INFORMATION SYSTEM

Information System

Information System

Introduction

A Management Information System (MIS) converts data from Internal and External Sources into information in an appropriate form to managers at different levels in an organization to enable them to make effective decisions or to monitor/control the performance of their employees. Improving information management practices is a key focus for many organisations, across both the public and private sectors. (Kumar, R.L. 2006, 65-78)

This is being driven by a range of factors, including a need to improve the efficiency of business processes, the demands of compliance regulations and the desire to deliver new services. In many cases, 'information management' has meant deploying new technology solutions, such as content or document management systems, data warehousing or portal applications. These projects have a poor track record of success, and most organisations are still struggling to deliver an integrated information management environment. (Kumar, R.L. 2006, 65-78)

Effective information management is not easy. There are many systems to integrate, a huge range of business needs to meet, and complex organisational (and cultural) issues to address. This paper draws together a number of 'critical success factors' for information management projects. These do not provide an exhaustive list, but do offer a series of principles that can be used to guide the planning and implementation of information management activities.

From the outset, it must be emphasised that this is not an article about technology. Rather, it is about the organisational, cultural and strategic factors that must be considered to improve the management of information within organisations. The key goal of this article is to help information management projects succeed.

Explanation

Principle 1: recognise (and manage) complexity

Organisations are very complex environments in which to deliver concrete solutions. As outlined above, there are many challenges that need to be overcome when planning and implementing information management projects. When confronted with this complexity, project teams often fall back upon approaches such as:

Focusing on deploying just one technology in isolation.

Purchasing a very large suite of applications from a single vendor, in the hope that this can be used to solve all information management problems at once.

Rolling out rigid, standardised solutions across a whole organisation, even though individual business areas may have different needs.

All of these approaches will fail, as they are attempting to convert a complex set of needs and problems into simple (even simplistic) solutions. The hope is that the complexity can be limited or avoided when planning and deploying solutions. In practice, however, there is no way of avoiding the inherent complexities within organisations. New approaches to information management must therefore be found that recognise (and manage) this complexity.

Organisations must stop looking for simple approaches, and must stop believing vendors when they offer 'silver bullet' technology solutions. (Kumar, R.L. 2006, 65-78)

Information management systems are only successful if they are actually used by staff, and it is not sufficient to simply focus on installing the software centrally. In practice, most information management systems need the active participation of staff throughout the organisation. For example:

Staff must save all key files into ...