The Development of Management Information Systems :: Business Management Studies

The Development of Management Information SystemsThe role of business randomness administrations has changed and expanded overthe last four decennarys.In the incipient decade (1950s and 60s), electronic data processingsystems could be afforded by scarce the largest organizations. Theywere employ to record and store bookkeeping data such as diaryentries, specialized journals, and ledger accounts. This was strictlyan operations support role.By the sixties management teaching systems were used to generate a express clutch of predefined reports, including income statements (theywere called P & Ls back then), balance sheets and sales reports. Theywere assay to coiffe a decision making support role, but they were non up to the task.By the 1970s decision support systems were introduced. They wereinteractive in the sense that they allowed the user to choose betweennumerous options and configurations. Not only was the user allowedcustomizing outputs, they withal could configure th e programs to theirspecific needs. There was a price though. As part of your mainframeleasing agreement, you typically had to pay to have an IBM systemdeveloper permanently on site.The main development in the 1980s was the intro ofdecentralized computing. Instead of having one large mainframecomputer for the full enterprise, numerous PCs were spread aroundthe organization. This meant that instead of submitting a job to thecomputer department for batch processing and waiting for the expertsto perform the procedure, each user had their own computer that theycould customize for their own purposes. many a(prenominal) poor souls fought withthe vagaries of DOS protocols, BIOS functions, and DOS batchprogramming.As people became homely with their new skills, they discoveredall the things their system was capable of. Computers, instead ofcreating a paperless society, as was expected, produced mountains ofpaper, most of it valueless. Mounds of reports were generated justbecause it was p ossible to do so. This information pluck wasmitigated somewhat in the 1980s with the introduction of executiveinformation systems. They streamlined the process, giving theexecutive exactly what they wanted, and only what they wanted.The 1980s also saw the first commercial application of artificialintelligence techniques in the form of expert systems. Theseprograms could give advice within a very limited subject area. Thepromise of decision making support, first attempted in managementinformation systems back in the 1960s, had step-by-step, come to