Advantages and Disadvantages of executive Information system?

Answer 1

The advantages of an EIS, or executive dashboard, are fairly easy to see. Most of these systems are easy to use, provide a timely information summary, can filter extraneous data and analyze meaningful data effectively, and provide an information tracking and trending capability. They can provide a historical view of performance and might even be able to provide some degree of forecasting capability.

The limitations of these systems should also be factored in, however. The EIS will only be as good as the information it has to work with. If the underlying data warehousing and mining infrastructure is not correctly implemented or used, or the wrong set of metrics is targeted, an EIS might provide a flawed view of the organizational health. Current EIS systems are also somewhat limited in their analysis capabilities.

It is also difficult to quantify the return on investment of these systems, and so justify the cost to implement them. More often than not, these applications stand or fall solely on the executive's satisfaction with the information provided and the interface of the system. That is to say, the value is one of perception rather than measurable ROI.

Although the EIS is intended to provide a simplified view of operational health, it can lead to information overload if not correctly configured and extraneous data is not properly filtered. The EIS might provide such a detailed a view of corporate health that the executive is tempted to micromanage his/her employees as daily performance information trends slightly downward periodically.

Another disadvantage is that data currency can be a significant problem if the EIS is not linked to the live corporate information base. If no such base exists (e.g., there is no enterprise resource planning system), data is very likely being provided by individuals reporting to the executives, and maintaining data currency can become problematic. The EIS is yet another window into the corporate data, so information security is critical. This is not simply a matter of an effective network and device security policy, but is also a matter of training the executives on personal security issues (e.g., the executive should not use the EIS platform in crowded airport waiting areas where anyone can see vital corporate performance information).

These systems can be fairly expensive to implement. Coupled with the difficulty of establishing an ROI, this may be a show stopper in many organizations.

Answer 2

The advantage of the executive information system is that it is very secure and very difficult to hack. The disadvantage is that it is very costly.