Advantages of Adopting a POS System
Questions:
1.What are the advantages and disadvantages of the new POS system?
2.How will this POS system help the business gain competitive advantages?
3.What are the advantages of having a centralised database?
4.How could this POS system facilitate decision making?
Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery has recently decided to adopt the point-of-sale system (POS) to scale up their business activities (Refer to Appendix A).
The report will showcase the advantages that POS can bring in the company. The risks and the challenges they are likely to face while adopting the POS system. Recommendations have been made such that they can carry out the business activities ethically and effectively so that they can get the competitive edge over other companies.
There are several advantages that Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery can get adopting POS system and they are as follows-
- Financial Accuracy- The humans can make errors while calculating the financial data. The POS system will calculate the data with the help of specific algorithms without any errors (Galliers and Leidner 2014). The company can get fast effective and error-free financial data calculations with the help of POS system.
- Accountability- The company can keep track of the products they manufacture or they deal with. In this way, the company can track the shipment of the products. The POS system also helps the particular company to correctly address and record the staff activity. Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery can detect the activities of each and every employee (Peppard and Ward 2016). The company can identify the employees having the highest sales figures and the ones having low sales figures. The company can take steps accordingly.
iii. Speed and efficiency- The speed and efficiency of the transaction can be achieved with the aid of POS system. The employees also get the opportunity to serve more and more customers with the help of POS system.
- Stock Management- The modern day POS system can be utilized to manage stock. The stock availability can be checked with the assistance of the POS system.
- Reporting- The POS also helps in preparing the business performance reports and those reports can be useful to provide daily analysis and annual profit margins. It can help to detect the bestselling items (Pearlson, Saunders and Galletta 2016). The POS thus helps in getting a picture of an overall performance of Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery with the assistance of POS system.
There are several disadvantages associated with the point of sale system and they are as follows-
- Costing- The POS system is quite costly; it is really difficult for any small enterprise to configure the POS system at their office premises. Thus it is quite difficult to adopt POS system for small and medium-sized enterprise like Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery (Arvidsson, Holmström and Lyytinen 2014). They will have to pay heavy for the monthly or yearly revenues for taking up the system software.
- Maintenance- The POS system requires daily maintenance. Thus the maintenance of POS system can take a lot of time and this maintenance can also disrupt the operations of Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery.
The POS has the capability to detect the business information from the sales transactions. The employees of Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery will not have to take the hassle to track sales manually. The POS system will store information and process that information. The POS system will also assist in maintaining the inventory. The products which can provide them the maximum profit can be acknowledged with the assistance of POS (Cassidy 2016). POS system is much more effective compared to the traditional cash register. They are known to provide better facility and functionality in tracking, inputting and distributing data to cater useful data to operate and maintain the business. POS maintains the accurate inventory so thus it helps in decision making. There is another advantage of POS system, POS can help Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery to price products more profitable and thus the company can get cost-effective service. POS can give them the cost-effective or cost-saving operations (Willcocks 2013). POS system enables the manager of the company to provide more responsibility to his or her subordinates and thus the employees can earn more revenues and more productivity. All these aspects of POS system ensure that that company can gain competitive advantage and can carry out their business activities smoothly and effectively.
The centralized database storage offers multiple advantages to small and medium-sized enterprise like Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery.
- Data Preservation comes with the fault tolerant setup and the redundant storage, data preservation has the capability to store and preserve data in case of any hardware failure. Thus it provides the functioning even after any sorts of hardware failure.
- Provides data security so there is less chance of security breaches (Sabherwal, Hirschheim and Goles 2013). Following the data access policies, one company can safeguard their system and database.
iii. Centralized database storage offers overall cost-effective service through fault tolerance setup is a little bit costly. The maintenance requires comparatively less amount of money. The centralized database also diminishes the space requirements as well.
Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery can maintain accuracy of the inventory data by POS system with the aid of decision making. Previously the company use to order products on the basis of speculations or assumptions. The company uses to manage the inventory data manually; the entire procedure was ineffective and was error-prone. Now with the advent of POS system, they can make proper assumptions of the inventory data. The company can get agile, effective and error-free service with the assistance of POS system (Snyder and Diesing 2015). Thus, Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery can take appropriate decisions what to purchase, how to purchase, what to discard and what to be sold. In this way they can conduct business activities on leaner inventory units. They can also acknowledge which product can give them the maximum profit with the help of POS system.
Disadvantages of Adopting a POS System
Recommending telecommunication options for this POS system
Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery must choose the WAN network for the POS system. WAN offers quicker file accessibility. Due to caching, the employees of the company can retrieve or utilize the file faster and they will not have to reload the entire document. The company can mitigate the effect of distance between business headquarters, branch offices and the mobile workers with the help of WAN telecommunication optimization (Tsang 2014). WAN also helps to embellish the performance of the applications. WAN is much more reliable and facilitates easy backup of data. WAN optimization can help the company to lessen the cost of equipment. The bandwidth expenses can get reduced as a result of protocol optimization.
The wireless network can suit better for Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery. The employees can stay connected all the time, they can roam without losing internet connection, and they can work together efficiently. The wireless connectivity provides better access to information that means the employees can connect to distant places or hard-to-reach places. The employees of the company can get connected to the information whenever required (Snyder and Diesing 2015). They can conduct cost-effective service and can provide excellent customer service. Moreover, wireless network caters secure wireless access to the Internet connection for the customers and the business partners. Thus all these aspects can help them to gain the competitive edge; they can stay ahead of all other competitors.
Type of risks POS system bring and procedures to protect the business against those risks
Security- The insecure network can be a threat to Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery. The hackers can take advantage of the weak and insecure network and can make their system and database vulnerable. Security can be assured by installing an antivirus program. The antivirus program can protect them from potential virus and malware (Ifinedo 2014). The installation of firewall can prevent the unauthorized access, in this way Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery can safeguard their system from unauthorized access.
Confidentiality- Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery will have to keep their company’s data safe and secure. The employees’ data and the financial data of the company should not get breached; otherwise, they will face severe loss (Kavanagh and Johnson 2017). They deal with the customers and they should proactively safeguard their customers’ data. The confidentiality can be threatened due to malware attack and by installing antivirus program confidentiality can be ensured.
Privacy- The privacy of employees, as well as the customers, can be at stake due to the malware attack. The intruders can hack the system and can steal the sensitive and the private data (Xu and Bélanger 2013). Privacy can be ensured by installing an antivirus program, the company employees should use a password on their system and should also apply password while using the cloud services. The company should use the authenticated software on their system.
Conclusion
It can be concluded from the above discourse POS system can bring immense benefits to Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery. POS system facilitates the decision making which can enhance the productivity of the company. The POS has the capability to give a competitive edge to the company and that has been described in the report. Recommendations have been made for the company. The benefits that the company can get by using WAN and wireless technology have been demonstrated in the report as well. There are various kinds of risks associated with the POS system. The report has addressed the risks related to security, privacy and confidentiality and has also highlighted how those risks can be mitigated.
- Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery after adopting POS system should utilize it ethically to meet all the business deliverables.
- The company must install an antivirus program to protect their system and database.
- They should constantly focus on decision making and innovative approach to get the competitive edge.
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Galliers, R.D. and Leidner, D.E. eds., 2014. Strategic information management: challenges and strategies in managing information systems. Routledge.
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Snyder, G.H. and Diesing, P., 2015. Conflict among nations: Bargaining, decision making, and system structure in international crises. Princeton University Press.
Tsang, E.W., 2014. Case studies and generalization in information systems research: A critical realist perspective. The Journal of Strategic Information Systems, 23(2), pp.174-186.
Willcocks, L., 2013. Information management: the evaluation of information systems investments. Springer.
Xu, H. and Bélanger, F., 2013. Information systems journal special issue on: Reframing privacy in a networked world. Information systems journal, 23(4), pp.371-375.
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