Good Decision Support System (DSS) Essay Example

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MANAGEMENT INFORMATION SYSTEM

Management Information System (MIS)
The Management Information system (MIS) is a computerized database of different information mostly financial, which is programmed in a manner that it determines regular reports regarding the functions and various organizational operations for every department and function within the company. The system is able to produce special reports as well without difficulty, depending upon the data provided. One of the most important functions of MIS is that gives managers the feedback about their productivity level and performance and provides the senior executives with an opportunity to view the performance of the entire company (Kenneth, p.20).
The data and information that is displayed by MIS generally show the actual data in comparison to the results that have already been planned by the company. The data are also compared with the data from a year before to analyze the progress of the company against the established goals. The data that the MIS software receives is from the functions and departments of the company. Much of this data is collected through the automatic check-out counters of the company that is linked to the computer, and some of it is keyed into the system at intervals like bimonthly, monthly. The routine reports are programmed and are extracted from the MIS software on demand or at regular intervals. There is a built-in query function that operates the MIS and the display function is used by the senior level managers to check the status of the reports and the overall operations of the MIS software (Kenneth, p.20).

A Decision support Support System (DSS) is a computer software that supports the organizational decision-making process. The DSS provides support to all three levels – operations, management, and planning units of an organization and help the management to make various decisions. The decision-making process at times is sudden due to the dynamic business environment and many not be pre-informed in advance. The decision support system provided by DSS can be human, computerized or both (Kenneth, p.21).

Difference between DSS and MIS

There are some major differences between DSS and MIS:
The MIS is used by the relatively limited number of people such as professionals and managers only, whereas the DSS software can be used by individuals, teams and managers at various levels.
The main function of MIS is to produce the routine or specifically required reports whereas the DSS software generates sophisticated reports, data modeling, and analysis tools to achieve the purpose of extracting structured reports.

The nature of MIS reports is semi-flexible as compared to adaptable reports generated by DSS.

DSS is an improved concept of MIS. Even though, both of them have different focuses but they are an improved version. DSS focus more upon the leadership concept. DSS relates to the senior management where the firm is providing an innovative vision, whereas the MIS focuses on the information that is gathered and is keyed into the management information system (Kenneth, p.23).
MIS focuses more on the planning of the reports on different topics that relate to the organization, whereas the DSS focus more on the decision-making.
Another main difference between DSS and MIS is that MIS focuses more on operational efficiency, whereas, the DSS focuses more on the decision-making and helping the company make the right decision (Kenneth, p.24).

Work Cited

Kenneth Laudon, Management Information System – Managing the Digital Firm, 12th ed, p.20-24.