What Does an Applications Manager Do?

Executive Information System (EIS), often called the executive information system, is a special type of information system that serves the senior managers of the organization. EIS enables managers to get faster and wider information. EIS is first of all an organizational status reporting system that can provide comprehensive information quickly, easily, and intuitively (with graphics), and can provide early warning and control of problems encountered by key success factors. EIS is also an "interpersonal communication system". Managers can issue orders through the network, make action requests, discuss, negotiate with other managers, determine work assignments, and perform job control and acceptance.

Manager Information System

EIS is a relatively new field in information system science. Especially in China, the research and application of EIS is still in its initial stage. So far, there is no rigorous definition that is generally accepted by the academic community. 1. In 1981, Rocuart and Treacy analyzed the activities of 20 managers and concluded that compared with DSS, DSS and EIS support different management tasks. EIS is a type of data-oriented system, which is mainly used for the fourth generation Language and menu access data.

2. In 1983, Scott Morton renamed EIS to ESS, which was used to provide managers with information to improve their management planning, monitoring, and analysis. Compared with the typical DSS, this EIS needs to obtain a large amount of data from the enterprise internal transaction processing system (TPS) and external information sources, and establish a relatively large database. He believes that this is the most important common characteristic that all EIS should have. In addition, he particularly emphasized that the model in DSS is so typical that it cannot meet the flexibility requirements of managers. The ESS is more about data-oriented access than model-oriented.

In the 1970s, many applications have been developed and applied to decision support. But at the same time, there are three main obstacles: managers and computer users are only familiar with a few systems; most computer application requirements come from the lower layers of the organization; software development focuses on technology. Because of these obstacles, these systems can only bring benefits at a lower level. These benefits mainly increase the communication and communication between organizational members and establish a common conceptual basis for organizational decision-making.

In the early 1980s, with the development of computer technology and the enhancement of application software analysis capabilities, senior managers saw the possibility of shifting from traditionally obtaining information derived from employees to being able to access data directly from computers And find analysis. According to a survey of 16 US companies, one-third of senior managers use computer information systems. The reason for this rapid growth is mainly due to the decline in computer prices and increasing competition. At the same time, the use of computers by senior managers will encourage the use of computers by other members of the organization. The main purpose of EIS at this time is to provide senior managers with more effective planning and control information. Each system has important data on business changes so that senior managers can analyze and compare competitors, customers, and target markets, and can track them over time. EIS can enable senior managers to understand the current business status in time and predict future development trends, and can also use analysis models for effective analysis.

Since the 1990s, people's demand for EIS has grown rapidly, and more than half of senior managers in organizations have begun using EIS. The main technological trends at this time were the use of personal computers, local area networks, and the World Wide Web. Under this technological background, there are more and more commodity software companies and more and more advanced software products. According to statistics, there are currently more than 50 software companies producing EIS software products in the world.

Benefiting from a personal computer-based platform, the rapid development of application software and user-friendly graphical interfaces, the decision support system evolved into an Enterprise Information System, also called a Performance Measurement System. The new EIS system provides information to more people in the organization.

The balanced scorecard is another extension of performance evaluation. The concept was developed by Kaplan and Norton based on their case studies of many companies that have developed innovative performance measurement systems. The concept of the balanced scorecard is mainly based on the pursuit of balance, looking for the balance between the short-term and long-term goals of the company, the financial and non-financial data, the backward and leading indicators, and the internal and external performance of the company. Taking aircraft driving as an example, it is explained that in a complex enterprise operating environment, to understand the current operation status of an enterprise, it is necessary to evaluate the performance through an aircraft dashboard method, and to return the operating situation to relevant personnel in the enterprise at any time. Make necessary operational adjustments during the accounting period to ensure that the objectives are achieved at the end of the period.

The supervisory decision information system allows supervisors to easily grasp the information required for decision-making through simple charts through the aid of information tools, thereby improving the hit rate of decision-making, achieving target management and exception management to improve corporate profits.

From the radar chart, you can grasp the status of multiple key indicators (KPI) at the same time. For abnormal indicators, you can click Drill-Down on the chart to use the analysis module tool for analysis. You can grasp the company's profile and problems and assist the executive in making decisions.

1. Web-based: Through the Web, the browser can connect to the system without installing additional software on the client, so that supervisors can easily deploy decisions in the enterprise.

2.Intuitive & easy to use: The intuitive and easy-to-use interface allows high-level executives in busy schedules to understand the overall situation of the enterprise through a simple representation without the need to pay extra learning costs.

3.Granularity of views: can provide supervisors from various angles of analysis

(1) Executive view: Analysis from the perspective of decision makers, allowing decision makers to grasp the overall situation through several key indicators (KPIs) and provide information to decision makers to assist decision making. (2) Summary view: summary analysis, allowing decision makers to perform detailed analysis of individual indicators through various analysis modules (such as: trend analysis, ranking analysis). (3) Detail view: Each analysis can drill down for abnormal conditions, allowing decision makers to find out the truth of the problem.

4.Extensible: easy to extend, with easy-to-use tools and components, allowing supervisors to flexibly develop system solutions based on changing information needs.

5.Rapid implementation: can be quickly built within a few weeks, see the results, and achieve the effect of rapid return investment (Rapid Return Investment).

With the continuous success of EIS in organizations, people have generally recognized the important status of EIS, but where should EIS develop? This is a concern for many entrepreneurs and scholars.

In fact, under today's increasingly competitive pressure, the rapid development of technology and constantly updated management concepts have brought many new problems to EIS. In order to solve challenging organizational problems, as the most effective information system to support the work of senior managers, EIS must meet the following requirements, and the fulfillment of these requirements depends on the continuous development and progress of EIS.

1. Externalization and intelligence of data.

The successful implementation of EIS has been quite effective in obtaining internal data and monitoring the internal status, but access to external data is still very limited, which is a certain gap from the original intention of EIS advocates. Due to the complexity of the external environment and the highly unstructured external data, with the current level of technical support, it is more difficult to achieve external status monitoring and data access than internal status monitoring and data access. In fact, based on past experience, managers may not use EIS as a formal external source of information, nor do they make high expectations for it. Senior managers prefer to do most of the external information monitoring themselves, and think there are some subtleties that only they can see. In addition, the ability of the EIS system to intelligently identify and extract information needed by managers from a large amount of complicated data outside the world is still weak. Since EIS supports a wide range of poorly structured and changeable manager activities, externalization and intelligence of data is essential. With the globalization of the market, the focus of organizational management has gradually shifted outwards, and the proportion of managers handling external information will continue to rise. With the development of information technology, new data acquisition and processing technologies, such as the emergence of Data Warehouse, Data Mining and Data Market, the externalization and intelligence of data in EIS Aspects will be strengthened.

2. Flexible and flexible structure.

Change is one of the most basic challenges facing today's information systems. A series of changing factors such as business process reorganization, changes in competitors, organizational alliances, adoption of new technologies, and migration of old systems are changing the information technology environment of an organization. The lack of flexible information systems has become a serious obstacle to organizational success. Gradually improving the flexibility and adaptability of the organization's information system has become the only way to improve the resilience of an organization with an increasing rate of change. Flexibility is an indispensable ability for an organization to develop and remain invincible in a rapidly changing environment. Flexible enterprises need flexible information systems. EIS focuses on meeting the needs of senior managers' strategic decision-making information. It focuses on the extraction of external and internal information, and assists the office management of senior managers. It is characterized by tailoring information products to form its own view according to the needs and habits of senior managers. The information objects it processes are highly unstructured. It can be seen that the nature of EIS determines the requirements for flexibility and flexibility of the system.

3 Collaboration and distribution of the system.

In the new era, the dynamic organizational environment and information technology have made organizations develop flat and integrated, and many new organizational structures have emerged. This means that more information and greater communication are involved in the various tasks of the organization, which require support different from traditional information systems. This indicates the advent of the age of information systems that support organizational collaboration and power distribution. In the traditional sense, EIS is defined as a system only used by a few senior managers. Its current application is limited to key figures in the organization, and the resulting non-economics are obvious. From this point of view, it is necessary to extend this information system for a few organizational members to other knowledge workers. In many cases, as long as the performance of the members of the organization can be significantly improved, EIS can be extended to the lower levels of the organization. The maturity of EIS development technology will reduce costs, which can expand the user level. In the future flat networked organizational structure, EIS collaboration and distribution will be an inevitable trend

A complete MIS has the following four criteria:

The strategic planning of management information system should generally include the following steps

The first step is to determine the basic issues of planning, such as the age of the plan, the method of planning, and whether to determine centralized or decentralized planning.

The second step is to collect initial information. This includes collecting information from cadres at all levels, similar vendors, leading groups of various information systems within the enterprise, various documents, and books and magazines.

The third step is to evaluate the existing status and identify plan constraints. Include goals, system development methods, planned activities, existing hardware and its quality, information department personnel, operations and controls, funding, security measures, personnel experience, procedures and standards, medium- and long-term priorities, external and internal relationships, existing Equipment, existing software and its quality, and the state of mind and ethics of the business.

The fourth step is to set goals. It is mainly set by the general manager and the computer leadership team, including the quality and scope of services, policies, organizations, and personnel. It includes not only the goals of the information system, but also the goals of the entire enterprise.

The fifth step is to prepare the planning matrix. List the matrix of the interrelationships between the content of information system planning, determine the content and the priority of their implementation.

The sixth, seventh, eighth, and ninth steps are to identify the various activities listed above, and judge whether it is a one-time engineering project activity or a repetitive and frequently performed activity. Due to limited resources, it is impossible to carry out all projects at the same time. Only the projects with the greatest benefits should be selected first. The proportion of engineering projects and daily repetitive projects must be selected correctly. The proportion of projects with high risks and projects with low risks must be selected correctly.

The tenth step is to determine the priority of the project and estimate the cost of the project. Based on this, prepare the eleventh step of the project's implementation schedule, and then write the long-term strategic plan in the twelfth step. In the process, you must continue to exchange views with users, information system staff, and leaders of the information system leadership team.

The written plan must go through the thirteenth step before the general manager approves it to take effect and announce the completion of strategic planning tasks. If the general manager does not approve, they have to re-plan.

The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) proposed the Open System Interconnection (OSI) model for open system architecture in 1979. This is a standard architecture that defines heterogeneous computers. The OSI reference model includes seven layers: the physical layer, the data link layer, the network layer, the transport layer, the session layer, the presentation layer, and the application layer.

A single information system has a general hierarchical model: physical layer, operating system layer, tool layer, data layer, function layer, business layer and user layer. There are three structural modes of the information system: centralized structure mode, client / server (C / S) structure mode, and browser / server (B / S) structure mode.