Tilos Business Solutions has developed Tilos MIS++, an active management information system (MIS) that formally structures data and provides meaningful support to management and other decision-makers.
As such, it goes beyond traditional management information and other business intelligence systems to identify issues of concern to management, along with a set of recommended corrective actions.
Sybille McCloghrie, director of Tilos, says MIS++ is an integrated management environment, rather than just an MIS. "Usually, an MIS deals with figures and reports, with a core focus on users performing queries.
That environment does not provide real support to management, as the final product is merely a set of reports and cubes," McCloghrie notes.
"If the reports manage to show that something is wrong, systems do not provide a corrective path. With MIS++, if turnover is down, for example, it suggests the appropriate corrective interventions. It is an active management environment, as opposed to a data warehouse that simply provides review information to management."
A host of metadata underlies MIS++, detailing the relationships between various types of data. It formalises outputs, such as sales figures, and ensures management "compares apples with apples", McCloghrie says.
Data is formally managed and figures derived are traceable. "For example, you can follow sales data to its source to see how the final figures were derived," McCloghrie says.
Tilos initially invested R10 million in developing the system, which was conceived in response to client needs. These included the strategic importance of an MIS environment in areas such as:
* Information retrieval and reporting requirements;
* Measuring key performance indicators;
* The integration of budget requirements into a consolidated whole;
* Web-based information delivery; and
* Improved customer relationship handling and identification of opportunities.
McCloghrie notes: "Whether these are all undertaken together with an initial project or subsequently, the building blocks in the MIS++ environment, together with the integration of workflow and document management, can be rapidly customised and deployed to create a comprehensive solution. This represents a rapid, cost-effective approach to providing a single integrated management perspective.
"MIS++ is a point of departure for the fast, cost-effective, complementary development of other systems, such as e-learning, budgeting, forecasting, activity-based costing, and even elements of CRM."
The solution provides core functionality for integrated reporting and management, including the necessary methods and metadata to interface to legacy and underlying systems. The active management and reporting environment can be a foundation for additional solutions (either as short-term "glue" or as a long-term solution), such as one or a combination of any of:
* Campaign management;
* Customer relationship functionality;
* Employee financial wellness management;
* Credit management;
* Budgeting and forecasting;
* Performance management and reporting at the organisational level or down to the individual employee; and
* Compliance architecture for FAIS and Basel II.
Rapid deployment is enabled by the rich suite of existing MIS++ building blocks, leveraging the MIS++ workflow integration and extractions and interfaces to systems already implemented for MIS++, with the ability to provide integrated views across multiple diverse systems.
McCloghrie says: "MIS++ provides management with a powerful tool for integrated reporting across diverse and changing information systems.
Business can be insulated from these changes, in that management reporting and cross-system action management can be deployed from this layer.
"Management reporting ensures management still has an end-to-end understanding of operations, irrespective of data source. Cross-system action management allows management to trigger, manage and report on specific business actions essential to continuing functionality."
McCloghrie concludes: "The solution to many reporting problems goes beyond the traditional data mart/warehouse to a focus on the workflow and management of information and knowledge. It is not enough to run multiple complex queries in a functional area and produce multiple outputs if this is not done with an outcomes-based framework.
"With MIS++, a focused and formally managed subset of critical management objects is defined, including critical success factors and key performance indicators and measurements. The lifecycle of these is then managed within the ambit of a set of methods that allows for the acquisition, collation, analysis and deployment of data, information and knowledge in a formal yet flexible, responsive and user-friendly framework."
Share
Editorial contacts