hi all,
i am doing my summers for a large consumer goods company.i am with their sales deptt.i have to do an evaluation of their salesMIS.can any one help me on this.Oracle11i e business suite is used here.

thanks,
vjohn

Hi Vjohn

Orcale is a reporting tool not an MIS tool. To judge an MIS you need to see how does an MIS helps in getting management a real picture at the ground by putting min effort.

Hence to have an effective MIS you need to do the following :

i. Idetification of levels ( MIS needs to be diff for diff levels, say RM/ GM/ Sales team)

ii) Identification of Key parameters which neds to captured at all levels, say performance vis a vis other markets ( say north , south) , sales per person, sales per rupee spend on advertising, coorelations between travel cost and sales etc etc, growth is sales commission, and relation od sales with sales commision, also analysis whether sales is coming with more customer interaction or advertising or due to high commissions??

so one you work on all these, you will be able to see whether your MIS i sgiving management all necessary data or not ??

Hi John

If you have to evaluate their MIS, do it as a MBA and not as an IT engineer. Keep far away from the nitty grities of thier IT systems

Ask the users of information (head of sales, head of marketing, key functinal managers of sales and marketing, and hgead of finance and heads of supply chain/materilas and despatch w.r.t inventory bit of it)

What data do they need and how critical is it for thier job (vital/essential / desirable)
How recent/up-to-date shoud it be (x days old serves 100% or 70% or 40% or 0% of the requirements)
How accurate should the data be for it to serve 90% of their needs (Accuracy of + or - 2% is ok, or +/- X %, let them fill inthe X)Then ask them to rate the current system of the same parameters

Collate it and present it in a sensible manner

Use common sense + structure, and you have got it. You will enjoy it too : you will find in 90% of the cases that when you make the presentation to them jointly, the information has gone from one person to another person sitting in cabin 10 feet away to each other, has become known to them only through you. In the last decade and a half of service, I have never found a large enough issue that required anything more than common sense

Cheers !

A Shukla

Cheers !

A Shukla