The global business environment constantly changes, and organizations that collect data from across the enterprise and organize, analyze and distribute it most efficiently can react more quickly and with greater certainty to fluctuating market conditions.
The effective use of digital information creates significant competitive advantages, driving demand for data professionals with advanced expertise in Systems Development Life Cycle project management and other models for optimizing Management Information Systems (MIS).
MIS comprises the integration of companies’ data infrastructure that incorporates specialized systems that support competitive strategies. Those systems include:
- Executive Information Systems provide executive and senior leadership with real-time information to set policy and high-level decisions.
- Marketing Information Systems use metrics from past campaigns to optimize current and future operations.
- Business Intelligence Systems enable leadership to identify competitive challenges and optimize operations ranging from human resources to supply chain management.
- Customer Relationship Management analyzes previous sales activity to support growth by automating takes such as contract management, lead development and tracking and order management.
“When integrated properly, data can accelerate many — even most — business strategies by improving the processes and empowering the people needed to execute them,” according to Harvard Business Review.
What Are the Advantages of Using Data as a Strategic Asset?
MIS breaks down operational data siloes and manages its secure flow across the enterprise enabling self-service access to decision-makers.
“When organizations approach data as a strategic asset, it can open the door to new efficiencies, insights, and capabilities while also enabling emerging technologies,” Deloitte notes in its 2021 report, Data as a Strategic Asset.
As companies migrate their data management to cloud computing, they place a greater value on MIS to realize efficiencies and lower costs by:
- Leveraging cloud affordability: Cloud computing allows companies to manage increasingly large and complex data sets without investment in storage devices.
- Increasing data portability: MIS enables businesses to take advantage of remote work opportunities by providing on-demand data access to enterprise data stored in the cloud.
- Improving integration and collaboration: Business partners and enterprise operations not only can access MIS-managed data stored in the cloud but can also share analytics and applications.
The Deloitte analysis says its survey of chief financial officers found only 40% described their companies’ degree of data sophistication as “low” or “medium,” while 85% predicted a significant acceleration of digital transformation to take advantage of benefits such as those.
As a result, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts demand for data professionals will grow 36% through 2031, about seven times the growth rate for all other careers, with about 13,500 jobs created annually.
How Do Business Professionals Prepare for a Career in Data MIS?
Professionals with a Master of Science (M.S.) in Management Information Systems are equipped with the expertise and insight companies seek for leadership roles in business intelligence, data and systems analytics and database administration.
The interdisciplinary program offered online by the University of Illinois-Springfield (UIS), for instance, explores topics and skills such as:
- Analysis, design and implementation of information systems using the Systems Development Lifecycle, programming and decision analysis
- Concepts and processes that support data-driven decision-making
- Strategies for optimizing information technologies
Overall, program graduates gain advanced expertise in collecting, storing and disseminating data, giving them an advantage in high-demand, lucrative careers.
Learn more about the UIS M.S. in Management Information Systems online program.
