Paige Shirley

An information system has five parts:

• Data,

• People,

• Hardware,

• Software,

• And Telecommunications

An information system is only as good as the data that is being put in it, but if you put bad data in this can lead to the results being wrong, which is what you don’t want.

By putting unfinished or incorrect data in means the results will be unfinished or incorrect, there for the system will become completely useless to use.

In order for the results to be correct, you need to put the correct data in.

When it comes to who uses it and what for, there are many types of people who would use it for many reasons.

The main people to be involved with using it are the people who are involved in the capture, processing and the input of the data.

People can affect the quality of the output and the information system because if the data that is put in is wrong the system will become useless.

This means that the system is only as good as the expert it has been collected from

The MIS (Management Information System) size will depend on the size of the company.

Small Companies

• The MIS is and will normally be run on a stand alone PC in the finance directors office.

Big Companies

• The MIS is normally run on a server this is either shared or dedicated with Internet access.

MIS can be built just by using simple standard software, all it has to do is be able to handle any size of data fast and well.

The more expensive the MIS, the less features it has but the cheaper the MIS, the more features it has.

The most important thing to remember is that the software and hardware need to work well together.

Telecommunication tools are the things that near enough everyone uses:

• Email,

• Phone,

• Internet,

• Etc.

These are so important to running a successful company

The information system has four parts:

• Input,

• Storage,

• Processing,

• Output,

• And Control/Feedback Loops.

When it comes to entering information in to a information system, there are two parts:

• Detailed Data – Stored and processed and forms the basis for the rest of the system.

• User – Tells the system what sort of analysis they want from the system.

Storing your data right is important because the data should be stored professionally with the highest level detail available.

The IT department or anyone who takes care of the storage should make sure that they do regular back ups of the system and of the stored data.

Everything should also be kept in a different place just in case of a disaster.

Processing is what turns the data into information.

Processing at its simplest could just be adding up the prices of all of the things a person could buy on their weekly shopping list.

Processing at its most complex the computer can perform the complex calculations for example making assumptions about missing data.

After entering the input data the output data can be in either a graphical format or a textual format.

Graphical Output – Information that is presented as charts, diagrams, graphs or pictures.

Textual Output – Information that is presented as characters, numbers, or text.

Control or a feedback loop is what happens in the company as a result of the output from an information systems.

A example of it is a data feed of actual sales data to a computerised stock control system, this could note which products from suppliers have increasing sales and reorder these products in order to reduce the likelihood of being out of stock.

Closed System: the user has some choice about what to report. But they are limited to predefined output formats, these are easy to use.

Open System: There is great flexibility on what to report on and the format in which the information is output.