DIFFERENCE BETWEEN DSS, MIS & EIS

With the exposure to all the above information systems, let us find out the differences between DSS and MIS. Table-1 enlists some basic differences between Decision Support System, Management Information Systems and Executive Information System. As the name implies, the later two are the systems that provide information that may or may not be used for making a decision whereas the support information provided for deciding on the policy, planning or implementation is the basic component of DSS.

Let us find out the characteristics of the three systems :

DSS (DECISION SUPPORT SYSTEM) :

- DSS generally provide support for unstructured, or semi-structured decisions (decisions that cannot be described in detail).

- DSS problems are often characterized by incomplete or uncertain knowledge, or the use of qualitative data.

- DSS will often include modelling tools in them, where various alternative scenarios can be modeled and compared.

- Investment decisions are an examples of those that might be supported by DSS

MIS (MANAGEMENT INFORMATION SYSTEMS) :

-    MIS is generally more sophisticated reporting systems built on existing transaction processing systems

-    Often used to support structured decision making (decisions that can be described in detail before the decision is made)

-    Typically will also support tactical level management, but sometimes are used at other levels

-   Examples of structured decisions supported by MIS might include deciding on stock levels or the pricing of products.

DIMENSION	DSS	MIS	EIS
Focus	Analysis, decision Support	Information processing	Status Access
Typical Users Served	Analysts, professions, managers (via intermediaries)	Middle, lower levels, sometime senior executives	Senior Executives Expediency
Impetus	Effectiveness	Efficiency
Application	Diversified Areas where Managerial Decisions are made	Production control, sales forecasts, financial analysis, human resource management	Environmental scanning, performance evaluation, identifying problems and opportunities
Database(s)	Special	Corporate	Special
Decision Support Capabilities	Supports semi-structured and unstructured decision making; mainly ad-hoc, but sometimes repetitive decisions	Direct or indirect support, mainly structured routine problems, using standard operations, research and other models	Indirect support, mainly high level and unstructured decisions and policies
Type of Information	Information to support specific situations	Scheduled and demand reports; structured flow, exception reporting mainly internal operations	News items, external information on customers, competitors and the environment
Principal Use	Planning, Organizing, staffing and control	Control	Tracking and control
Adaptability to Individual User	Permits individual judgment, what-if capabilities, some choice of dialogue style	Usually none, standardized	Tailored to the decision making style of each individual executive, offers several options of outputs
Graphics	Integrated part of many DSS	Desirable	A must
User Friendliness	A must where no intermediaries are used	Desirable	A must
Treatment of Information	Information provided by the EIS/or MIS is used as an input to the DSS	Information is provided to a diversified group of users who then manipulate it or summarize it as needed	Filters and compresses the information, tracks critical data and information
Supporting Detailed Information	Can be programmed into DSS	Inflexibility of reports, cannot get the supporting details quickly	Instant access to the supporting details of any summary
Model Base	The Core of the DSS	Standard Models are available but are not managed	Can be added, usually not included or limited in nature
Construction	By users, either alone or with specialists from IS or IC departments	By vendors or IS specialists	By Vendors or IS Specialists
Hardware	Mainframes, micros or distributed	Mainframes, Micros or distributed	Distributed system
Nature of Computing Packages	Large computational capabilities, modelling languages and simulation, applications and DSS generators	Application oriented, performance reports, strong reporting capabilities, standard statistical, financial, accounting and management science models	Interactive, easy to access multiple databases, on-line access, sophisticated DBMS capabilities and complex linkages

  

EIS (EXECUTIVE INFORMATION SYSTEM) :

-      EIS support a range of decision making, but more often than not, this tends to be unstructured

-     EIS support the executive level of management, often used to formulate high level strategic decisions impacting on the direction of the organization

-     These systems will usually have the ability to extract summary data from internal systems, along with external data that provides intelligence on the environment of the organization

-   Generally these systems work by providing a user friendly interface into other systems, both internal and external to the organization

Let us now explore differences among the three information systems based on the dimensions (Table 1).