ENTERPRISE INFORMATION SYSTEMS
Many firms have tried to
take transaction processing to a higher level by creating Enterprise
Information Systems that encompass the transaction processing done in the various
functional silos. The idea of these efforts is to create unified databases that
permit any authorized individual to obtain whatever information would be
helpful in making decisions across the organization. So having all this information
in a unified database should improve decision-making. Enterprise information
systems are quite controversial because the effort to create them is enormous.
They involve much more than changing the format of databases. Often it is
necessary to change business processes to suit the needs of the information
system instead of vice versa. Nonetheless, many organizations have found
that the integration resulting from this large investment seems to be
worthwhile. The last part of this discussion explains why these information
systems are usually called Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems
even though planning is not their main focus.
Management and Executive Information Systems
A Management Information
System (MIS) provides information for an organization’s managers. The idea of
MIS predates the computer age. For example, as long ago as the middle 1500s,
the Fogger family in Augsberg, Germany, had business interests throughout
Europe and even into China and Peru. To keep in touch, they set up a worldwide
news reporting service through which their agents wrote letters about critical
political and economic events in their areas of responsibility. These letters were
collected, interpreted, analyzed, and summarized in Augsberg and answered through
instructions sent to the family’s agents. This paper-based system encompassing
planning, execution, and control helped the family move more rapidly in the
mercantile world than their rivals. Instructions went out to the agents; the
agents executed their work’ and the agents reported their results.
