Advantages of integrating technology in business processes
Every small, medium or large sized business makes use of information technology for enhancing the business operations of the organization. The use of technology in integrating the different business processes of the organization becomes essential as it not only reduces human error, but also reduces the human labour. Implementation of technology in an organization needs a lot of investment both in terms of time and money. Therefore, it might sometimes become difficult for the small and medium sized organization to implement technology in their business processes. The report discusses the advantages of integrating technology with the business operations in Four Seasons Greenhouse Nursery. The nursery faced a lot of problems in managing their business as it used to maintain a manual record for recording the different organizational need (Lallo 2012). The use of manual records resulted in human errors and incorrect data entry. The organization implemented point of sales system or POS system in the year 2008. The report discusses the benefits that the organization could achieve with the help of new POS system along with its disadvantages. There are certain risks associated with the use of POS in business which is discussed in the report as well.
Four Seasons Greenhouse Nursery implemented the POS system in order to accurately control the different vital business processes such as maintenance of accurate inventory data and inventory units. The switch to the new POS system was necessary for the $1M business operation of Four Seasons Nursery because the profits of the nursery were either negligible or loss. This occurred mainly because of the problem in the manual record keeping process that was generally followed by the organization. The advantages offered by the new point of sales system to the Four Seasons Nursery are as follows-
With the implementation of the new point of sales system, all the business processes of the organization were automated. The POS system eliminated the need of maintaining the records manually, which were prone to human errors and errors in data entry. This was one of the main reasons behind the organization being not able to properly identify the products which were more profitable (refer to appendix).
The new POS system furthermore allowed the owners to track the useful data and the daily reports of the organization immediately at the time of sale. This therefore removes the need for the owners to track the useful data manually (Stadtler 2015). The system was further able to process the stored data from the sale and therefore it was able to update the inventory and sales details in real time. This helped in better management of the inventory items.
Implementation of a point of sales system in Four Seasons Greenhouse Nursery
The accurate management of the inventory data further helped in proper decision making as well (Stair and Reynolds 2013). This is because the decisions on the number of product and their sales were no longer based on speculations.
The implementation of the new POS system further confirmed that the owners of the organization had no proper knowledge about their business. It was found out that some of the products were less profitable than the owners thought. The knowledge about the detailed product cost helps in pricing the products of the nursery more profitably.
The new system further helped the management of the organization in having a proper control of the employee schedule that is used for reviewing and allocating the labour expenses to the specific departments and functions. This additional benefit allowed the owners to delegate more responsibilities to the staffs.
With the above discussed advantages, there are certain disadvantages associated with the implementation of new POS system, which are as follows-
The cost of implementation is one of the significant disadvantages associated with the use of POS system (Laudon and Laudon 2016). The investment in POS was considerably huge considering the Four Seasons being a small sized industry. The maintenance cost is huge as well.
Since the POS system makes use of internet in maintaining and storing a particular data, there are certain security risks associated with the use of the new point of sales system.
The employees of the organization are used to manual record keeping and therefore, it is essential to train the employees about the use of the new POS system. This is subjected to a large expenditure as well.
The timely and regular updates and maintenance is required for the new system which is another significant disadvantage of the new POS system.
The Point of sales system has helped the organization in gaining a competitive advantage over the other similar organization. The competitive advantages that the business gained in implementation of POS system are discussed below-
The use of the new point of sales system helped in automating all the vital processes of the organization. This helped in better management of the different business process of the organization (Diallo et al. 2014). Better knowledge about the sales and the inventory items helped the organization in gaining a competitive advantage.
The organization could gain a competitive advantage by identifying the most profitable products of the organization. The use of the nee POS system further helped in the identification of the most profitable products, which was earlier not possible. Proper identification of the profitable products helped the business in gaining a competitive advantage.
Benefits of implementing a point of sales system in Four Seasons Greenhouse Nursery
The knowledge about the inventory items and the sales units further helped the organization in gaining a competitive advantage in the market.
These are the main reasons by which the new POS system helped in gaining a competitive advantage in the market.
The Point of Sales system will be using a centralized database for storing the data and the business information. There are a number of advantages of using a centralized database system which are as follows (Coronel and Morris 2016)-
- Since the data stored in the centralized database is managed centrally there is less chances of data inconsistency.
- The centralized database can be easily monitored and controlled and therefore it reduces the chances of data security risks.
- In centralized database, the speed of data processing is very high and it helps in easier availability of the status reports.
- The centralized database further helps in maintaining the data integrity.
The new point of sales system helped in better decision making. This is because the decisions regarding the units of a product that are ordered are no longer based on speculations of the details of the current inventory units (Galliers and Leidner 2014). The accurate inventory count helps in eliminating the guesswork on how much to order as it is now based on the data of sakes.
One of the major advantages of accurate estimation of the inventory data and sales is that the business processes can be managed more effectively as real time data can be fetched from the point of sales system (Pearlson, Saunders and Galletta 2016). This helps in better decision making related to the inventory items.
Manual tracking of the information is difficult and the time consuming matter. The manual tracking of information is further prone to delays and human errors (Wang et al. 2014). The new POS system that is implemented in Four Seasons eliminates the need of manual data tracking as the data and status reports are generated in real time (Hall 2012). Access to the real time data helps the management in taking proper decisions regarding the operations of the organization.
With the implementation of POS in the organization, the questions associated with the inventory items and the number of items that are purchased, sold or discarded can be easily answered (Peppard and Ward 2016). This helps in effective decision making about inventory and sales units of the organization.
The information that is stored in the new POS system helps in better management of the business processes. The knowledge about the cost of the products and the product profits helped in easier management of the business and further helped in better decision making. The new POS system further helped in reviewing the labour expenses and allowed the owners to delegate more responsibilities to the staffs.
The new Point of sales system integrates all the existing business processes of the organization. Therefore, a telecommunication option should be chosen that will be easier and cost effective to implement. The organization has to choose from LAN, WAN and MAN as the telecommunication option of the organization. The LAN or local area network helps in interconnecting all the digital devices present in a particular area. The Wide area network interconnects the digital devices present in a considerably larger geographical area. The metropolitan area network or MAN is mainly used when an even larger geographical area is considered. Since Four Seasons is a small sized organization, it is recommended for the organization to choose LAN as the telecommunication option of the new POS system. This connection will help in interconnecting all the digital devices and the associated business processes with the help of a common network.
Disadvantages of implementing a point of sales system
For the telecommunication service in Four Seasons, it is recommended for the organization to make use of Wireless technology (Lu et al. 2015). This is because setting up of a wired connection is a time consuming and costly task and therefore, wireless connection is the recommended option (Barakah and Ammad-uddin 2012). The wireless connection is easy to set up and it would be easier to maintain as well (Ghosh et al., 2014). Employees can fetch data from POS quite effectively with the help of wireless telecommunication option. The organization can make use of the wireless radio or infrared communication for data transfer from the POS to target device.
The new Point of sales system offers a number of advantages to the organization. However, it brings in certain security risks as well (Al Ameen, Liu and Kwak 2012). The system is subjected to different security risks associated with data security, privacy and confidentiality mainly because is it based on wireless technology.
These risks can be mitigated by establishing a proper access control and authentication control within the organization.
Conclusion
The report gives an idea of the benefits that Four Seasons could gain with the implementation of the new POS system. The report gives an overview of the advantages and the disadvantages of using a point of sales system in integrating the different business operations. The security issues associated with the POS is also evaluated in the report. The business report gives an overview of the implementation of POS in Four Seasons Greenhouse Nursery.
The recommendations for improvement of the business processes and use of point of sales system are as follows-
- The employees are needed to be properly trained about the use of POS in order to reduce the errors in data processing.
- Authorization levels can be imposed on the use of the information in order to eliminate the security risks associated with the use of POS.
References
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Barakah, D.M. and Ammad-uddin, M., 2012, February. A survey of challenges and applications of wireless body area network (WBAN) and role of a virtual doctor server in existing architecture. In Intelligent Systems, Modelling and Simulation (ISMS), 2012 Third International Conference on (pp. 214-219). IEEE.
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