A Comparison and Evaluation of MIS and EIS

Introduction
As the amount of information continuously increasing, more and more organizations start using information management technology to help them on the daily operations. Information Management is a concept that after collect information from serval sources, organize that information then distribute that information to one or more persons to help them solve problems or make decisions more effectively and efficiently.  “Information management concerns the control over how information is created, acquired, organized, stored, distributed, and used as a means of promoting, efficient and effective information access, pro- cessing, and use by people and organizations. ”(Detlor, 2010). And there are two main approaches are Management Information System (MIS) and Executive Information Systems (EIS), these two systems are widely used in the organizations, but many people still confused which should they chose for their specific needs, because there are some commons of these two systems that make people cannot recognize these two systems well. In this essay I will compare these two systems and evaluate these two systems separately.

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Compare two information systems
The Introduction of two systems
The first time a new decision-making framework named Management Information System (MIS) which aims on help user to have a better understand on the organizational behaviour was published in the 1950s (Asemi, Safari and Asemi Zavareh, 2011).  Many people have already made the definition to the MIS while one of the most accuracy definition as ” A Management Information System (MIS) is an information system that is intended to be used by the higher management of an organization. The MIS generally collects summarized data from different departments or subsystems of an organization and presents in a form that is helpful to the management for taking better decisions for the organization “(Mishra, 2013)
In 19th century as the development of computer science technology people developed many information systems used on the computer, EIS is one of those systems which could help executives get useful information more efficiently (Giner, Fernandez and Boladeras, 2009). EIS are also defined as a “computerized system that provides executives with easy access to internal and external information that is relevant to their critical success factors (CSF)”(Byun and Suh, 1994). In addition, EISs usually include personal productivity, communication, and coordination components, providing executives with a broad range of services that increase productivity.
From the definitions of the two information systems the main difference of two systems is the main users of two systems. MIS is served for the lower and middle managers to help them get information of problems and have better understanding of problems also give mangers suggestion of solving problems whilst the EIS system is only served the high level managers and executives give them the information not only to solve problems but also all the critical success factors that they need.
The model of two systems
The data gathered and sorted by the MIS is comes from the daily operational data of an organization. A MIS has serval subsystems such as sales and marketing system, investment system, advertisement system etc. Each subsystem collects different kind of data and store in the main database of MIS(Mishra, 2013).Some MIS also collect competitors’ information from the internet to help mangers analyse competitors’ strategy and make correspondence(Mishra, 2013). The database contains the data gathered from every sub-system, then the data will be used by the software and mathematical tools, after many times simulations the system will output different kinds of suggestions to person who are in charge of the problem. Meanwhile MIS allowed some decision makers stay in a same system together and form an Inter Organizational Information System (IOS)(Asemi, Safari and Asemi Zavareh, 2011).
Different with only a few MIS collect external data, all of EIS collect both internal data (organization documents) and external data such as the information from news services and stock markets(Byun and Suh, 1994). Depend on the executive’s requirement and organization’s development methodology and also the internal and external pressure (such as political changes and timely information), all of those settings and both external and internal will input into the EIS after run by soft wares (such as EIS generators, spreadsheets, graphic packages) information will be analysed and transformed into a suitable format that satisfy executives’ requirements and perfect management reports(Nord and Nord, 1995).
Compare the model of two kind of systems, EIS is an extension of MIS, most of MIS only collect the internal data and summarize the information whilst EIS collect both external and internal data (some data are same as MIS’s data) and could give executives not only reports but also pre-defined customized presentation.
The role of two systems
Nowadays, some organizations use MIS to help managers to make decisions, which plays an important role in the decision making process(Asemi, Safari and Asemi Zavareh, 2011). MIS is a good    system that could help managers to find the main problems and help them have a better understanding of the problems(Asemi, Safari and Asemi Zavareh, 2011). For an example Walmart is one of the biggest sales company in this world, in the 1960s when Sam Walton only have a few number of retail stores he realized that managers need get the data that he wants immediately, such as the exactly number of a kind of product in all Walmart stores, the sales number in yesterday and last week even the last whole year. From that time Walmart develop their own management information system constantly which help Walmart became the most successful company in this world.
As the development of computer technology and Internet technology, more and more organizations start using EIS, also EIS is playing an increasing crucial role in organizations, what’s more EIS is playing an important part of the information systems portfolio (Neil McBride,1995). At beginning EIS were only served to executives but nowadays in some cases many managers are beginning use EIS also. While the original intention of building EIS was give executives a user-friendly data presentation to help them understand information more easily, nowadays EIS has developed much more beyond a data reporting tool.” They provide a means of control of business units and of subsidiary companies by conglomerates.”(Neil McBride,1995).EIS could help executives have better organizational learning, enhance organizations’ competitiveness.
Compare the role of these tow information systems, MIS focus on organizations’ daily internal operation while EIS focus on organizations’ high level strategies-making and help executives to run the organization.
Evaluate two information systems
Evaluate MIS
The goal of MIS
The original purpose of MIS is collecting data from each sub-system to determine business requirements for information systems which could help managers to have a better understanding about the management issues in the organization. As an information management tool, a goof MIS aim to improve management efficiency, operational efficiency, employee productivity, project performance and customers’ satisfaction.
Benefits from MIS
People who in charge of the management could access to the daily used data easily. Because of the desired information have been already organized, managers could get useful information quickly which could highly promote the decision-making process.
As the development of MIS design, MIS has already evaluated some further functions such as information update monitoring and information communication. Nowadays MIS could not only help managers solve short-term decision-making problems but also solve long-term decision-making problems even help making strategies.
MIS also could be used as a standardization tool, because MIS have multiple sub-systems, MIS collects data from different divisions of an organization, in this term there will have some incompatible data. But MIS will standardize those incompatible data and provide managers a well-organized and aggregated data formats, that will help managers save a lot of time.
The characteristics of MIS
MIS has the following characteristics:
Firstly, MIS is only assisted to the managers to help them understand problem clearly, which is not like the systems just to help personals to solve their daily problems(Mishra, 2013).
Secondly, each organization has its own MIS, the structure of MIS depends on the organizations’ structure. Because each organization may in the different development environment and have different development histories also. As different organizations may have different strategy and different target the structure and output of MIS may very different(Mishra, 2013).
Thirdly, MIS has smaller amount of data compared to other information systems, which collected from all MIS sub-systems(Mishra, 2013).
Evaluate EIS
The goal of EIS
The original purpose of an EIS is to provide a link between management in organizations to help executives to run organizations more efficiently. As an information system EIS provide variety type of information reporting function to users such as information timely access function, EIS could give executives a suitable answer for a specific question and based on the question could give executives more information which timely related to original question. Another purpose of an EIS is direct executives’ attention to specific areas of the organization.
Benefits from EIS
EIS could collecting both internal and external sources and reduce the useless information then make a friendly report to executives that could make executives’ work much more easily and could help executives save a lot of time. More than providing the foundation information EIS also provide the drill down facilities, which could dig data deeply and allows executives to touch the detailed information rather than the summarised information.  (Papageorgiou and Bruyn, 2010)
Then, using EIS allows executives have the opportunities to get the latest data in time which encourages the real-time reporting. As Umakant Mishra said “information is key to decision making” getting information efficiency is quite important for all of the users.
EIS is also a management tool, using EIS executives could help managers to run an organization more effectively.
EIS also could provide a data contrast evaluation, there is no need to spell out the importance of foundation data of an organization, what’s more competitors’ data are more valuable in some cases. Using EIS executives could make a data evaluation of the major competitors and make a judgement for competitors’ development strategy. Also EIS could allow executives to compare the financial situation of past years and the current financial year.
The characteristics of EIS
EIS has the following characteristics:
Firstly EIS has a user-friendly graphical interface, and advanced report generation(Nord and Nord, 1995)
Secondly, access to variety external and internal sources whilst MIS only access internal sources(Nord and Nord, 1995)
Thirdly, EIS is powerful for help executives to make decisions, and solve specific problems.
Finally, EIS is a functional tool for executives to run organizations.
Conclusion
Nowadays there are plenty of different kind of information systems in this world, MIS and EIS are the main concern of present article. From the previous article we could see MIS is a good at collecting information and help managers identify problem and help managers have a better understanding of the problem, then help them to make a better decision, while EIS focus on the more specific questions, EIS allowed executives to ask a specific question and give them a suitable answer. Also the main users of MIS are managers while the main users of EIS are high-level executives. That are two main differences of these two systems. An organization needs more than one kind of information systems to help them on the daily operation, both MIS and EIS are very important for an organization.
References
Asemi, A., Safari, A. and Asemi Zavareh, A. (2011) ‘The Role Of Management Information System (MIS) And Decision Support System (DSS) For Manager’s Decision Making Process’, International Journal of Business and Management, 6(7), pp. 164–173. doi: 10.5539/ijbm.v6n7p164.
Byun, D. and Suh, E. (1994) ‘A Builder ’ s Introduction Information Systems’, Management, 14, pp. 357–368.
Detlor, B. (2010) ‘Information management’, International Journal of Information Management, 30(2), pp. 103–108. doi: 10.1016/j.ijinfomgt.2009.12.001.
Giner, J. L. C., Fernandez, V. and Boladeras, M. D. (2009) ‘Framework for the analysis of executive information systems based on the perceived usefulness and the perceived ease of use’, Intangible Capital, 5(4), pp. 370–386. doi: 10.3926/ic.2009.v5n4.p370-386.
Mishra, U. (2013) ‘Introduction to Management Information System’, SSRN Electronic Journal. doi: 10.2139/ssrn.2307474.
Nord, J. H. and Nord, G. D. (1995) ‘Executive information systems: A study and comparative analysis’, Information & Management, 29(2), p. 95.
Papageorgiou, E. and Bruyn, H. De (2010) ‘Creating Strategic Value through Executive Information Systems : an Exploratory Study’, Information Systems, 13(1), pp. 57–76.