Systems

MIS: The new challenges

Management Information System is effective when it improves the profitability of an organisation considerably. The new and improvised MIS triggers the decision makers for proactive decision process, writes S M Edward

Technology has always been associated with quick decision-making that enables businesses to minimise risks and attain quality output. The hospitality industry is now keen to use technology to its full potential to offer the best services.

The management on the other hand has always been using software that played a key role in defining the performance of a hotel. Management Information System (MIS) has been one of them and has played a potent role in this industry. With time, it has become the most dependent tool, having gone through some changes apart from being customised to a company's needs. These changes in a way enabled the hospitality sector to view MIS as a complete networked platform upon which performance of a company can be viewed and dissected easily.

The competitive culture has crept into the Indian scenario as well, where constant perfection is vital to keep the revenue graph moving upwards. Hence, the new genre of MIS is all about division of departments, being web-based and offering single platform for all information across the network.

MIS operational platform

MIS is undertaken to take account of the day-to-day operations and the aberrations that need to be quickly addressed. It works on client-server architecture and facilitates maintenance of necessary data as well as generation of reports and queries. This software explicitly expresses the operation in a format that is conceived easily and enables quick understanding of various levels of operations. MIS is like a report card of an organisation but, experts feel, it needs to be more refined in order to figure out where the performance diversion is taking place.

This is a crucial aspect which a few software solution providers have incorporated in its software where customers (hotels) can directly pin-point the areas where things are going wrong, thereby bringing about immediate rectification. Today, hoteliers are even extending the use of MIS for keeping a bank of guest information and feedback using this real data into bringing about changes in service styles, menus, etc. An in-depth analysis can therefore be possible with the kind of information available through customisation, feeding the right inputs and evaluating the output generated.

Vital factors

MIS primarily focuses on the soft skills of the operations. But there has to be a synergy of information flow within the managerial, operational and the top management of a hotel. To address this issue companies try to attain exactly that feature through their MIS module. In a hotel, there are different departments and MIS is made on a platform where work is divided and managed according to the departments.

MIS will be more beneficial and effective only when it considerably improves the profitability of an organisation. This will happen only when it triggers the decision-makers to be proactive, which in turn benefits the bottom line. Also, each hotel goes about customising the software according to their needs.

However, there are a few factors that are making MIS a more potent tool. Focusing on the hotel sector we have introduced a Drill Down feature. If Drill Down is provided on MIS (displaying up to voucher level data which is composed of the MIS) the management can get down to the minute details of any abnormal behaviour and can take instantaneous corrective actions. Further, we tend to forget the expense part in the budget set for each department where the emphasis is on sales. Identifying and then reducing these expenses or core areas of concern through MIS is a big boon for the management.

Going the Web way

MIS operations have become more complex and challenging in this sector because of chain hotels which need to be linked to each other when it comes to finding out the performance of each unit. Therefore, MIS is presently being upgraded for Web-based operations too. Here, a central system is created - central MIS - that takes into account the reports generated by each property (through MIS) at the end of the day after the completion of night audit. This is done by uploading the day's report at the central Web server.

The idea is to reach the root of any discrepancy quickly and keep the profitability of the business at the optimum. This tabulation brings the performance of all properties on a single platform - single window information system - for evaluation and appraisals. Here one can figure out reasons for lacklustre performance through links provided for report generation. This also enables a company to study past trends to predict future trends. Also, MIS going the Web way not only secures data from possible theft but also ensure quick recovery from any part of the world for reference and future planning, which gives this software a status like never before.

(The writer is the managing director of Winsar Infosoft)