MANAGEMENT INFORMATION SYSTEM

Information is the basis for every decision taken in an organization. The efficiency of management depends upon the availability of regular and relevant information. Thus it is essential that an effective and efficient reporting system be developed as part of accounting system. The main object of management information is to obtain the required about the operating results of an organization regularly in order to use them for future planning and control. The old techniques like intuition, rule of thumb, personal whim and prestige, etc. are now considered useless in the process of decision taking. Modern management is constantly on look out for such quantitative and such information, which can help in analyzing the proposed alternative actions and choosing one as its decision. Thus, modern management functions are information-oriented more popularly known as management by information. And the system through which information is communicated to the management is known as management information system (MIS). The management needs full information before taking any decision. Good decisions can minimize costs and optimize results. Management information system can be helpful to the management in undertaking management decisions smoothly and effectively. Management information system can be analyzed thus: 1. Management: management covers the planning, control, and administration of the operations of a concern. The top management handles planning; the middle management concentrates on controlling; and the lower management is concerned with actual administration. 2. Information: information, in MIS, means the processed data that helps the management in planning, controlling and operations. Data means all the facts arising out of the operations of the concern. Data is processed i.e. recorded, summarized, compared and finally presented to the management in the form of MIS report. 3. System: data is processed into information with the help of a system. A system is made up of inputs, processing, output and feedback or control. Thus MIS means a system for processing data in order to give proper information to the management for performing its function.

Data Warehouse: A collection of non-volatile data of different business subjects and objects, which is time variant and integrated drawn from various sources and applications and stored in a manner to make a quick analysis of business situation. Fig>- 1 Hence data warehouse is a special database containing large stocks of enterprise data and related meta data processed to a ready to use stage for decision makers for operational and analytical business analysis. Fig>-2 First step in building Data Warehouse is to extract data from different sources. After this the data needs to be validated for coding structures, names and formats. It is rationalized to a common unit of measure through transformation or conversion process. Such data set is then consolidated to common reference level such as end of month, region, zone etc. The data so processed is then moved to Data Warehouse. All these processes are handled by middleware, written to construct the DW. Middleware is a set of programs and routines which pulls data from various sources, checks and validates, moves form one platform to other and transforms to the DW design specifications and then loads in the DW. Since, data in DW is ready to use for decision making, it needs to be delivered in DW after instituting QA measures on the data. Since, data sources are wide and different, the data needs to checked for reasonable values, permissible values, inconsistencies arising out of different sources of data, missing values, data gaps arising out of application failures for a period and most important for violation of business rules. The physical view as shown as : Fig>3 There are some characteristics of Data Warehouse which differentiate it form Database. The scope of Data Warehouse is the whole organization. It contains the historical record of business created form existing applications. It enables you to take business view, application view and physical view at a point-in-time on any aspects of business situation. Data Warehouse supports cross functional Decision Support Systems (DSS) to manage the business, as it provides detail, historical, consistent, normalized business data for further manipulation by the decision makers. The Data Warehouse usage makes business decisions on facts and not on intuition. This is applicable to both tactical and strategic business decisions. It enables you to get insight in key areas of business where information support for strategic decisions is necessary. If viewed intelligently and with imaginative mind, it helps you to sense early wearing on some aspects of business, calling for business review and radical change in policy, rules and strategies.

Metadata: Various data sources could be options form taking the business data to Data Warehouses. Further each source may have application specific data definition and its use requiring special derivation and reconciliation process. It is, therefore, necessary to know the data model, data definition, data structure and data usage precisely in each case. This data about the business data is called as Metadata. In other words metadata is a data about data. In any information system application, three types of metadata are created. They are System Design-Time, Control and Usage metadata. System Design Time Metadata. While designing a system, a data which describes the use of input data in the application is known as Time Metadata. This metadata gives details on specification, value, allowed value, allowed value, the business rules it would use to validate and formula to compute and so on. Such metadata is built many times. Metadata is stored in data dictionary. Control Metadata. The control Metadata is used by the system to produce Data Warehouse. This data is used to manage and control the process of Data Warehouse creation. For Example data hierarchy is a metadata which is required to control the business data entry into the warehouse. This control metadata is often sourced from data dictionary. The second source of Control Metadata is infrastructure of the warehouse. There is a metadata for warehouse design which explains the business data definition, its description, scope, usage, etc. in Data Warehouse. Usage Metadata. The users of Data Warehouse require this. This metadata is sourced from Data dictionary. The usage metadata describes the use and application of the business data, in business management. The business data is correctly valued and perceived, if its definition, usage and application is known to the user of Data Warehouse. The usage metadata explains business data in terms of its meaning in the business data structure in terms of picture, size, and used for which applications.

Data Mining. Data mining is a major use of data warehouse databases and the static data they contain. In data mining, the data in a data warehouse are analyzed to reveal hidden patterns and trends in historical business activity. This analysis can be used to help managers make decisions about strategic changes in business operations to gain competitive advantages in the marketplace. Data mining can discover new correlations, patterns, and trends in vast amounts of business data stored in data warehouses. Data mining software uses advanced pattern recognition algorithms, as well as a variety of mathematical and statistical techniques, to sift through mountains of data to extract previously unknown strategic business information. For example, many companies use data mining to: Perform market analysis to identify new product bundles. Find root causes of quality or manufacturing problems. Prevent customer attrition (pressure) and acquire new customers. Cross sell to existing customers. Profile customers with new accuracy.