysis for the past quarter or yearly production details etc. fall under this category. Management information system (MIS) caters to such information needs of the organization. Due to its capabilities to fulfill the managerial information needs of the organization, Management Information Systems have become a necessity for all big organizations. And due to its vastness, most of the big organizations have separate MIS departments to look into the related issues and proper functioning of the system. The third category of information is relating to the daily or short term information needs of the organization such as attendance records of the employees. This kind of information is required at the operational level for carrying out the day-to-day operational activities. Due to its capabilities to provide information for processing transaction of the organization, the information system is known as Transaction Processing System or Data Processing System. Some examples of information provided by such systems areprocessing of orders, posting of entries in bank, evaluating overdue purchaser orders etc.

1.Transaction Processing Systems:

TPS processes business transaction of the organization. Transaction can be any activity of the organization. Transactions differ from organization to organization. For example, take a railway reservation system. Booking, canceling, etc are all transactions. Any query made to it is a transaction. However, there are some transactions, which are common to almost all organizations. Like employee new employee, maintaining their leave status, maintaining employees accounts, etc. This provides high speed and accurate processing of record keeping of basic operational processes. These include calculation, storage and retrieval. Transaction processing systems provide speed and accuracy, and can be programmed to follow routines functions of the organization.

2.Management Information Systems:

These systems assist lower management in problem solving and making decisions. They use the results of transaction processing and some other information also. It is a set of information processing functions. It should handle queries as quickly as they arrive. An important element of MIS is database. A database is a non-redundant collection of interrelated data items that can be processed through application programs and available to many users.

3.Decision Support Systems:

These systems assist higher management to make long term decisions. These type of systems handle unstructured or semi structured decisions. A decision is considered unstructured if there are no clear procedures for making the decision and if not all the factors to be considered in the decision can be readily identified in advance. These are not of recurring nature. Some recur infrequently or occur only once. A decision support system must very flexible. The user should be able to produce customized reports by giving particular data and format specific to particular situations.

Types of Information Management Systems

The management of Information is facilitated by the use of Information Technology and Information Sciences. The popular Information Management Systems can be listed as follows:

1 Document management system (DMS) 2 Content management system (CMS) 3 Library management system (LMS) 4 Records management system (RMS) 5 Digital imaging system (DIS) 6 Learning management system (LMS) 7 Geographic information system (GIS)

Document management system (DMS)

The DMS is focused primarily on the storage and retrieval of self-contained electronic data resources in the document form. Generally, The DMS is designed to help the organizations to manage the creation and flow of documents through the provision of a centralized repository. The workflow of the DMS encapsulates business rules and metadata.

Content management system (CMS)

The CMS assist in the creation, distribution, publishing, and management of the enterprise information. These systems are generally applicable on the online content which is dynamically managed as a website on the internet or intranet. The CMS system can also be called as web content management (WCM).

Library management system (LMS)

Library management systems facilitate the library technical functions and services that include tracking of the library assets, managing CDs and books inventory and lending, supporting the daily administrative activities of the library and the record keeping.

Records management system (RMS)

The RMS are the recordkeeping systems which capture, maintain and provide access to the records including paper as well as electronic documents, efficiently and timely.

Digital imaging system (DIS)

The DIS assist in automation of the creation of electronic versions of the paper documents such as PDFs or Tiffs. So created Electronic documents are used as an input to the records management systems.

Learning management system (LMS)

Learning management systems are generally used to automate the e-learning process which includes the administrative process like registering students, managing training resources, creating courseware, recording results etc.

Geographic information system (GIS)

The GIS are special purpose, computer-based systems that facilitate the capture, storage, retrieval, display and analysis of the spatial data.