First Lesson of Management Information System

Everything is changing nowadays. Start from the technology that influences people behavior or even their personalities in facing today’s globalization. So with how people demand efficiency is changing the technology development. This whole cycle also can be seen in the business environment. The element such as the organization structure, the people in an organization, and the technology used in a business are changing. Hence, the Management Information System will work as a tool to connect and link all of those changes.

A real example of changes that can be seen is globalization. People over the world are connected to each other easily using the social media platform such as Facebook, Instagram, or any other social media that are wide connected over the world. This phenomenon makes us can explore the whole world without exact travel to another country. So with the barriers between countries, the worldwide online shopping business is one of the examples that impact the people behave in the business sector. The e-business is emerging and brings the business competition to a higher level.   

Another example is the factory or the plantation. The business used to use a lot of labor in the production operation process and need each factory to fulfill the demand of each place. The factory strategy is now shifting to the limit employment of labor that being substitutes by the advanced machine. The same thing happens for the number of factories a business might consider. The strategy taken most of the company is to build a gigantic factory that might produce the product in a massive amount and distribute to each place regarding the demand. There is still a lot of examples such as the distribution method in business, and the working conditions.

The MIS process basically starts from the data gathering to data processing and lastly, the information got from the data. MIS work as a tool to gather the data and process them to find the link between them or connected them and resulting in the interpretation of information. MIS can help the business by collecting the information so that we can understand the pattern of business, for example, the habit of the customer which known as customer behavior. Finally, we can make the choices and correct strategy to win the business competition. The result of MIS is varied, starting with a new idea and product invention until the cost analysis to increase the profit.

The approaches to MIS are basically divided into two categories which are the technical approaches and behavioral approaches. The technical approaches are management science, computer science, and operation research such as queuing theory and optimization. On the other hand, the behavioral approaches are the studies of economics, psychology, and sociology.