Just a Small Piece in the MIS Puzzle.

Greg Drocz

There I sat in the cramped, cluttered office, impatiently fanning through the neatly typed blue brochure that had been handed to me. In gold lettering, “Villanova School of Commerce & Finance: Academic Programs” was scrawled across the front. Startling me and forgetting I was only 3 feet from him, the booming voice of my academic advisor said, “So what do you want to minor in?” With a shrug I answered, “MIS I guess”, not really knowing what I had chosen. “Oh, computers,” he replied “that’ll go well with the accounting degree.” And with that brief encounter with my advisor 3 years ago I had chosen my minor - even though I would not take a minor course until the fall of my senior year. For the next two years family members and friends would ask how school was going and what I was majoring in. “Accounting major/MIS minor” was my standard reply. I could tell by their faces the abbreviation of MIS threw them for a loop. “Management Information Systems” I’d then say. Still blank faces. “Computers”, yup, now they understood. Now that I am about to complete my minor, my answer of “computers” shows just how misunderstood I was about the field. Management Information Systems isn’t just computers. Its technology, its information and it’s the use of these two combined to make intelligent decisions.

Upon graduating, I will be working for Ernst & Young in their real estate auditing practice. As an auditor I can see numerous places where MIS will weave its way into my daily work however one area sticks out the most. A proposal has been made by members of the Big 4, Grant Thornton and BDO Seidman to have companies move towards the use of XBRL to report financial information – a form of reporting previously mention by Scott in a previous post. What does this mean for me as an accountant and an auditor? The access to real time financial data and user customized statements in place of standardized accounting statements. Being real time, XBRL may bring with it the ability to weed out misstatements by management. If information will be presented real time to the auditor, management of the companies being audited have harder time “cooking the books”. This in turn will also provide greater assurance to those who use the valuable information attested to by the auditor – the investors. In addition to XBRL, I see biometrics as something that I will encounter in my work experience. During the assessment of a company’s internal controls we may deem a company to have poor internal controls as to many employees have the ability to access and change information. We may then recommend biometrics, such as a fingerprint scan, in order to allow only those with proper clearance to access the information.

Work is not the only place where I see myself integrated into the world of MIS. The emergence of Web 2.0 will integrate everyone, or rather everyone willing to participate, into the world of MIS. As we saw in the video on YouTube, Web 2.0 is and will be what the users make of it. It truly has endless possibilities. Blogs, Wiki’s, MySpace, Facebook, and RSS feeds are just the beginning. The key thing with all of these is information and the use of this information is just starting to be tapped. Like Danielle, I envision a time where I receive, via other mediums such as cell phone or visual advertisement, personalized offers for goods and services based on the information that I have contributed to this vast Web 2.0. In fact, we’re already starting to see that. Log into Facebook and there is a company trying to sell movie posters in an advertisement on the side bar. What movies posters? It displays the actual posters of movies that I have listed in my “Favorite Movie” category. Empty your favorite movies and generic posters will be advertised to you. This is just a small example of how Web 2.0 will be such a valuable tool and those who contribute will get the most out of it.

Now that I am about to complete my minor I again realize how my answer of “computers” to friends and family was so far off base. MIS is more then that. It about information, using technology to access that information and using that information to make decisions – and we are just a piece in this puzzle.

"The real time reporting utopia?" http://www.it-analysis.com/business/content.php?cid=8977