Important categories of management information systems are as follows:
1. Databank information system:
The responsibility of this information system is to observe, classify and store any item of data, which might be potentially useful to the decision maker.
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2. Predictive information system:
This system moves beyond pure data collection and the determination of trends over time. Predictive information systems provide for the drawing of inferences and predictions that are relevant to decision making. If data from the above examples were to be used in this way, it is possible to obtain information useful for making predictions or for drawing inferences.
3. Decision-making information system:
This system goes one step further in the process of decision-making and incorporates the value system of the organization or its criteria for choosing among alternatives. An extension organization’s values are many and varied.
4. Decision-taking information system:
This is a decision system in which the information system and the decision maker are one and the same. Management is so confident in the assumptions incorporated in the system that it basically relegates its power to initiate action to the system itself.
An automated MIS system contains data just as a manual system does. It receives input, processes input, and delivers the processed input as output. Some input devices allow direct human-machine communication, while others require data to be recorded on an input medium such as a magnetizable material.
Use of automation makes it possible to store immense quantities of information, to avoid many of the errors that find their way into manual records, and to make calculations and comparisons that would be practically impossible in a manual system.
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a. Support to ongoing decision-making activities of a business or functional area.
b. Facilitates effective decision-making by managers.
c. Transport the required information to the right person at the right time in the specified format.