What is MIS Planning? Discuss the need and objectives of MIS Planning.
OR
What are the objectives and need of MIS Planning?

Ans.: The plan for development and its implementation is a basic necessity for MIS. In MIS the information is recognized as major resource like capital and time. If this resource has to be managed well, it calls upon the management to plan for it and control it, so that the information becomes a vital resource for the system. The management information system needs good planning. This system should deal with the management information not with data processing alone. It should provide support for the management planning, decision making and action. It should provide support to the changing needs of business management.
A long range MIS plan provides direction for the development of the system and provides a basis for achieving the specific targets or tasks against time frame.

Following are the contents of MIS planning :
a). MIS Goals and Objectives : It is necessary to develop the goal and objectives for the MIS which will support the business goals. The MIS goals and objectives will consider management philosophy, policy constraints, Business risk, internal and external environment of the organization and business. The goals and objectives of the MIS would be so stated that they can be measured. The typical statements of the goals can be providing online information on the stock and market; the query processing should not exceed more than three seconds and the like.
b)Strategy for Plan Achievement : The designer has to take a number of strategic decisions for the achievement of MIS goals and objectives. They are
1.) Development Strategy : Ex. an online, batch , a real time.
2.) System Development Strategy : Designer selects an approach to system development like operational verses functional, accounting verses analysis.
3.) Resources for the Development : Designer has to select resources. Resources can be in-house verses external, customized or use of package.
4.) Manpower Composition : The staff should have the staffs of an analyst, and programmer.

The Architecture of MIS : The architecture of the MIS plan provides a system and subsystem structure and their input, output and linkage. It spells out in details the subsystem from the data entry to processing, analysis to modeling and storage to printing.

The System Development Schedule : A schedule is made for development of the system. While preparing a schedule due consideration is given to importance of the system in the overall information requirements. This development schedule is to be weighed against the time scale for achieving certain information requirements.
Hardware and Software Plan : Giving due regards to the technical and operational feasibility, the economics of investment is worked out. Then the plan of procurement is made after selecting the hardware and software. One can take the phased approach of investing starting from the lower configuration of hardware going to the higher as development take place. The process needs matching the technical decisions with the financial decisions.