Management information system "NEEDS"

8/9/2019 Management information system "NEEDS"

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Defining Needs

Decisions are required to be taken in day to day life. No single task in

our life can be done without decision making. For every assignmentwe undertake, there has to be a process of making choices.

Whenever we are faced with choices, there is an inevitable need of selecting one particular course of action. Any task can be done invarious ways, but doing it simultaneously through all possible

alternatives is virtually impossible. This necessitates making a reasonable choice from all the optionsavailable. An example can be taken for a person who wants to go toIslamabad. He can look at following options.

Use any of the local bus service available

Go by train

Travel by air

As you can see, the decision to be made in this situation is faced withthe availability of a set of combination of alternatives.


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Every decision we take in daily life requires some sort of informationabout the alternatives available. For instance, in the above example

certain factors need to be considered before taking a decision. How urgent it is to reach to Islamabad

How much time is available to accommodate travelling, since eachmode of travelling will take different time to reach at the samedestination?

Whether bookings are available for the desired day and time.

Is there any possibility of cancellation of booking or flight or busservice.

Which bus service or airline to chose from, since various airlines andbus services are having travelling facilities to Islamabad.

Without the availability of relevant information, we may take adecision which is wrong or not to our benefit.

For instance if the person does not have complete knowledge of factshe might not be able to take the right decision.


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Similar is the case with business. Businesses are run by organizationswhich are in-fact a group of people. As individuals have choices tochoose from, organizations also face various alternatives in day today operations, Decisions are made by individuals from themanagement.

1.1 Need for information

Information is required in day to day decision making. Without theavailability of right quantity of information at the right time, theprocess of decision making is highly affected. For this reason varioussources of information are used to extract information. Some of theseare:

o Newspapers

o Internet

o Marketing Brochures

o Friends & Relatives


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1.2 Sources of Information

Sources of information are generally categorized as primary,secondary or tertiary depending on their originality and their proximity

to the source or origin. For example, initially, findings might becommunicated informally by email and then presented at meetingsbefore being formally published as a primary source. Once published,they will then be indexed in a bibliographic database, and repackagedand commented upon by others in secondary sources.

The designations of primary, secondary and tertiary differ betweendisciplines or subjects, particularly between what can generally bedefined as the sciences and the humanities. For example,

The historians primary sources are the poems, stories, and films of the era under study.

The research scientist's primary sources are the results of laboratorytests and the medical records of patients treated with the drug.

Written information can be divided into several types.

Primary Sources

Secondary Sources

Tertiary Sources


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1.3 Primary Sources

Some definitions of primary sources:

1. Primary sources are original materials on which other research isbased

2. They are usually the first formal appearance of results in the printor electronic literature (for example, the first publication of the resultsof scientific investigations is a primary source.)

3. They present information in its original form, neither interpretednor condensed nor evaluated by other writers.

4. They are from the time period (for example, something writtenclose to when the event actually occurred.

5. Primary sources present original thinking and report on discoveriesor share new information.

Some examples of primary sources:

1. Scientific journal articles reporting experimental research results

2. Proceedings of Meetings, Conferences.

3. Technical reports


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4. Dissertations or theses (may also be secondary)

5. Patents

6. Sets of data, such as census statistics7. Works of literature (such as poems and fiction)

8. Diaries

9. Autobiographies

10. Interviews, surveys and fieldwork

11. Letters and correspondence

12. Speeches

13. Newspaper articles (may also be secondary)

14. Government documents

15. Photographs and works of art

16. Original documents (such as birth certificate or trial transcripts)

17. Internet communications on email, and newsgroups


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1.4 Secondary Sources

Secondary sources are less easily defined than primary sources. What

some define as a secondary source, others define as a tertiary source.Nor is it always easy to distinguish primary from secondary sources.

For example,

A newspaper article is a primary source if it reports events, but asecondary source if it analyses and comments on those events.

In science, secondary sources are those which simplify the processof finding and evaluating the primary literature. They tend to beworks which repackage, reorganize, reinterpret, summarize, index orotherwise "add value" to the new information reported in the primaryliterature.

Some Definitions of Secondary Sources:1. Describe, interpret, analyze and evaluate the primary sources

2. Comment on and discuss the evidence provided by primary sources

3. Are works which are written after the fact with the benefit of

hindsight?


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Some examples of secondary sources:

1. bibliographies (may also be tertiary)

2. biographical works3. commentaries

4. dictionaries and encyclopedias (may also be tertiary)

5. dissertations or theses (more usually primary)

6. handbooks and data compilations (may also be tertiary)

7. history

8. indexing and abstracting tools used to locate primary & secondarysources (may also be tertiary)

9. journal articles, particularly in disciplines other than science (mayalso be primary)

10. newspaper and popular magazine articles (may also be primary)

11. review articles and literature reviews

12. textbooks (may also be tertiary)


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1.5 Tertiary Sources

This is the most problematic category of all.

Some Definitions of Tertiary Sources:

1. Works which list primary and secondary resources in a specificsubject area

2. Materials in which the information from secondary sources hasbeen "digested" -

reformatted and condensed, to put it into a convenient, easy-to-readform.

3. Sources which are once removed in time from secondary sources

Some examples of tertiary sources:

1. Almanacs and fact books2. Bibliographies (may also be secondary)

3. Chronologies

4. Dictionaries and encyclopedias (may also be secondary)

5. Directories


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Another example: the site's users are often new or infrequentvisitors. And perhaps the site's content scope is changing frequently.So the information architecture probably should be very good atsupporting orientation.

If that's the case, invest in a table of contents or some othercomponent that's effective at orienting users and communicatingwhat content is contained in the

site.

Management information system "NEEDS"

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