Define MIS and its types

Management Information System (MIS)

MIS is an integrated system of people, hardware, software, data and procedures that gathers, processes, stores and distributes information in the right form and at the right time to managers for planning, control and decision making.

Types of information systems

1. Transaction Processing System (TPS): Processes day-to-day routine transactions (sales, payroll, bank deposit/withdrawal, billing). It is the lowest level, used by operational staff, and provides the data for other systems.
2. Management Information System (MIS): Summarises TPS data into regular reports (daily, weekly, monthly), exception reports and comparisons for middle managers, for control and monitoring.
3. Decision Support System (DSS): Interactive computer system that uses data, models and analysis tools to help managers solve semi-structured problems with what-if analysis and forecasting.
4. Executive Information System (EIS): Gives top executives easy access to internal and external information in graphs and summaries, to support strategic decisions.
5. Expert System: Uses stored knowledge and rules of experts to give advice or diagnose problems.
6. Office Automation System: Supports office work such as word processing, email, scheduling and conferencing.
7. Knowledge Management System: Collects and shares organizational knowledge.

     /EIS\       top management, strategy
    / DSS \      middle management, analysis
   / MIS   \     middle management, reports
  /  TPS    \    operational, transactions

Example in Nepal: a commercial bank uses TPS for daily deposits, MIS reports for branch managers, DSS for loan analysis and a dashboard for the CEO.