15th November, 2018, Thursday: A management information system (MIS) refers to a dashboard or computerised database of financial information and reports produced regularly on operations for every level across the organisation to appraise the management of the performance. It is an important tool to be used on daily basis to enforce control and maintain vigil on the operations and workforce of the company by the top executives & owners.

In an ideal scenario, your MIS should be working for you, not the other way round. If your MIS is not capable of providing you proper insights and reports as required or even worse if it doesn’t exists, then it means that the reins of your company have been set free. At some point of time, an unwarranted development in the company may act as a wake-up call, signalling the importance of such a dashboard.

If the below questions sound familiar to your daily woes, your MIS isn’t working for you:

• What is the status of the order I received from client “ABC” last month?
• How does the increase in price of raw material affect the sales price of my products? Am I still making the budgeted margins?
• How much payment to creditors is due in the next week?
• Are job cards created for the production process and how are they linked to inventory management?
• How much production has been done by each factory operator & how do I justify their payrolls?
• Where does the petty cash go and who approves any substantial payments?

At Cashcow, our CFOs help the clients to develop a robust MIS based on accurate data. We first understand the information & control requirements of management and use this as a basis to create dummy reports. Apart from the requirements of the management, our team also comes up with inputs for additional reports and insights (based on our experiences & industry standards) that can enhance the control exercised by the management.

All the information & data required for the reports are directly sourced from the ERP or accounting software to avoid any tampering or inaccuracy in the data. The model is shared with the ERP vendors to incorporate in the existing dashboard or is developed by the team on in-house software (including excel). After testing & trial runs the same is deployed to be used by the management.



Few benefits of an active MIS are:

• Companies are able to identify their strengths and weaknesses due to the presence of revenue reports, employees’ performance record etc. Identifying these aspects can help a company improve its business processes and operations.
• Giving an overall picture of the company.
• Acting as a communication and planning tool.
• The availability of customer data and feedback can help the company to align its business processes according to the needs of its customers. The effective management of customer data can help the company to perform direct marketing and promotion activities.
• MIS can help a company gain a competitive advantage.
• MIS reports can help with decision-making as well as reduce downtime for actionable items.

Get in touch with us at Cashcow Consulting to learn how we can bring a difference to your organisation. We look forward to talking with you.