MANAGEMENT INFORMATION

SYSTEM AT

REPORT SUBMITTED BY:

CHETAN PATIL (27)
NEHA PARAB (29)
MOHINI GANDH (32)
VIJETA DAINE ()
RONAK HARIHARAN (06)

MANAGEMENT INFORMATION SYSTEM

Definition: Management Information Systems (MIS) is the term given to the discipline
focused on the integration of computer systems with the aims and objectives on an
organization.
The development and management of information technology tools assists executives
and the general workforce in performing any tasks related to the processing of
information. MIS and business systems are especially useful in the collation of business
data and the production of reports to be used as tools for decision making.

Applications of MIS

With computers being as ubiquitous as they are today, there's hardly any large business
that does not rely extensively on their IT systems.
However, there are several specific fields in which MIS has become invaluable.
Strategy Support
While computers cannot create business strategies by themselves they can assist
management in understanding the effects of their strategies, and help enable effective
decision-making.
MIS systems can be used to transform data into information useful for decision making.
Computers can provide financial statements and performance reports to assist in the
planning, monitoring and implementation of strategy.

MIS systems provide a valuable function in that they can collate into coherent reports
unmanageable volumes of data that would otherwise be broadly useless to decision
makers. By studying these reports decision-makers can identify patterns and trends that
would have remained unseen if the raw data were consulted manually.
MIS systems can also use these raw data to run simulations hypothetical scenarios
that answer a range of what if questions regarding alterations in strategy. For instance,
MIS systems can provide predictions about the effect on sales that an alteration in price
would have on a product. These Decision Support Systems (DSS) enable more
informed decision making within an enterprise than would be possible without MIS
systems.

Data Processing

Not only do MIS systems allow for the collation of vast amounts of business data, but
they also provide a valuable time saving benefit to the workforce. Where in the past
business information had to be manually processed for filing and analysis it can now be
entered quickly and easily onto a computer by a data processor, allowing for faster
decision making and quicker reflexes for the enterprise as a whole.
Management by Objectives
While MIS systems are extremely useful in generating statistical reports and data
analysis they can also be of use as a Management by Objectives (MBO) tool.
MBO is a management process by which managers and subordinates agree upon a
series of objectives for the subordinate to attempt to achieve within a set time frame.
Objectives are set using the SMART ratio: that is, objectives should be Specific,

Measurable, Agreed, Realistic and Time-Specific.

The aim of these objectives is to provide a set of key performance indicators by which
an enterprise can judge the performance of an employee or project. The success of any
MBO objective depends upon the continuous tracking of progress.
In tracking this performance it can be extremely useful to make use of an MIS system.
Since all SMART objectives are by definition measurable they can be tracked through
the generation of management reports to be analysed by decision-makers.
Benefits of MIS
The field of MIS can deliver a great many benefits to enterprises in every industry.
Expert organizations such as the Institute of MIS along with peer reviewed journals such
as MIS Quarterly continue to find and report new ways to use MIS to achieve business
objectives.

Core Competencies
Every market leading enterprise will have at least one core competency that is, a
function they perform better than their competition. By building an exceptional
management information system into the enterprise it is possible to push out ahead of
the competition. MIS systems provide the tools necessary to gain a better
understanding of the market as well as a better understanding of the enterprise itself.

Enhance Supply Chain Management

Improved reporting of business processes leads inevitably to a more streamlined

production process. With better information on the production process comes the ability
to improve the management of the supply chain, including everything from the sourcing
of materials to the manufacturing and distribution of the finished product.

ERP OF DELL
Dell Computers Vital PLM Processes
Dell has achieved dramatic success streamlining its product data management
activities to product life cycle management. Its ability to keep the project focused
on core business processes has yielded short time to value.

In 2000, Dell Computer faced these trade-offs as part of its constant efforts to improve
its supply chain processes. In this case, it improved its product data management
(PDM) capabilities, most notably its engineering change management (ECM)
processes, internally and across the supply chain. In addition to streamlining the
engineering workflow, this IT effort was key to building a foundation that can enable
more-efficient product life cycle management (PLM). The goal of PLM is to manage the
stages of a product's life to improve business performance. PLM depends on PDM for
timely and accurate information about the status of a product definition.
Problem: Dell determined that it needed to reduce costs associated with managing
product data and improve its engineering change workflow internally and across the
supply chain as part of its ongoing efforts to improve business performance. The
established infrastructure and processes were supported by internally developed
applications to define products and manage bills of material (BOMs), manage related
documentation and support ECM. As the enterprise continued to grow, it was becoming
harder to monitor and control product development and production startup. Dell sought
to address these issues before they became widespread.

Objective: As a cornerstone of Dell's strategy, engineering management recognized the

importance of adopting standard software and processes for the workflow from design
through manufacturing implementation. The scope of the effort required the inclusion of
suppliers and manufacturing sites; otherwise, Dell would face increasing challenges
with the timeliness and accuracy of product data. These problems could, in turn, create
product quality problems, as well as unacceptable levels of scrap, rework and material
shortages, resulting in inefficiencies in a highly competitive market. By improving these
processes, Dell hoped to discover opportunities to further reduce material costs. For a
company that ships more than 4 million PCs per quarter, small material savings per PC
can improve the bottom line significantly. Key objectives included:
Enabling consistent engineering change workflow globally across Dell and suppliers
Improving data integrity, as well as the timeliness and accuracy of product data
Reducing engineering change cycle times
Increasing the automatic reuse of product data across multiple applications, while
eliminating the need for data reentry.
Reducing the workload required for product configuration management
Detecting product data errors before they reach manufacturing
Integrating with established applications, such as Dell's sales configuration tool for
servers and storage devices in the
United States
Reducing system downtime
Improving user acceptance and use of enterprise-standard software
Dell was concerned about the time and cost for such an effort. Based on its own
knowledge and anecdotal evidence, the company was aware that such large-scale
initiatives typically require more than a year to accomplish. On occasion, they may take
many years, at great expense, and with the risk of unsatisfactory results. In the fastpaced PC industry, failure could have hurt the companys ability to compete.
Approach: Dell decided to replace its internally developed infrastructure for PDM with
commercial, Web-based software that would support product definition, configuration

management, and ECM across the enterprise and the supply chain. During 2000, the
stewards of product data, Dells Product Group
Configuration Management (PGCM) team, drove this effort in conjunction with the
engineering services project team. Meetings with senior executives reaffirmed the need
for the project, reinforced corporate commitment, and confirmed the goals, scope and
expected results from this initiative. Enterprise wide awareness of this support from
senior executives encouraged cooperation from all affected groups. Central to this
strategy was Dell's decision to focus on the IT capabilities that would be useful to
improving its infrastructure. It focused on secure document and file management, BOM
creation, product configuration management, ECM, and the Web based ability to
coordinate these activities across Dell's global operations and with suppliers. Although
Dell recognized that supporting multiple types of workflow could be valuable, it decided
to streamline workflow options during the initial deployment of software. After exploring
options with major systems integrators (SIs) and suppliers of PDM applications, Dell
decided to partner with Agile Software and to support the effort with an internal team
dedicated to the deployment. Dell adopted this approach because:
Agile addressed the major focus points of this initiative
During the evaluation process, Agile instilled the greatest confidence that Dell could
work with it to deploy in the Dell environment
Given their knowledge of engineering processes and software, an internal deployment
team from Dell would deliver a more-economical and timely solution than those
proposed by Sis Figure 1 depicts the upgraded infrastructure. At the core, the ehub and
the Internet file server provide the backbone for archiving and sharing electronic files
securely across the Internet. The product data validator and the Agile integration server
provide the interface between Agile and Dells enterprise resource planning (ERP)
environments worldwide, as well as to its sales configurator for complex servers and
storage devices in the United States. By integrating Agile with its sales configuration
validation tool, Dell enabled its U.S.-based sales department to automatically validate
server and storage device configurations based on engineering technical attribute data
housed in the Agile tool. Dell executed the bulk of the deployment in two phases. The
first enabled Agile as the system of record for 2,500 internal users and 37 of Dell's top

50 suppliers. More than 250,000 part numbers and 20,000 documents were converted
from the legacy database into Agile's software environment. This phase lasted seven
months (from March 2000 through October 2000) and cost between 200 percent and
250 percent of the software's purchase price. Nonsoftware costs comprised Agile's
consulting services, the time of internal team members, travel and ancillary software
support for the Web-based environment, including extranet support. On 1 October 2000,
Dell went live on Agile as the product change system of record to manage all product
platforms. During the second phase of the deployment (from October 2000 to June
2001), Dell added 800 users and 63 suppliers to the system. It improved interfaces with
ERP systems and developed the data validator with Agile's Software Development Kit.
The data validator checks product data accuracy, compliance with local manufacturing
conditions and the compatibility of translated data with local ERP data formats. Further
steps in this effort will involve refinement of the workflow internally and with suppliers.
Results: The initiative reduced the product development cost structure by improving the
timeliness and accuracy of product data and ECM processes across Dell and its
supplier network. Dell achieved most of these benefits during late product design stage
(just before manufacturing begins). This is the point in the product life cycle with the
greatest volume of engineering change to manage internally it is the point in time at
which suppliers have the greatest risk of error. Dell reduced the resources necessary to
process engineering changes by more than 30 percent. The average time to process an
engineering change dropped by 50 percent. Thirty percent fewer people are needed for
configuration management globally, since employees are able to process four times as
many engineering changes as they had done previously. This enabled personnel to be
redeployed to other critical tasks throughout the product's life cycle. Improvements in
the accuracy and timeliness of data reduced unnecessary scrap and rework. On
average, Dell processes more than 4,000 changes monthly on more than 20,000 parts.
The data validator traps more than 8,500 errors each month. This has substantially
reduced the amount of personnel required to intervene on the translation of product
data to ERP systems.

Critical Success Factors/Lessons Learned: An enterprisewide IT project does not

have to be broad to deliver value. Such an initiative should focus on the business
processes with the greatest impact. Dell achieved a rapid time to value seen across the
enterprise because it focused the effort on a vital business process.
Software tools with the greatest breadth of off-the-shelf functionality do not necessarily
offer the best solution for the enterprise. Dell compared Agile's Product Collaboration
module to applications with greater scope and selected Agile because it was the best fit
for the business processes to be addressed. The user and vendor must coordinate the
quality assurance effort. More regression testing and greater quality assurance effort
would have saved additional time and money. Standard, but imperfect, workflow is
more-efficient than attempting to implement ideal, but complex, workflow. Agile
supported much of what Dell wanted in workflow as part of its packaged software;
however, it was not ideal across the enterprise. This standard, but imperfect, workflow
support significantly contributed to the success of this effort.

KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT
Dell Computer Corporation enjoys a reputation for outstanding customer service. This
expertise has helped the company become one of the fastest growing computer
manufacturers in the world. But customers in the rapidly evolving information age
expect even more. To meet its customers demands for faster, better-informed, and
more responsive service, Dell has developed a host of Microsoft
Exchange Serverbased knowledge management solutions that has helped the
company increase productivity and cut costs while improving customer service.
The concept of direct customer contact has made Dell Computer Corporation one of the
most successful companies of the 1990s. But to carry their success into the next
millennium, Dell executives realized they would need to make sure that when customers
come into contact with Dell, they receive quick, accurate, knowledgeable service.
Dell has a two-part sales force, an internal sales-support team and a fleet of field sales
representatives. Historically, the groups were challenged to keep their information about
customers in synch and up-to-date, often resulting in needless duplication of efforts and
missed sales opportunities.
Dell also needed a way to respond to customers whether they contacted the company
by letter, fax, phone call, or e-mail. Complicating that communication was the fact that
the people who needed to respond to customer issues were dispersed among the
companys more than 33,000 employees in 33 different countries.
As Dell and its customer base began to experience explosive growth, it became
increasingly difficult for Dell employees to provide high-quality service using nonautomated processes, says Arnie Panella, Dell senior manager for global messaging
infrastructure.We needed to create an infrastructure to support development of
workflow-based applications that would enable us to efficiently organize, share, and
disseminate information throughout Dell, so we could better serve our customers.

Uniting a Disparate Sales Force

By May 1998, Dell had standardized on Microsoft Exchange Server and the
Microsoft Outlook messaging and collaboration client, which the company chose not
only for their reliability and scalability, but also as a knowledge-management platform.
Exchange gives us more than a messaging system, says Panella. It gives us a stable,
scalable platform we can also use for collaboration, data storage, application
development, and knowledge management. To help better connect its internal sales
support team and its field sales representatives, Dell created a universal contactmanagement system that sales reps can update and synchronize easily, whether they
were accessing the system from an internal desktop computer or an offline laptop. Dell
found the solution simple to implement, thanks to Exchange Public Folders on the
server side, and Outlook Contacts on the desktop. Now, with the universal contact
repository in place, sales, management, marketing, and executive staff can access any
customers full history, including the most recent activity at a customer site, order status,
and relationship or competitive details, all from their standard Outlook Contacts
interface. The contact information is stored in Exchange Public Folders, so it is
automatically synchronized every time an employee logs on to his or her e-mail
account. This system has standardized the customer information corporate wide and
united the inside and outside sales forces into a single team because of the timely
information sharing. Its also helped with sales productivity because of the ability in
Outlook to plan meetings, assign tasks and manage follow up.
Responding to Customers Promptly and Accurately
Dell has also used Exchange to create a workgroup document-management system
called Customer Recovery. With these system customer service representatives, who
handle incoming customer issues and orders, enter inquiries into a custom Outlook
form. The Keyfile Keyflow automated workflow application then automatically routes the
form to the appropriate person within Dell. Dell managers can quickly check to see if a
customer service representative has officially closed the inquiry or not, and they can
track who is resolving issues and how theyre being resolved.
Customer

Recovery makes sure that weve addressed whatever issues the customer

has raised in a timely and efficient manner, Panella says. With this knowledge

management solution, we make sure that the correct people see the complaint, resolve
it, and close the loop with the customer, and that gives our customers a better
experience with Dell. Dells order-fulfillment and tracking process has also improved.
The company receives many orders by fax, and customer service representatives used
to write down additional information or customer questions on the actual hard fax copy.
These records were very difficult to track, manage, and follow up on. In fact, it could
take weeks for Dell employees to find the correct fax order and respond to a customer
inquiry. Dell IT staff made a number of changes that help make these fax orders more
manageable. First, they installed the Omtool Fax Sr. fax server to receive all incoming
faxes and send them directly to employees desktops via Exchange Public Folders.
Then, they designed a knowledge management solution that makes it easy for
employees to find the order information they need. Now, when a fax order arrives at
Dell, an employee enters all the relevant information into a custom Outlook form, and
the fax and form are sent to a Microsoft SQL Server-based database. Any Dell
employee can then find the order almost instantly and answer questions or update
information.
Business-Critical Results
According to Panella, the document-management system is helping Dell in a few very
important areas. The system has cut the material costs of printing faxes and has saved
the company for each page not printed. In addition, the time it takes to service requests
has been reduced dramatically from a number of days to the number of minutes it takes
to service online image retrieval. The document management system has dramatically
improved Dells responsiveness to order inquiries. Because accounts receivable can
also find payment information almost immediately, it has helped Dell to come up with
the correct document quickly. Because Dell employees can invoice customers more
quickly and follow up on payment status easily, Panella considers this a business-critical
solution. In addition to increasing sales productivity, the shared-contact management
system has also given the Dell sales force a competitive advantage. If a Dell employee
learns that a competitor is courting a Dell customer, he or she can target and quickly
contact the appropriate people at the customer site. Then the representative can update
the contact information immediately, so other Dell employees know about the situation

and the action taken. Dell has many plans to refine and expand its use of knowledge
management solutions. For example, its IT staff is developing reporting tools that will
help managers record, track, and analyze the success of systems such as Customer
Recovery. In addition, the company is in the process of developing an automated
approval system that will reduce the time it takes to fulfill employee requests, whether
for new equipment or a change in benefits. Employees will enter their requests in a
custom Outlook form that will then automatically be routed to the correct managers for
approval. And the efforts wont stop there. Dell executives have embraced knowledge
management as an integral component of running an efficient business. Says Panella,
Very soon after migration, weve gone from using Exchange just as our messaging
system, to using it for business-critical knowledge management applications.

DELL UPS SOFTWARE

REMOTE MONITORING AND CONTROL OF UPS PRODUCTS

Dell UPS Management Software supports Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) products
connected to an individual computer as well as UPS models connected to a network
using the Network Management Card (NMC). The Dell UPS Management Software
allows you to monitor and manage several UPS products through one intuitive graphical
user interface. In addition to monitoring the UPS products the software also safeguards
computer systems from uncontrolled shutdowns due to power failure.
With the Dell UPS Management Software, you can configure UPS products on any
computer within the same LAN and monitor their status. Using the UPS software, you
can manage the power to multiple computers on a network as well as shut systems
down in the event of a utility power failure, saving vital application data. The Dell UPS
Management software also supports different UPS products in redundant
configurations1 through the same user interface.

DELL UPS MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE COMPONENTS

Dell UPS Management Software has three components. Of these, the first is the Agent,
which is the core component and runs in the background as a system service. It
communicates with the UPS, logs events, notifies users of events, arranges actions
according to the users specifications, and initiates shutdown when necessary. The
Agent can be managed by the Monitor.
The Monitor is the graphical user interface application of the Dell UPS Management
Software. Communicating with the Agent, it gathers real-time UPS information, UPS

status, and server information, and allows the user to tailor the UPS working
parameters. It can run on any computer on the LAN or on a standalone computer. The
final component, the Tray Icon, is the management tool of the Dell UPS Management
Software, and it appears in the status area of the system task bar. It is available only for
the Microsoft Windows platform.

DELL UPS MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE FEATURES

Dell UPS Management Software features include:

User-friendly GUI showing status of all locally connected and networked Dell UPS
products
Remote control and configuration of Dell UPS products through network
Redundant UPS configurations support even with different Dell UPS products
Automatic closing of applications and initiation of multiple server shutdowns in the
event of power failures
Wake on LAN server action enablement after power outage
Energy-saving design: Manages timed (on/off) control of UPS
Allows customized messaging upon power events
Easy access to historical data logs and events
Automatic local and network discovery of all Dell UPS products
Self test and power on/off scheduling calendar
ADDITIONAL ADVANTAGES
The Dell UPS Software is bundled free of charge with every Dell UPS, so you can
manage multiple servers and UPS products without buying additional software. The
software also includes information in English, German, Spanish, French, Russian,
Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Japanese, and Korean. Finally, you have the
assurance that the Dell UPS Software is Dell tested, approved, and supported.