Management Information Systems for Planning and Control in Multinational Companies

1. Preface


The competitive environment within the last decades is becoming more and more challenging and demanding. The growth of international trade and the leading trend towards globalization pose a great impact on the companies all over the world, no matter if they are or not international.
For the companies, willing to stay on the edge of competitiveness, new technologies are playing increasing role not only in optimizing particular processes, but also in managing the whole enterprise.

Management accounting as a process of identifying, measuring, reporting, and analyzing information about the economic events of organizations is in the focus of this work. In contrast to financial accounting, management accounting deals not with external constituencies (shareholders, creditors, government), but with internal ones (senior executives, managers, workers). An example of management accounting information is the calculated recent cost of a product, activity or department, as well as a predicted value of this cost.
Management accounting information serves for various organizational functions: operational control, costing, management control, strategic control. Because it is used for so various purposes, which include organizational learning, measuring performance and so on, it has to include not only quantitative, but also qualitative information. Examples of such information are: customer satisfaction, employee capabilities and satisfaction, new products performance.

From organizational perspective management accounting information system serves as a tool for implementing organization’s strategy and measuring its execution.
All of the above emphasizes, how important is it to develop an effective management information system, which then in turn can be very valuable for successful operation of any enterprise.



2. General information on MIS

2.1 Definition of MIS, its tasks and role

In modern hi-tech age information is becoming more valuable and crucial in many aspects of managing an enterprise. Company’s management is setting up the tasks, planning and making decisions about different alternatives, implements these decisions and controls their effect. These tasks can be depicted in the form of management cycle.

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