Friday, 01 March 2013 What is MIS report?

MIS stands for Management Information System and the reports generated through any such system are called MIS reports. These reports may contain information regarding functioning of a unit including but not limited to daily progress of tasks/projects at hand, financial position of the unit, manpower status and planning as per requirement and overall balance sheet of the unit to facilitate the strategic decisions in view of governing and developing the business activities. Why is it needed? MIS report is not just a tool to generate loads of trivial data and piling the communication folders but it should be seen as a Management Tool to Organize, Administer, Manage and Develop various functions of a unit to facilitate the predefined mission. It also provides the vision for strategizing and refining the objectives with anticipation of imminent set of conditions. It is a lighthouse that throws light on the underlying issues that has the potential of turning into a nightmare. What a MIS report should contain? 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. Status of Tasks in a particular Project Daily Status of Projects in progress Weekly Status of transactions and CASH FLOW Daily Status of Client Accounts and receivables Weekly Status of Bank accounts for reconciliation Monthly Status of Cash-in-hand for Investment strategy Quarterly Status of Employee activities Daily Status of individual Employee performances Weekly Status of Employee Performance Appraisal Quarterly Status of fixed assets, equipments and vehicles Monthly

Who should be responsible to prepare a MIS Report? This is a tricky question and most of the time a HR or Admin personnel is tagged to this and held responsible for ineffectiveness of MIS but that is not the case. Job of HR or Admin is to prepare a user-friendly format for filling in the information by ALL the OWNERS of the respective TASKS. These very personnel should be responsible, accountable and liable for disciplinary action if failed in filling the appropriate information from time-to-time and Admin and HR should have authority to oversee that these formalities are religiously completed and to penalize the personnel if found otherwise. MIS report is nothing but a jigsaw puzzle with variety of pieces in different types, sizes and shapes. To complete the picture, every piece has to fit in at its appropriate place and in the right direction. Even a single misaligned and nonconforming piece can spoil the entire big picture and in such case there is no other alternative but to make that disorderly piece to learn some discipline and ultimately replace it if even after all the managing efforts it refuses to fall in place.
Note Prepared for Organization Development Process for a client having an Engineering Consultancy Services Firm