There are four key types of organisational information systems.

Operational level – to track the flow of transactions through the organisation.

These systems answer particular questions relating to progress and current status.

“Is the hotel booked for the workshop?”

“How much budget do we have left?”

Knowledge level – to help integrate new knowledge into the organisation and control the flow of paperwork.

Research and development

Presentations, publications and papers

Capacity building content and delivery systems

These systems include shared document management systems, which promote collaborative working and are essential for version control of documents. Document management systems are also an integral part at the operational level, for example being used for storing key emails or producing and storing mail merge correspondence.

Management level – serves monitoring, controlling and decision making activities.

Periodic reporting

Although these are largely fed by operational systems they are not used for instant information, but rather for:

“Are things going well?”

“What if…”

Strategic level – helps senior management address strategic issues

Institutional monitoring and evaluation

These systems help in drawing conclusions for market and product development. They also help to answer strategic questions.

“Are we fulfilling our 5 year strategic plan?”

“Has the focus of our strategic plan changed?”

“Should we be doing different things with different people?”

The reason for referring to this section as institutionalised information systems is because, for these systems to work effectively within an organisation there needs to be full management buy in and full compliance with information handling processes across the organisation.