What is the role of Management Information Systems in the Service Sector

Introduction
In the manufacturing sector, physical goods are to be manufactured for the customer, but this is not the case in the service sector. Unlike the manufacturing sector, the service sector does not involve any manufacturing of the physical goods for the customer. So now it can be said that the Management Information Systems that are generally used in the manufacturing and the selling organization cannot be used in the service sector.

Payroll, accounting, inventory etc form a very important part of the data processing applications and are used in the service sector only sometimes but an important point to be kept in mind here is that these applications are not that much critical for the service sector. The main mission in this service sector is to provide service to the customer that ultimately satisfies him but this is not the case in the manufacturing sector as here this concept varies from industry to industry and from organization to organization.

The service industry consists of some of the major applications which need to be controlled in a very good way for getting the best stuff out of them.

By these applications, the service organization becomes efficient in the nature and then is able to provide with the best type of the services to the customer. In the today’s world, there occurs a tremendous competition between the companies in order to achieve the maximum profit and this competition also exists a lot in the marketing world, one company directly or indirectly always tries to show the other company inferior to it. So in this competitive scenario, one of the major needs of the industry is to get a service distinction, in order to create a position and a particular identity and growth to remain ahead of the various other industries.

In the service sector, the identification of the segment to be served can be obtained by the sensitive market and also with the help of the consumer research. The service demands are very dynamic in the nature and as a result of all this, for the upgradation of the service facilities, it is very much necessary to conduct a research on the requirements, expectations and the perceptions.

Tom Peters in “The Service Edge” states five principles of a distinct service –
1. Listen, understand and respond to the customers.
2. Define a superior service and establish a service strategy.
3. Set the standards and measure the performance.
4. Select, then train and then empower the employees to work for the customers.
5. Recognize and also reward the accomplishments.

The service industries these days involve the front end facilities, which help in serving the customers in order to clear the immediate needs and to make him comfortable for the other service demands.
All the human interactions are mainly based on the knowledge, so all the systems making the human interaction effective are the mission critical applications and here the main responsibility of the service sector is to provide these to offer the most satisfying service. Changes in the service organizations tend to occur more quickly than the manufacturing sector and also the returns in the service industry are very immediate if compared to the manufacturing sector. At this point, it actually becomes a necessity to understand the meaning of the creation of an outstanding service. This creation of the distinctive service is actually a willful conscious and deliberate management endeavor etc. The management of the service business calls for these willful conscious and deliberate act to create a distinctive service and hence to remain in the business. In order to manage a service effectively, it is a necessity to have in depth understanding about the distinctive characters between the product and the service, the customer expectation and the perception.

Comparison between the Service and the Product

Following are few examples of application of Management Information Systems (MIS) in the Service Sector

1) Application of MIS in Airlines industry
2) Application of MIS in Hospitals
3) Application of MIS in Banking