What information does a manager need before making a decision?

well this is quite genera question and the unswer deffer from one situation to another.

The manager needed to be aware of every aspect that afect the case . This require good analysis process to identify key factors. For example if the management decides improvment plan for certain product , managers from research and development or /marketing should know many things like:

- what our rivals do?

- what the customer needs?

- what is the amount of budget allocated to this project?

- time of the project?

the questions might go further like what are the real reasons behind the development ?

as you can see qustions deffer from the point you look at to the cases.

analised the environement

analised the market

make a plain

Every department manager requires different sets of information to make decision. This all depends on the KPI's, Organization Goal, Short term and long term goals with yearly targets set by the organization. Information is key to decision making hence every single data contributes to information and reports. Lets take one example : To make a product in house  or to buy it from outside , Manager requires information on Raw Material, Labour cost, Variable and fixed overheads and direct cost from the market from available distributors, suppliers etc.