Advantages/Disadvantages of Point of Sales
Discusss about the advantages of using technology in a small business.
The use of information technology can certainly benefit the different business organization. Small and medium sized business can realize the positive effect of adoption of technology in the organization. However, the small organizations may not have the resources or the expertise of a large corporation to implement the business operations of the organization. A small business can however, get equally benefitted by the use of technology in management of the pivotal business operations. In order to discuss the benefits of technology, a case study of Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery is evaluated in the report (refer to appendix). The maintenance of business operations in a manual way in Four Seasons had resulted in negligible profits or a complete loss (Stadtler 2015). This is because the management of the organization did not have an access to the useful operational data that is needed for managing the business of the organization. The benefits of using a POS and its use in Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery are discussed in this report. The organization could achieve the business benefits as it allowed the owners to track the required business data from the sales in real time.
The use of point of sales system in the nursery had a number of positive impacts on the existing business of the organization. It became easier for the organization to manage the useful business data and business process as the necessary information is available to the management at the time of sales (Laudon and Laudon 2016). The advantages the business could achieve with the implementation of the new POS system are as follows-
The new Point of Sales system eliminated the need of maintaining a manual register in order to record the system sales and different business processes of the organization (Galliers and Leidner, 2014). The point of sales system automated the different business processes that helped in live order tracking and live forecast of the business data and sales transactions.
Another advantage of the POS is the real time data update and generation of reports about the number of units present in the inventory. The knowledge about the accurate inventory units further allowed the management to make effective decision regarding the number of inventory items, the work goals of the employees and the number of items that are to be purchased or sold (Stair and Reynolds 2013). The accurate data helped in taking accurate and timely decision about the business operations, thus eliminating the need of guesswork.
The Competitive Advantage with POS
The implementation of the new POS system confirmed that the owners had very little knowledge about their business than they thought they did. After reviewing the reports it was found at that some products were less profitable than they thought. This resulted in incorrect costing of the products and loss. The POS system helped in easy identification of the more profitable products which is one of the significant advantages of the new POS system as it helped the costing of products more profitably.
Another significant advantage of the new system is control over the employee schedules. The new system enabled the managers to monitor the labours’ and employees’ schedule and assign the roles that are most suitable for them and their business goals. Furthermore, the new system allows the owners to delegate more responsibilities to the staffs and establish accountability (Lallo 2012).
The new point of sales system further helped the organization in efficient management of the different business processes of the organization.
However, there are certain disadvantages of implementing the point of sales system, which are as follows-
The implementation of the point of sales system is subjected to a large amount of monetary investments which might be difficult for the organization like Four Seasons as it is already running on a loss.
It is very essential to provide training to the employees of the organization about the use of point of sales system so that it becomes easier for the employees to operate the system (Peppard and Ward 2016).
The following section discusses the competitive advantage that an organization can gain with the help of the Point of Sales system.
The implementation of a point of sales system can further help an organization in gaining competitive advantages. The processes by which a business can gain a competitive advantage in the market are as follows-
Accurate inventory management by the POS helps in effective decision making. Since accurate estimations could be done, there were very less chances of loss in the projects and it gives the organization a competitive advantage in the market (Pearlson, Saunders and Galletta 2016).
Since the pricing of the project could be done more profitably with the help of the new POS system, the organization could gain a competitive advantage with the increase in profit margins.
The easier management of the business processes of the organization further gives the Four Seasons Greenhouse Nursery a competitive advantage in the market. Since the business could be effectively managed with the help of the real time data updates, gaining a competitive advantage was possible.
Centralized Database and its Advantages
The use of a centralized database helps in easier management of the stored data in a network. The use and benefits of centralized data base is discussed below (Coronel and Morris 2016)-
- There is a proper disaster recovery mechanism in centralized database that improves data preservation.
- Use of a centralized database improves the physical security of a system. Proper security of the server rooms prevents any unauthorized data access.
- Data protection is a critical issue. However, the use of a centralized database system ensures that proper security is achieved. This is ensured with the help of proper data encryption.
- The use of a centralized database considerably reduces the overall cost of data maintenance. This is because the maintenance of the central servers proves to be less costly than maintaining multiple computers in business operation. Centralized data storage furthermore reduces the overall space requirements for data storage and processing of the data.
- Furthermore, the speed of data processing increases in centralized database and therefore it becomes significantly more reliable than the local storage.
The point of sales system not only helped in easier management of the business, it also helped in the process of decision making. The decision making process is enhanced as more practical knowledge about the operations of the organization could be achieved with the POS (Hall 2012). The process by which the new POS system helps in decision making is as follows-
- With the help of the new point of sales system, the owners were able to track the useful business data and sales transaction at the time of sales. This helped in easier management of the vital business processes of the organization.
- Manual information tracking may not be effective since the manual record keeping is prone to human errors and incorrect data entry. The record of erroneous data is a roadblock in effective decision making. With the POS, Four Seasons could track the information quite efficiently which facilitates decision making.
- The questions that could be effectively answered included the questions that were associated with the data of the inventory and the sales units.
- The information obtained from the new POS system can help in easier management of the business as the accurate data about the inventory and sales could be achieved. The point of sales system therefore provided a good business benefit to the Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery by facilitating decision making.
The above discussed points provide an idea about the process by which, the POS enhanced the decision making process in Four Seasons.
For integration of the different digital devices and the business process with the installed point of sales system, choice of a proper telecommunication option is necessary. The options include LAN, WAN and MAN. The use of Local Area network or LAN is justified when the devices of a particular area is needed to be interconnected (Ghosh et al. 2014). Metropolitan Area Network is used when a larger area is concerned. Wide Area Network however is used to interconnect the devices that are scattered over a wider area (Wang et al. 2014). LAN is recommended for Four Seasons as it is a small sized enterprise and LAN would be appropriate for the purpose.
Wireless network technology is the recommended media option for Four Seasons. This is because it is easier to install and access (Diallo et al. 2014). The cost of implementation of wireless telecommunication network is low in comparison to the wired telecommunication option and therefore wireless network is recommended. The organization can make use of infrared or radio frequency communication as the wireless telecommunication option (Lu et al. 2015). However, the use of wireless telecommunication option is subjected to certain risks, which are discussed in the next section (Al Ameen, Liu and Kwak 2012).
There are certain risks associated with the use of wireless telecommunication. The evaluation of the risks is done on basis of the security, data confidentiality and its privacy. Any unauthorised access to the data might result in data security breach. The use of the data stored in the system. The security of the data is to be maintained as the confidential business data is stored in the POS system. Ensuring proper access control is therefore necessary in order to protect the privacy and the confidentiality of the stored data. Furthermore, enforcement of the authorization level on the use of data stored in POS is necessary to secure the data confidentiality.
Use of POS in Facilitating Decision-making
Conclusion
The benefits of technology in Four Seasons are discussed in this report. The ability of a business organization to remain competitive and agile is crucial and therefore, the Four Seasons nursery adopted point of sales system in order to gain a competitive advantages and the operational efficiency in their business. Previously the organization used to maintain manual records, which resulted in incorrect data entry and business loss. The new point of sales system could eliminate all the issues that existed in the system. The report gives an overview of the advantages, disadvantages and the competitive advantages that the organization could achieve with the help of the new POS system.
The business efficiency of the Four Seasons can be improved and for that certain recommendations are made-
- Maintenance of the security is vital and therefore, proper access control in the POS should be enforced. This will help in eliminating the risks associated with the data storage.
- Proper monitoring of the data stored in the system is essential so that the risks associated with the digital data storage can be mitigated.
References
Al Ameen, M., Liu, J. and Kwak, K., 2012. Security and privacy issues in wireless sensor networks for healthcare applications. Journal of medical systems, 36(1), pp.93-101.
Coronel, C. and Morris, S., 2016. Database systems: design, implementation, & management. Cengage Learning.
Diallo, O., Rodrigues, J.J., Sene, M. and Niu, J., 2014. Real-time query processing optimization for cloud-based wireless body area networks. Information Sciences, 284, pp.84-94.
Galliers, R.D. and Leidner, D.E. eds., 2014. Strategic information management: challenges and strategies in managing information systems. Routledge.
Ghosh, A., Thomas, T.A., Cudak, M.C., Ratasuk, R., Moorut, P., Vook, F.W., Rappaport, T.S., MacCartney, G.R., Sun, S. and Nie, S., 2014. Millimeter-wave enhanced local area systems: A high-data-rate approach for future wireless networks. IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications, 32(6), pp.1152-1163.
Hall, J.A., 2012. Accounting information systems. Cengage Learning.
Lallo, N.Y.H., 2012. Critical Succes Factors, Instructors’ Characteristics and Accounting Information System Course Content (Doctoral dissertation, Universiti Utara Malaysia).
Laudon, K.C. and Laudon, J.P., 2016. Management information system. Pearson Education India.
Lu, X., Wang, P., Niyato, D., Kim, D.I. and Han, Z., 2015. Wireless networks with RF energy harvesting: A contemporary survey. IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials, 17(2), pp.757-789.
Pearlson, K.E., Saunders, C.S. and Galletta, D.F., 2016. Managing and Using Information Systems, Binder Ready Version: A Strategic Approach. John Wiley & Sons.
Peppard, J. and Ward, J., 2016. The strategic management of information systems: Building a digital strategy. John Wiley & Sons.
Stadtler, H., 2015. Supply chain management: An overview. In Supply chain management and advanced planning (pp. 3-28). Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.
Stair, R. and Reynolds, G., 2013. Principles of information systems. Cengage Learning.
Wang, S., Chen, W., Yin, Z.Q., Li, H.W., He, D.Y., Li, Y.H., Zhou, Z., Song, X.T., Li, F.Y., Wang, D. and Chen, H., 2014. Field and long-term demonstration of a wide area quantum key distribution network. Optics express, 22(18), pp.21739-21756
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