BUS206: Management Information Systems

Today, the management of information systems is mostly associated with databases, the Internet, and server rooms. However, “information management” has been around since before the invention of these tools. It is as old as commerce itself, as traders, bankers, and merchants have always had reason to track sales and inventory. Creditors must be aware of how much capital has been lent to borrowers and how much money has been deposited at banks. Long before humans harnessed electricity, there was a need for information systems. But currently almost all management of information systems is done electronically.
Management Information Systems (MIS) is a formal discipline within business education that bridges the gap between computer science and the well-known business disciplines of finance, marketing, and management. However, most students will only take one or two MIS courses in their undergraduate programs.
You may not know it, but you use MIS every day. If you use email, you are using MIS, as email is an information system (you just only see one end of it). If you log into a computer every morning and access or edit data in corporate systems and databases, you are using information systems. In its most general terms, information systems encompass any interactions between organized data and people. MIS can be the means by which information is transmitted (such as the Internet), the software that displays the information (such as Microsoft Excel), or the systems that manage the data. In this course, you will learn about the various components of information systems and how to leverage them in business.