Management information is used by organizational leaders to help them gauge the efficiency and effectiveness of the things being managed, that is the resources within their purview (e.g., people, product, physical assets,etc.)
Ultimately this information is used to inform decision making. In today’s environment the information is largely in digital form and the tools managers use are called management information systems (MIS)
Technology is an Enabler
This categorization (MIS) puts a technology spin on the information gathering, storage, sorting and retrieval. (often referred to as Extract, transform, load – ETL)
However, management information is not about or even truly bound to the technology. Technology is just a tool, and that is an important distinction . Some often have difficulty with this separation.
When I first started in business, (in the dark ages) the tools used in the gathering and recording were pen and ink, the sorting was pure brain power.
Interpretation of the information was largely manual, as it continues to be today although automation, i.e., artificial intelligence, is beccoming more and more prevalent.
An Example
There are of course a myriad of information types, interpretations and uses. The following example is intended to be illustrative of data you might collect, transform and analyze, for management purposes, highlighting the benefits of doing this.
Whether this is an automated process, fully manual or a combination is not the point, rather just why you would collect management data and how you can use it to, well, manage.
Time Reporting
How do the human resources in your organization spend their time? First you could ask each person record their time by category (e.g. customer support, project work ,operations, administration) over a defined defined period.
By amalgamating the teams results you can get an idea on what type of work your group is focusing on. This does not account for individual variations ( it is a group measure) but on the whole you can determine if the groups efforts are directed according to your strategic expectations.
If not, you can investigate, determine the cause and make course directions. Without this type of data you are just guessing, so it really is invaluable.
