Types of Information Systems Information systems differ in their business needs. Also depending upon different levels in organization information systems differ. Three major information systems are: 1. Transaction processing systems- TPS processes business transaction of the organization. Transaction can be any activity of the organization. Transactions differ from organization to organization. For example, take a railway reservation system. Booking, canceling, etc are all transactions.
Any query made to it is a transaction. However, there are some transactions, which are common to almost all organizations. Like employee new employee, maintaining their leave status, maintaining employees accounts, etc. This provides high speed and accurate processing of record keeping of basic operational processes. These include calculation, storage and retrieval. Transaction processing systems provide speed and accuracy, and can be programmed to follow routines functions of the organization. 2.
Management information systems-These systems assist lower management in problem solving and making decisions. They use the results of transaction processing and some other information also. It is a set of information processing functions. It should handle queries as quickly as they arrive. An important element of MIS is database. A database is a non-redundant collection of interrelated data items that can be processed through application programs and available to many users. 3. Decision support systems-These systems assist higher management to make long term decisions.
These type of systems handle unstructured or semi structured decisions. A decision is considered unstructured if there are no clear procedures for making the decision and if not all the factors to be considered in the decision can be readily identified in advance. These are not of recurring nature. Some recur infrequently or occur only once. A decision support system must very flexible. The user should be able to produce customized reports by giving particular data and format specific to particular situations.
