Analyzing the MIS Needs for a Proposed Cosmetic Business

This report provides an in-depth examination of the management information system (MIS) needs for a proposed cosmetic business. It outlines the informational needs across various organizational levels, including decision support systems for top management, MIS for middle-level manage...Read More

Running head: MANAGEMENT INFORMATION SYSTEM
Management Information System
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author’s note

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MANAGEMENT INFORMATION SYSTEM
Table of Contents
Introduction……..............................................................................................................................2
Task 1- Products..............................................................................................................................2
Cosmetic Products....................................................................................................................2
Customers.................................................................................................................................3
Departments.............................................................................................................................3
Task 2- Organizational Structure.....................................................................................................4
Task 3-MIS System.........................................................................................................................5
MIS Development Plan............................................................................................................5
Need for Information System...................................................................................................6
Technology for Information System........................................................................................7
Conclusion……...............................................................................................................................7
References……................................................................................................................................8

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Introduction
This report presents an idea for starting a cosmetic business in the market for commercial
purpose. It also gives the organizational structure that the business would have along with the list
of the departments. This report proposes a management information system for the business. It
gives an overview about the information system requirement for the organization.
Task 1- Products
Cosmetic Products
The products that the new cosmetic business will manufacture and sell are:
Eye makeup: This cosmetic company will sell several products under this category of eye
makeup like eye shadow, eye liner and eye mascara.
Face makeup: Face blush, face compact, foundation and face mousse are the cosmetic
products that the company will manufacture and sell.
Lip makeup: Different categories of lip makeup like lipsticks, lip gloss and lip balms are
the cosmetic products that the new company will sell.
Skincare products: Night cream, anti-aging lotion, fairness cream, moisturizer and sun
protection cream are the main skincare products that the new company will sell. Makeup
cleansing lotions can also be sold by the company.
Nail makeup: Nail paint and nail enamel removers are the two main products that this
company will manufacture and sell.

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Customers
Women and teenage girls are the target customers of this business. The cosmetic industry
is one of the leading industries with huge number of customers. There are diverse cosmetic
buyers. Different category of customer has different preferences. Aged women prefer anti-aging
lotions, whereas the younger generations prefer skin brightening products and moisturizers. This
company will also try to target men by producing skincare products for younger boys and men.
Selling these cosmetic products through direct channels will help the business to reach to a larger
group of audience.
Departments
The main departments in this organization will be:
Production: This department will monitor the quality of the products. It will deal with
inventory control and production scheduling as well as planning (Kerzner 2013). The other main
responsibility of this department is to decide best method of production.
Research and Development: The main concern of this department will be to develop new
cosmetic products or to improve the current products as well as business processes. R&D
activities and marketing activities are interrelated. The focus of this department will be to
produce better cosmetics for fulfilling the customer needs in an effective and efficient manner.
Marketing Department: The main focus of this department will be to identify and satisfy
customer needs at a reasonable price. The fundamental activity of this department will be to
manage the 4Ps of marketing (Armstrong et al. 2015). The 4Ps are place, promotion, price and
product.

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Group of CEO
Vice President Production DepartmentManagement Department
Accounting Team
Affairs Team
Quality Control Team
Quality Assurance Team
Sales Team
Marketing
Team
Promotion
Team
Production
Team
R&D Team
Production
Control
Team
MANAGEMENT INFORMATION SYSTEM
Finance Department: This department will be concerned about the monetary outflow and
inflow. It will monitor the payroll system of the employees.
Human Resource Management: The main aim of this department will be to hire the right
people for the right jobs (Hendry 2012). This department will also be responsible for providing
training to the employees in an effective manner.
Task 2- Organizational Structure
Figure 1: Organizational Chart
(Source: Created by author)
Top level management: The responsibility of the top management will be to develop the
overall objectives and policies of the organization. This management level will monitor the
performance of the business and access all the information from various units and departments.

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The top management team will need strategic information from the entire organization for
making long term decisions (Lunenburg 2012). This level will also require strategic information
from outside the organization. Top level management will require information about the revenue
generated in the entire organization and the sale of cosmetic products at various locations. It will
also need information about the competitors for developing competitive strategy of the
organization.
Middle level management: The responsibility of the middle level managers is to make
decisions based on various situations. They are responsible for making short range plans, budgets
and schedules. This level deals with semi structured problems. Middle level executives will need
summarized reports and exception reports. Middle level management will need information for
carrying out analysis (Morse, Babcock and Murthy 2014). The middle level managers of the
cosmetic business will need monthly or weekly reports regarding the sale of products so that they
can analyze the reason behind high or low sales level and take effective decisions.
Low level management: This is the operational management level. This management
level is responsible for developing short range plans like weekly production and sales target.
Structured decisions are taken by low level management. This management level will need
operational information based on daily activities in order to find out exceptions for reporting it to
the top level of management.
Task 3-MIS System
MIS Development Plan
MIS development plan will facilitate the cosmetic business to perform in a more effective
and efficient manner. MIS system implementation requires effective planning. The goal of MIS

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must support the organizational goals (Laudon and Laudon 2016). The development plan must
be well documented for the benefit of the business.
Problem definition and development strategy: The need for adopting MIS must be
identified. The MIS system must be developed in such a manner so that it has a quick response
time. The initial step will be to make a development strategy. The cosmetic business can select a
real time development strategy (Leau et al. 2012). This business will be benefitted by using
customized external resource or vendor for MIS development.
Feasibility analysis: Technical and financial feasibility will be analyzed in this stage.
Several alternatives will be developed and the best choice must be selected.
Design: This phase will focus on the detailed architectural design of MIS. MIS will assist
the middle level managers to collect data from the TPS and generate reports. Logical as well as
physical designing of the MIS will be done in this phase.
Implementation and programming: The design will be converted into programmable code
for the purpose of implementation.
Testing and installation: This phase will focus on testing the functionalities of the
software. It will verify whether the software is fit for the business use. System testing will be
followed by installation and system maintenance on a regular basis.
Need for Information System
This cosmetic business will need MIS for providing the managers with tools for
organizing, evaluating and efficiently managing business operations (Laudon and Laudon 2016).
This system will provide a centralized database to the management. MIS will be able to collect

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data from the lower level and enable the managers to generate summarized report. MIS is needed
for effectively operating the inventory, financial, sales and HRM system of the business. MIS
will enhance the satisfaction level of the customers (Bajdor and Grabara 2014). It is also required
for providing up-to-date information for the development of effective strategies.
This cosmetic business will require sales, budgeting, HRM system and inventory control
management information system. MIS is required for supporting semi- structured and structured
decision making by using internal information of the organization. The non functional
requirement of MIS will be its strong security features, easy backup process, platform
independence, simple process of data migration, flexible and high performance. MIS system will
need HTTP for data transmission as it will use internet. Different organizational level will need
different information systems (Willcocks 2013). The top management will need decision support
system, the middle level managers will need the MIS and the low level managers will need TPS.
Technology for Information System
The cosmetic business can adopt SAP ERP software for the purpose of automating the
flow of information and improving the effectiveness of the business. ERP system will integrate
the information from various departments and store it in a centralized database (Leon 2014). This
will enable the business to enhance its operational efficiency by streamlining the processes. It
will also present accurate and real-time information to the managers for making effective
decisions.
Conclusion
It can be concluded from this report that the proposed cosmetic business will need MIS
for the purpose of generating more revenue and enhancing operational efficiency. This report

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showed the different informational need of the various management levels. It also gave an
overview of the MIS development plan along with its various phases like problem definition,
feasibility study, design and implementation.

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References
Armstrong, G., Kotler, P., Harker, M. and Brennan, R., 2015. Marketing: an introduction.
Pearson Education.
Bajdor, P. and Grabara, I., 2014. The Role of Information System Flows in Fulfilling Customers’
Individual Orders. Journal of Studies in Social Sciences, 7(2).
Hendry, C., 2012. Human resource management. Routledge.
Kerzner, H., 2013. Project management: a systems approach to planning, scheduling, and
controlling. John Wiley & Sons.
Laudon, K.C. and Laudon, J.P., 2016. Management information system. Pearson Education
India.
Leau, Y.B., Loo, W.K., Tham, W.Y. and Tan, S.F., 2012. Software development life cycle
AGILE vs traditional approaches. In International Conference on Information and Network
Technology(Vol. 37, No. 1, pp. 162-167).
Leon, A., 2014. Enterprise resource planning. McGraw-Hill Education.
Lunenburg, F.C., 2012. Organizational structure: Mintzberg’s framework. International journal
of scholarly, academic, intellectual diversity, 14(1), pp.1-8.
Morse, L.C., Babcock, D.L. and Murthy, M., 2014. Managing engineering and technology.
Pearson.

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Willcocks, L., 2013. Information management: the evaluation of information systems
investments. Springer.