Introduction
Nations make vital decisions concerning requisite policies that can address social problems such as poverty and sicknesses. This decision-making process requires the collection and subsequent analysis of large amounts of data. Relying on human decision makers can delay the process of analyzing data to facilitate decision-making.
The cognition of this challenge has compelled many organizations to integrate information management systems into their decision-making processes. This paper discusses the application of information management systems in organizations with a particular focus on the role of the systems in decision-making processes.
Information Management Systems
Information management systems are essential for ensuring speedy analysis of data to yield useful information. Data refers to raw details that relate to a given phenomenon or issue. Information refers to the systematized facts about a given occurrence or issues. Organizations deploy information to draw conclusions.
Information management system constitutes computers and other associated tools that help in data collection and processing to produce information. Data is important in making various strategic decisions for an organization. The process of data assembly, packaging, and breakdown requires the possession of information management tools.
Indeed, every organization seeks strategic plans for growth in terms of their size and productivity levels. Growth increases difficulties in terms of handling customers and supply chain complaints due to the large amount of information that requires analysis and synthesis.
Different organizations deploy different types of information management systems to handle big data. At medium-sized organizations, common information management systems include decision support systems, transaction processing systems, and the integrated MIS systems (Speiss et al. 3).
In general, information management systems can be conceptualized in terms of the MIS systems, expert systems, and transactional processing systems. MIS systems are further divided into various subsets, including executive information management systems and decision support systems.
Decision support systems facilitate the making of decisions based on the analysis of data and statistical projections. They comprise application programs that can evaluate an institution’s figures and subsequently deliver them in a manner that makes it possible for operators to make proper conclusions. The systems rely on input data that is necessary for answering queries (Speiss et al. 3).
For instance, the systems can facilitate the comparative analysis of sales figures within seven days or even annually. They can also help in making projections for revenues on new sales, whether real or based on forecasts and assumptions. Transaction processing systems avail a means of collecting data, its storage, modification, and/or cancelation of different transactions.
This system is perhaps important where big data is deployed in managing organizations’ operational systems that support the business. Decision support systems create an opportunity for improvement of the quality of decisions that are made by organizations’ managers instead of laying off workers who prove ineffective.
Through transaction processing system, an organization acquires the capacity for executing simultaneous transactions. Data that is collected by the system can be held in databases, although such data banks may not have the capacity to handle big data that relates to the entire customer population.
The data can later be deployed in report production, including billing, reports for scheduling manufacturing, wage reports, production and sales summaries, inventory reports, and check registers. Decision support systems and transaction processing systems share common challenges that make them not suitable for meeting the needs of organizations. Their security constitutes a big issue.
For transaction processing system, the appropriateness of the transactions is overly dependent on the accurateness of the information that is maintained in the databases. The decision support system is even slower in helping to arrive at decisions, notwithstanding its limited capacity of data processing.
Decision support systems interact with human decision makers. This challenge makes it incredibly irrelevant for an organization that generates several terabytes of data. The integrated information management system is an example of an information system for managing big data successfully at organizational levels entails.
One of such systems is the enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. However, more sophisticated systems are used for managing big data in science research institutions and internet-based organizations such as the Amazon and Goggle.
The Role of Information Management Systems in improving the Quality of Decisions
Information management systems are important to all organizations. Speiss et al. assert that some modern organizations’ information management systems depend on “traditional database, data warehouse, and business intelligence tool sets” (4).
Such systems are only configured to serve one organization while utilizing only data resources that are accessible to it. This case suggests that such tools do not possess the scalability and cost-effectiveness attributes that are necessary for facilitating the analysis of large customer-related records.
Therefore, similar records that are collected by other organizations may be important in managing customer experiences better. In addition to data from the organization in question, the above records may be left unanalyzed, hence leading to the making of irrelevant decisions concerning how to serve customers.
Decision-making is noble to all organizational operations. Indeed, Dusanka and Aleksandar reveal how the operations of many business entities entail the making of decisions by management departments and various stakeholders (323). Such decisions are based on information that is acquired after the analysis and synthesis of data.
Therefore, arriving at a good decision requires the existence of effective and efficient information management systems. The validity of decisions that organizational managers make depends on the available information. Hence, through information management systems, managers can cultivate a good environment for data gathering followed by its analysis to yield information that can foster the making of effective decisions, which help to determine the necessary policy directions.
Many organizations are caught in the dilemma on whether to increase the number of employees or seek alternative solutions to speed up the expedition of supplier and customer information. A major concern is that the increasing the number of employees will require the commitment of more organizational resources in reward, training and development, and motivational programs to increase their productivity.
Some organizations are also required to hire more HRM personnel. Such a move increases the cost of running the business both in the short-term and long-term. This strategy may be contrary to a company’s strategic plan for lowering its costs to capitalize on the low-cost strategy to gain a competitive advantage in the marketplace.
Deploying information management systems can help to increase the effectiveness of making decisions without having to increase the number of employees. In the attempt to contribute to the debate on the role of information management systems in an organization, Devece maintains that information management systems improve managers’ accessibility and analysis of information (721).
He maintains that such accessibility can be enhanced by interactions with various decision support systems, data mining, and information inquiries. Such systems can help to compare various strategic goals of different organizations to yield a practical decision. This strategy provides managers with a sense of the manner in which a given strategy fits in an organization’s mission and objectives.
Information management systems have been incredibly important in improving the quality of decisions where they have been automated. Over the last one decade, Poelmans, Reijers, and Recker confirm that many organizations now deploy automated MIS systems (307).
This plan ensures they do not rely on services that are offered by their employees to support their decision-making processes. Through the systems, managers are also relieved of the task of arriving at some decision, particularly those that are technical in nature and which automated MIS systems can solve and interpret with a high degree of rapidity.
The Application of Information Management in the Abu Dhabi Health Authority
The Health Authority-Abu Dhabi (HAAD) is a company that takes part in the regulation of healthcare in Abu Dhabi. It shares this role with other organs. These organs include the health department, DHA, and the EHA. Amid the efforts to introduce different authorities to control and monitor healthcare services, the distribution of responsibilities and powers are not clear to some extent.
For example, for the four elements that define the Abu Dhabi health sector (DHA, EHA, the Health Ministry, and the HAAD), overlapping mandates have been realized in terms of licensing and the controlling of various medical institutions. The HAAD executes its mandates by distributing different organizational functions to different entities, which comprise its organizational structure.
Information management systems are important in increasing the effectiveness and efficiency of decision-making in all organizations. This role is evident at Health Authority-Abu Dhabi (HAAD). The Abu Dhabi Health Authority ensures that people in the region have access to quality healthcare.
The authority sets strategies for healthcare systems. It also controls and monitors the operations of the healthcare industry organizations. As a regulator, the authority has the mandate of examining compliance with regulations. It establishes appropriate standards that guide the practice. It insists on the need for healthcare organizations to benchmark from the evidence-based best practices in healthcare services across the world.
Making vital decisions on all concerns of the Health Authority-Abu Dhabi, the process of data collection and processing is incredibly important. The extensiveness of the healthcare sector in Abu Dhabi implies that a large amount of data has to be processed.
Therefore, deploying information management systems is inevitable in the healthcare system. The system deploys different types of IT tools, infrastructure, and equipment to augment human efforts or automate operational systems. HAAD deploys an integrated information system. The core of the systems relies on the client-server kind of infrastructural architecture.
The integrated tools include the databases, software for controlling various presentations and developments, and the operator interface. The users comprise the HAAD officials and customers in the case of eCommutation gateway that is integrated into the organization’s information systems. Since HAAD experiences different changes due to the growing number of service seekers, its IT system is not only flexible, but also highly adaptable to the changing situations.
The system is also highly available. Hence, it is easily accessible for use by different organizational units that are situated in different locations in Abu Dhabi. The system can also simulate various business conditions in an effort to facilitate the process of making vital decisions to enhance HAAD’s effectiveness and efficiency.
The IS/IT systems comprise both software and hardware equipment. The software is customized to fit the specific uses and needs of the business. The software is installed in special-purpose computers that have a large processing and storage capacity. For reliability reasons, buffer solutions are provided.
The system is also highly available since the hardware specification meets the software requirements. The software is explicitly customized for use by the organization’s hardware workstation. The HAAD IS/IT system has various tools that enhance its capacity to achieve its integrative roles in making decisions, controlling, and monitoring the organization’s operations.
It has human resource tools, financial management tools, control and monitoring platforms, and customer management outfits among others. It has a workflow, DMS, corporate acumen, and gateway components. Transactional databases are used in storing various business dealings. Just like any other organization that deploys integrated information systems, “the contractual databank is used in the collection, updating, processing, and simple presentation of data” (Dusanka and Aleksandar 324).
The business intelligence platform deploys data from HAAD databases to create reports, either statically or dynamically. The IT system uses the TREX technology in indexing various objects to facilitate the display of research results. Workflow involves the different logical processes for executing various HAAD business processes without or with the negligible mediation of human decision makers.
Conclusion
Modern organizations in both private and public sector need to develop the capacity to process information in a speedy and an efficient manner. This process calls for the design and implementation of IS/IT systems. Organizations make vital decisions based on consumers’ information on consumption and preference patterns.
Scientific studies are also based on collected data whose analysis leads to appropriate information. The paper has analyzed how information management systems are deployed in businesses to ease decision-making.
Works Cited
Devece, Carlos. “The Value of Business Managers’ Information Technology Competence.” Service Industries Journal 33.8 (2013): 720-733. Print.
Dusanka, Lecic, and Kupusinac Aleksandar. “The Impacts of ERP on Business Decision-Making.” TEM Journal 2.4 (2013): 323-326. Print.
Poelmans, Stephan, Hajo Reijers, and Jan Recker. “Investigating the Success Of Operational Process Management Systems.” Information Technology & Management 14.4(2013): 295-314. Print.
Speiss, Jeffrey, Yves T’Joens, statRaluca Dragnea, Peter Spencer and Laurent Philippart. “Using Big Data to improve Customer Experience and Business Performance.” Bells Lab Technical Journal 18.4 (2014): 3-17. Print.