Advantages and Disadvantages of new POS systems
Discuss about the POS System for business Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery.
Every business requires information technology to carry out the business. The small business can be benefitted by the POS system and it has been illustrated in the report.
The Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery is the small business based in Colorado. The garden center small business has been using the manual registers for carrying out the business operations. They are planning to adopt information system to enhance their business and POS system is going to offer them several useful benefits (Rahman and Ripon 2014). Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery with the help of POS can track the inventory; can track the customers and the employees.
The report explains the usage of the information system at the nursery. There are several advantages and disadvantages of POS that has been highlighted in the report. Again, the idea of the centraised database has been defined in the report.
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Advantages |
Discussion |
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Improved efficiency |
The POS system records the price of the inventory and the products. The employees do not have to calculate the financial data manually |
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Stock Management |
POS helps to know the current available stock. The data will be entered into the digital database. The employees can enter the data, can access the data and can process the data with ease |
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Accurate Reports |
POS has the capability to identify the general sales trends such as the seasonal variations as per demands of the stock (Rahman and Ripon 2014) |
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Employee tracking |
POS can be helpful to track the behavior of the employees. The employees are asked to submit the sales goals for the next reporting period. Thus POS can help to process and report for the enterprise |
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Disadvantages |
Discussion |
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Cost of Web Access |
Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery will have to spend heavy to take up the POS software. They will have to pay the cloud vendor. Also they require a network connection having high bandwidth |
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Updates |
Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery will have to update the software resources at regular interval. They will have to upgrade the hardware components as well. |
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Security Risks |
Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery will have to implement the antivirus software in their system otherwise there is a chance that their sensitive data will get breached |
POS system can assist to track the business transaction details. POS facilitates Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery to facilitate the business of the company. The software is also useful to track the internal stick, they ca be able to schedule the replenishment stock from several external resources. The inventory management is crucial for Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery. The POS aids in inputting, tracking and distribution of the data. The company can be able to track the items that have been manufactured (Johnson 2016). The POS also assist in decision making. The Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery can help to track the employees as well as they can keep track of the products which are being manufactured. The company can earn the maximum profit, they can be able to earn for the business. They must choose the POS software and the will have to consider several aspects of the POS software. The software will help them to meet the deliverable s for the business. The POS systems that can provide several benefits to the software are Bindo, ShopKeep and Vend.
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Advantages |
Discussion |
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Enhances data preservation |
Preservation is offered by the centralized databases. The database involves an efficient setup of the fault tolerance and redundant storage preservation data. This occurs at the time of the catastrophic failure of hardware within the drive. |
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The data which are stored locally denotes the physical safety hazards |
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Enhances Physical Security |
The server room and the centralized database blocks the direct access to the system and the database |
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Enhances Data Security |
Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery maintains data of the customers and the employees. Thus privacy and security is a challenge. The database administrators will have to ensure data safety otherwise the sensitive data will get lost. They will have to maintain the policies to restrict the harm that can prove to be harmful for the server (Keith, Buckler and Hamilton 2015). They need to implement the virtual private network, will have to install antimalware software. This will help to ensure the firewalls. |
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Reducing costs |
POS will surely curb down the process and expenses for the project. They do not require specialized hardware and software resources as most of the work activities will be conducted over the cloud platform |
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Enhances Reliability and Update Speed |
The centralized database storage is associated with redundancy and components. This makes the system reliable when compared to the local storage (Min and Park 2017). The cloud vendor will update the database and the system. Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery thus ca get the reliable updated system all the time. |
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Efficient processes facilitating decision making |
Discussion |
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Creating smarter ways of marketing |
Email marketing is the valuable means for promoting the services as well as the products. One can easily boost up their business through email marketing and Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery is no exception. The company by using the CRM can be able to target specific group of people (Muyo et al. 2017). CRM facilitates ways to reach out to customers in more reliable means. The CRM will help Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery to know the buying habits of the customers. |
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Close eye on gross margins |
POS aids in analyzing the why and seeks for the scopes to increase the average sale. POS also helps in setting margin goal of profit. The software will help them to know the performance of the company and they will have to wait longer till the end of the quarter or the month. |
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Rethink sales floor |
It is required to understand whether Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery can earn certain profits within the store. The Cloud based POS will help them to recognize the areas and the departments where they can earn more. Thus the company can know the scope of the project. |
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Purchasing with insights |
Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery with the aid of sales reporting and information inventory can make smarter decisions. POS will help the Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery to know the preference of the customers and they will display the customers those items which they prefer to purchase. They can provide discounts and in this way they can facilitate the customers. |
LAN:
The terminals of POS can be able to connect to POS servers with the aid of LAN. POS supports TCP/IDP protocols and other UDP data transfer protocols. To use the connectivity option, POS is connected to the LAN router. The system is set up in such way that the POS is operations data to the LAN. The router of LAN is connected to the server of POS.
Ways in which POS system help business gain competitive advantages
WAN:
WAN provides a secured mode of data transmission among the networks. WAN makes the data transmission reliable and comparatively less expensive. Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery can use the WAN for the gaining access to the distant support agents. This can aid students to the download the logos or run the various utilities like the analysis of the potential issues. WAN is also used for the remote administration such as programming of latest POS parameters with Q-Prog and uploading of POS parameters (Myatt and Redman 2015). One can call up reports and can assess after that can sales data from office premises to home.
MAN:
MAN supports the POS hardware. The software is also useful to control the inventory and the stock. The invoices are sent to the customers quickly and relatively faster via email. Cash flow is considered as the monitors and the accounts generated by the POS helps to develop the financial statement and the financial performance (Shu 2014). POS software is relatively easy to use and all the customers can use the software.
Wired media:
Wired media is a fixed and easy to use terminal. The POS terminals are secured and reliable and are contactless. It is enabled and be conveniently and incorporated in the POS system. POS system can go well with the debit as well as the credit cards lie the Visa card, America Express JCB, Union Pay and Master Card. Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery can make payments through several contactless chip cards as well as magnetic stripe cards (Stamam et al. 2016). The POS is thus relatively to use and it associates back tilt screen along with the keypad regarding each and every lighting conditions.
Wireless media:
Wireless POS is the usage of wireless devices which facilitates the payment for specific products and services. The wireless POS is also termed as WPOS and it comprises of the base situation that is connected to the central network. The WPOS is used to handle the devices to communicate wirelessly.
Security:
There are several risks associated with the POS system. The vendors manage all the encryption keys without ant security module. Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery uses the corporate network to send the emails and data. The security breach is a matter of concern. The attackers can attack the system can make the system vulnerable to use. The confidential data and the financial data of the customers can be at risk due to the virus attack or the malware attack.
Advantages of having a centralized database
Privacy:
Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery responsibility is to provide security and privacy of the system as well as the database. The company takes several initiatives to safeguard the confidential data of both the customers as well as the employees. The employees will have to setup username and the password and they should not share those confidential data with the outsiders. Thus sharing of the confidential data can lead to data breach. The customers must also keep their passwords secret.
Confidentiality:
Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery must ensure safety as well as security of the system and the database. The business must take the initiatives to safeguard those confidential and sensitive data of both the employees and the customers. The security breach can lead to disaster. The confidentiality can get threatened due to the hacker’s attack.
Conclusion:
It can be concluded from the above discourse that POS has several benefits to offer and all the benefits have been defined in the report. The competitive advantage that POS can get has been defined in the project report. The security issues, the privacy issues and lastly the confidentiality issues have been defined in the project. Recommendations have been made in the report alongside all the benefits. They must install the antivirus program, the antivirus program can provide several benefits to the company. Thus POS will offer them several benefits and all have been defined in the project.
References:
Cui, B., Jiang, J., Huang, Q., Xu, Y., Gui, Y. and Zhang, W., 2016. Pos: A high-level system to simplify real-time stream application development on storm. Data Science and Engineering, 1(1), pp.41-50.
Johnson, M., 2016. Sustainable Backyard Gardening: An Investigation into the Feasibility of Implementing a Small-Scale Aquaponic System for Household Consumption.
Keith Jr, J.C., Buckler, A.J. and Hamilton, J.A., 2015. [115-POS]: Development of vascuCAP™, an MR image analysis system for longitudinal surveillance of cardiovascular disease in women who developed preeclampsia. Pregnancy Hypertension: An International Journal of Women’s Cardiovascular Health, 5(1), p.62.
Min, B. and Park, S.J., 2017. A Smart Indoor Gardening System Using IoT Technology. In Advances in Computer Science and Ubiquitous Computing (pp. 683-687). Springer, Singapore.
Muyo, P.A., Balute, A.A.N. and Gonzales, D.B., 2017. The Development of the Authorized Valve Distributors POS Data Management System. International Journal of Computer Applications, 167(6).
Myatt, L. and Redman, C.W., 2015. [103-POS]: An online data collection system for preeclampsia research to enable data harmonization and merging across studies, with generation of very large, statistically powerful datasets: the CoLab Database Project. Pregnancy Hypertension: An International Journal of Women’s Cardiovascular Health, 5(1), p.56.
Rahman, M. and Ripon, S., 2014. Elicitation and modeling non-functional requirements-A pos case study. arXiv preprint arXiv:1403.1936.
Rao, K.S. and Nagendra, N., 2017. Automatic Watering of an Expressional Gardening System.
Shu, N.I., 2014. Application of POS and CORS Technologies in Photogrammetry. Geospatial Information, 5, p.025.
Stamam, M.S., Bakar, A.H. and Radzi, S.M., 2016. Perceived ease of use towards point of sales (POS) system: Four and five star hotels in Kuala Lumpur. In 3rd International Hospitality and Tourism Conference, IHTC 2016 and 2nd International Seminar on Tourism, ISOT 2016. CRC Press/Balkema.
Yang, D. and Hwang, I., 2015, May. Security enhancement methods for mobile POS system. In Proceedings of the Second ACM International Conference on Mobile Software Engineering and Systems (pp. 152-153). IEEE Press
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