Please take a moment to read this very carefully!

What is MIS?
MIS (Management of Information Services)
Information service is the organization, storage, and retrieval of data that is accumulated and created by use of computers and computer programs.
 

Management of this data includes the safe keeping and retrieval of this information through preventative maintenance routines and consultation or training of the users.  It also includes upgrades to hardware and software where it is deemed necessary, to insure a smooth running operation with the least down time for maintenance.
 

Why is this necessary?

Are you completely happy with all your computer equipment? Have you ever wondered if you could have made a better decision if you would have had the time to do more research or knew more about the equipment and its uses?

Do you think that you can buy software that will install on you computer and take care of all the maintenance functions that are necessary?

Do you think that when you have a hard drive failure that you can just replace the hard drive and all the things that you are used to will still be there?

Do you use a computer to do a specific job, thinking that you can just replace the equipment when it fails and continue doing the same job in the same manner?

 

The management of information systems today is many times more complex than just being a librarian. The need for a specialized department is great.

• In the twenty years of doing computer service for businesses we have found that most small business officers don't understand how to safe guard their data or they don't think it is necessary until after a computer failure.

* They may not know that they need to do a backup.

*They don't keep a Log of Assets.

* They think they have a backup, but don't know how to check it for validation.

* They don't do the backup often enough.

* They don't change the backup media at least every other backup.

* They think the computer magically takes care of that stuff in a manner that is indestructible.

**** MIS department will know the best backup method for a given situation.

How much money would it cost you if your computer data on your hard drive were to disappear and not be recoverable? You must count cost of man-hours to reconstruct the data + moneys lost due to non-productivity or slow down of productivity. Remember that you will have no document or spreadsheet templates, no database, no billing program, no financial data, no customer data access files, no email addresses, no internet shortcut list, no internet access. You can buy a new computer the same day but all the things that you are used to having available at the touch of the mouse must be reconstructed from your own or your employees memory or from paper copy that you may have put away somewhere. And you must pay the individual that does the reconstruction. I can remember when I lost a house to a fire 15 years ago, and I still occasionally think of something that I had not thought of before that is gone forever. It is hard to remember all that is lost until those things are needed again. I don’t mean to bring sentiment into this but just to point out that sometimes we can’t think of the things that we have lost until we can’t use them for production.

 

• Most computer failures and data losses are avoidable through preventative maintenance.

* Many times we hear from the user that the computer was acting funny or making a noise last month but then it quit, so the user ignored it until the problem caused complete failure.

* The users don't upgrade the virus software.

* They never turn the computers off and never do any preventative maintenance.

**** MIS personnel will perform maintenance checks to catch those "funny noises" or strange software behavior before they cost you money and time trying to recover lost data or have a machine repaired on a non-scheduled basis.

Several thousand years ago documentation was done on media such as stonewalls, then later on stone tablets, and then on scrolls made of animal skins. The language and symbols changed through these times as well. Now we use paper and ink and many different languages that seem very stable to us. The computer is a tool that allows very fast access to the data that we store on various types of media in many different methods or languages. These media types, methods, and languages or being improved upon constantly. Obsolescence in computer media can occur in as little as 6 months. The need to stay up to date on these different things is great because our devices may fail and one that will work to read our data may no longer be sold.

• The business officers often don't have the experience to make the proper decisions about purchasing computer equipment and upgrades.

* The officers will generally use crisis management and maintenance costs as an indicator of when to buy new equipment.  What they should have is an ongoing upgrade plan for effective use of the equipment they plan to buy.

* The officers are often over sold on equipment that their company can't fully utilize.

* Some officers will under buy computer equipment to save money only to find that the maintenance costs are to great or that they don't have the ability to upgrade the computer to what it needs to be.

* The advice that they get comes from users or people in much larger companies that don't have the budget restrictions that a smaller company has and they don't always understand that the officers of smaller companies have to wear many hats.

**** MIS personnel can evaluate your current and future computing needs and make recommendations as to what level of hardware to buy, within your budget constraints, that will allow you the maximum usability and duration of service.

We all learn from one another. We view a method used to do some task and that sparks an idea of how the job could be done better or more efficiently. Sometimes we get the idea from watching another business and we may learn from his loss or his winning. Seeing many different methods is even better because we can have more resources of wins and failures to choose from. An information systems manager working for many different types of companies has a large resource pool to pull ideas from. He can share ideas for information management with others thereby making all more productive in their individual fields.

 

Now see what MMIS can do for you