Modern businesses have been leveraging management information systems (MIS) to manage, order, organise and manipulate the gigabytes and masses of information generated for various purposes.

MIS helps businesses optimise business processes, address information needs of employees and various stakeholders and take informed strategic decisions.

However, budget allocation and monitoring issues can affect the efficacy of MIS. It has its advantages and disadvantages depending on organizational deployment and usage.

Advantages

Management information systems have changed the dynamics of running businesses efficiently.

Decentralisation is one of the biggest advantages; it allows monitoring of operations at low levels and frees up resources for departmental managers to devote time to strategic activities. Coordination of specialised projects and activities is much better and decision makers in the organisation are aware of issues and problems in all departments. Another advantage of MIS is that it minimises information overload, which can be quite common with conventional businesses in the modern era.

Better Planning and Control

MIS has to be designed and managed in such way that it aggregates information, monitors the company's activities and operations and enhances communication and collaboration among employees.

This ensures better planning for all activities and better ways to measure performance, manage resources and facilitate compliance with industry and government regulations. Control helps in forecasting, preparing accurate budgets and providing the tools and vital information to employees, top management and business partners.

Aid Decision Making

The purpose of MIS is to generate synthesised and processed information from computerised/automated and certain manual systems.

Information distribution to all levels of corporate managers, professionals and key executives becomes quite seamless with streamlined MIS. Managers are able to make quick, timely and informed decisions. Top management and board members can take strategic decisions, plan future growth and business expansion activities based on the data and information generated by MIS.

Disadvantages

Depending on organisation deployment, usage and extraneous factors, some disadvantages related to Management Information Systems can come to the fore. Allocation of budgets for MIS upgrades, modifications and other revisions can be quite tricky at times. If budgets are not allocated uniformly or as per immediate requirements, key functionalities might get effected and benefits might not be realised consistently. Integration issues with legacy systems can affect the quality of output and vital business intelligence reports.

Constant Monitoring Issues

Change in management, exits or departures of department managers and other senior executives has a broad effect on the working and monitoring of certain organisation practices including MIS systems. Since MIS is a critical component of an organisation's risk management strategy and allied systems, constant monitoring is necessary to ensure its effectiveness. Quality of inputs into MIS needs to be monitored; otherwise consistency in the quality of data and information generated gets effected. Managers are not able to direct business, operational and decision-making activities with the requisite flexibility.