IT Component - Research Paper Example

Just like most of the modern businesses, my organization has leveraged management information system (MIS) with an aim of having its masses and gigabytes of information produced for different purposes be managed, organized and manipulated. MIS has enabled my organization to optimize all its business processes, solve employee’s information needs as well as several stakeholders and has taken into consideration strategic decisions that are informed. MIS has been associated with several advantages in many organizations thus plays a crucial role as one of the IT components used in businesses.
When employed in an organization, management information systems transform the dynamics employed by the organization in order to operate efficiently. One of the main advantages of MIS is decentralization. MIS makes it possible for the operations of the organization to be monitored at low levels and goes further to free resources used by department managers while devoting time on strategic plans and actions. Such a system ensures specialized projects are well coordinated and the decision makers are well informed of the problems and issues in different departments. MIS also reduces information overload which is common in conventional businesses (Marakas and O’Brien, 2010).
In my organization, MIS was designed in such a way that it was in a position to effectively aggregate information, monitor the activities of the organization and enhanced collaboration as well as communication among employees. The above led to better planning within the organization and enabled the management to come up with means of measuring performances, facilitate compliance and manage resources according to government and industry regulations (Marakas and O’Brien, 2010). The control achieved through the employment of MIS also helps in the accurate budgets preparations, forecasting and offers vital tools and information to business partners, top management and employees.
The main aim of adapting MIS in my organization was to come up with processed and synthesized information from manual systems as well as computerized systems. By doing this, information was easily distributed to different levels of professionals and corporate managers making key executives become seamless in relation to the streamlined MIS (Oz, 2008). The system places the managers in such a position that they are able to make decisions that are informed, quick and timely. The board members and top management can base on the system to come up with strategic decisions, plan for any growths in future and expand the organization activities basing on the information and data that has been generated using MIS.
As the management information system became tightly interwoven in the operations of the organization, having solid returns on the stored data become a challenge to the organization. At some point in the operations of the organization the system was unable to meet the needs of database management packages that are off shelve. Most of the software that were used in the system could not be adapted to meet the changing needs of the organization without the organization being forced to incur extra vendor services costs that proved to be expensive. Implementation of new MIS system also had some weaknesses as it resulted to new function or in some cases it required different search option( Laudon and Laudon, 2009).
The above situation led the organization to come up with strategies of avoiding pitfalls by having flexibility be the number one priority while picking on any retrieval and management systems. It was important for the organization to have such systems be in a position to adapt and grow with the created online database. By having the MIS being flexible, the system easily generates the report types needed by the organization, is able to interface with the rest of the software and gives room for customization.
References
Laudon, K & Laudon, J. (2009). Management Information Systems. New York: Prentice Hall
Marakas, G & O’Brien, J. (2010). Management Information Systems. New York: McGraw-Hill
Oz, E. (2008). Management Information Systems. New York: Course Technology Read More