Management Support Systems

When information systems focus on providing information and support for effective decision making by managers, they are called management support system. Management support system began when the concept of management information systems (MIS) originated in the 1960s.
The concept of MIS was developed to counteract such inefficient development and ineffective use of computers. Though tarnished by early failures, the MIS concept is still recognized as vital to efficient and effective information systems in organizations for two major reasons:

• It emphasizes the management orientation of information technology in business. A major goal of computer-based information systems should be the support of management decision-making, not merely the processing of data generated by business operations.
• It emphasizes that a systems framework should be used for organizing information systems applications. Business applications of information technology should be viewed as interrelated and integrated computer-based information systems and not as independent data processing jobs.

Management Information Systems (MIS) are the most common from of management support systems that use the integrated resources of hardware, software, network, database management and people to perform input, processing, output, storage, and control activities that transform data resources into information products. They provide managerial and users with information products that support much of their day-to-day decision-making needs. MIS provide a variety of reports and displays to management. The contens of these information products are specified in advance by managers so that they contain information that managers need. MIS retrieve information about internal operations from databases that have been updated by transaction processing systems. They also obtain data about the business environment from external sources.
Decision Support Systems (DSS) are a natural progression from information reporting systems and transaction processing systems. DSS are interactive, computer-based information systems that use decision models and specialized databases to assist the decision-making processes of managerial end users. They differ from MIS, which focus on providing managers with prespecified information (report) that can be used to help them make more effective, structured types of decisions.
Executive Information Systems (EIS) are management information systems tailored to strategic information needs of top management. Top executives get the information they need from many sources, including letters, memos, periodicals, and reports produced manually as well as by computer systems. The goal of computer-based executive information systems is to provide top management with immediate and easy access to selective information about key factors that are critical to accomplishing a firm's strategic objectives.

Feedback and Control

The system concept becomes even more useful by including two additional components: feedback and control. A system with feedback and control components is sometimes called a cybernetic system, that is, a self-monitoring, self-regulating system.

• Fedback is data about the performance of a system. For example, data about sales performance is feedback to a sales manager.
• Control involves monitoring and evaluating feedback to determine whether a system is moving toward the achievement  of its goal. The control function then makes necessary adjustment to a system's input and processing components to ensure that it produces proper output. For example, a sales manager exercises control when he or she reassigns salespersons to new sales territories after evaluating feedback about their sales performance.

Components of an Information System. An information system depends on the resources of people (end-user and IS Specialist), hardware (machines and media), software (programs and procedures), data (data and knowledge bases), and networks (communications media and network support) to perform input, processing, output, storage, and control activities that convert data resources into information products.
Trend in Information System. Until the 1960s, the role of information system was simple: transaction processing, record-keeping, accounting and other electronic data processing (EDP) applications. Then another role was added, as the concept of MIS was conceived. This new role focused on providing managerial end users with predefined management reports that would give managers the information they needed for decision-making purposes.
By the 1970s, it was evident that the prespecified information products produced by such management information systems were not adequately meeting many of the decision-making needs of management. So the consept of decision support system (DSS) was born. The new role for information system was to provide managerial end users with ad hoc and interactive support of their decision-making processes. This support would betailored to the unique decision-making styles of managers as they confronted specific types of problem in the real world.