Page 145 - DLIS406_ACADEMIC_LIBRARY_SYSTEM

Academic Library System

Notes Overview

Initially in businesses and other organizations, internal reporting was made manually and
only periodically, as a by-product of the accounting system and with some additional statistic(s),
and gave limited and delayed information on management performance. Previously, data had
to be separated individually by the people as per the requirement and necessity of the organization.
Later, data was distinguished from information, and so instead of the collection of mass of
data, important and to the point data that is needed by the organization was stored.

Earlier, business computers were mostly used for relatively simple operations such as tracking
sales or payroll data, often without much detail. Over time, these applications became more
complex and began to store increasing amount of information while also interlinking with
previously separate information systems. As more and more data was stored and linked man
began to analyze this information into further detail, creating entire management reports from
the raw, stored data. The term “MIS” arose to describe these kinds of applications, which were
developed to provide managers with information about sales, inventories, and other data that
would help in managing the enterprise.

Notes Today, the term is used broadly in a number of contexts and includes (but is not
limited to): decision support systems, resource and people management applications,
enterprise resource planning (ERP), enterprise performance management (EPM),
supply chain management (SCM), customer relationship management (CRM), project
management and database retrieval applications.

“The five eras are general-purpose mainframe and minicomputer computing, personal computers,
client/server networks, enterprise computing, and cloud computing. The first era was ruled
by IBM and their mainframe computers, these computers would often take up whole rooms
and require teams to run them, IBM supplied the hardware and the software. As technology
advanced these computers were able to handle greater capacities and therefore reduce their
cost. By 1965 microprocessors began to take the market away from mainframe computers. This
technology allowed small desktop computers to do the same work that it previously would
have taken a room full of computers. This also decentralized computing power from large
data centers to smaller offices. In the late 1970s minicomputer technology gave way to personal
computers. Now for a relatively low cost anyone could have a computer in his own home.
This allowed for businesses to give their employees access to computing power that 10 years
before would have cost tens of thousands of dollars. This proliferation of computers also
helped create a need to connect these computers together on a network giving birth to the
Internet. As technology has increased and cheapened the need to share information across a
large company had also grown, this gave way to the client/server era. With this era computers
on a common network were able to access shared information on a server. This allows for
large amounts of data to be accessed by thousands and even millions of people simultaneously.
The latest evolution of Information Systems is cloud computing a recent development, cloud
computing lets users access data stored on a server, where they can not only see the data but
also edit, save, download or upload. This along with high speed networks has led to a much
more mobile view of MIS. In cloud computing the manager does not have to be at a desk to
see what their employees are working on but instead can be on a laptop, tablet pc, or even
smart phone.

An ‘MIS’ is a planned system of the collection, processing, storage and dissemination of data
in the form of information needed to carry out the management functions. In a way, it is a
documented report of the activities that were planned and executed.

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