Background of Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery
Use of technology or more appropriately, the use of information technology has become a necessary need for management of the business operations of every organization irrespective of the fact whether the organizations are small, medium or large. The need of use of information system is very vital in large organization as it becomes very difficult to manage their complex business operations without the help of an information system. Therefore, it is mandatory for these organizations to consider different information system and the accounting software models and packages such as enterprise resource solution and point of sales system. Although the small organization may not have the expertise or adequate resources to implement an information system, the need of an information system in those organizations is similar to that of large organizations (Baden-Fuller & Haefliger, 2013). A small business enterprise, Four Seasons greenhouse and nursery made use of the point of sales system in order to integrate and manage their different business operations. The use of point of sales system in Four Seasons is evaluated in the report.
The point of sales system in implemented in the Four Seasons in order to addresses the different issues and challenges that the organization was facing in management of their daily business operations (McDonald & Rowsell-Jones, 2012). The benefits of undertaking a point of sales system in Four Seasons are discussed below-
- Management of the efficiency of the business is very essential for ensuring that a business in not running on loss. A point of sales system helps the business owners in getting a real time updates of the sales and inventory units thus increasing the business efficiency.
- Another main advantage of the point of sales system is that it reduces the human labour and human efforts. Thus a considerable amount of time can be saved. Furthermore, the point of sales system was capable of tracking the employee schedule for delegating more responsibilities to them.
- The increase in business efficiency further offers the organization a competitive advantage in the market. This is one significant advantage of using a point of sale system.
- Enhancement in the decision making power can be counted as another significant advantage of using a point of sales system. The decision making process is enhanced as live data updates helps the managers in keeping a track of the important business processes of an organization.
- The new point of sales system helped the business owners to identify the actual cost of the products thereby increasing the profits of the business.
The implementation of the point of sales system is subjected to a number of risks or disadvantages which are discussed below-
- The implementation and integration of the business processes that is associated with use of point of sales system is subjected to a huge amount of monetary investment. Furthermore this type of systems is mainly web based and therefore, the cost of implementation of such system is generally high.
- A strong internet connection is required for integration of the different business processes with the point of sales system which is one significant issue associated with the use of a POS.
- The use of a web based point of sales system is subjected to a number of risks. These risks are needed to be mitigated in order to maintain the security and the privacy of the data.
One significant advantage of using a point of sales system is that, it helps a business in gaining a competitive advantage. Therefore, the use of the point of sales system will help Four Seasons in gaining competitive advantage. The processes by which the POS system will help the business in gaining a competitive advantage are as follows (Coronelreal & Morris, 2016)-
- The use of the point of sales system helps in better management of the business operations of the organizations. A smooth business operation gives a competitive advantage to the organization.
- Since the new point of saes system provides a time effective management solution to the business, the business owners and the management can consider reviewing the other important aspect of the business such as schedule of the employees, price of the products and the business profits, thus giving the organization a competitive advantage in the market (Sako, 2012).
- The new point of sales system helps in identifying the actual cost of the products. Proper product costing enables the organization in gaining a competitive advantage.
- The enhancement of the decision making capability of the management helps a business in gaining a competitive advantage.
The above discussed points give an idea about the process by which the use of the new point of sales system will help the organization in gaining competitive advantage.
There are a number of benefits of opting for a centralized database for storing the data that will be generated by the point of sales system. These advantages or benefits of choosing a centralized database are as follows (Osman & Knottenbelt, 2012)-
- Secure data storage is one of the advantages of choosing a centralized database. In a centralized database, security is a top priority and therefore it is one significant advantage as well.
- The use of a centralized database system helps in maintaining the integrity of the data which is very essential in managing the complex business operations.
- The speed with which a user can access the data stored in the centralized database is very high in case of centralized database system. Centralized database employs higher reliability in data maintenance as well.
- The cost of managing a centralized database is comparatively low and therefore choice of centralized database for POS in Four Seasons is justified.
The process of efficient decision making is a major criterion for a business success. The point of sales system helps in easier management of the business processes which in turn helps in effective decision making. The use of POS facilitates decision making by addressing certain essential business needs (Bharadwaj et al., 2013). With the use of the point of sales system, the business could be managed quite effectively. This is possible since the use of the point of sales system given an organization the opportunity to track the sales in real time. The easy information tracking ensures proper information availability during the times of decision making thus enhancing the decision making project (Diallo Rodrigues & Sene, 2012).
Implementation of Point-of-Sale System
Effective information tracking is a significant advantage of using a point of sales system. The real time update of all the transactional details makes it easier for an organization to take important decisions. The information tracking is not that effective by making use of manual registers (refer to appendix). This is mainly because information tracking in manual system is a time consuming task so as the information update.
The point of sales system helps in effective decision making as it efficiently provides certain answer that is related to the amount of order processed, the number of sales transaction and the number of inventory units.
The information that is provided by the point of sales system in real time helps a manager or the owner of the organization in keeping a track of all the business processes running with the organization which in turn enhances the decision making ability of the manager. This is the process by which, the use of a POS system helps in easier decision making.
For the use of the different services offered by the point of sales system, an appropriate telecommunication system is needed to be chosen. For the case of Four Seasons greenhouse and nursery, a local area network or LAN is chosen (Wang et al., 2015). LAN is mainly used to establish an interconnection between the digital devices that are present in a smaller geographical area. The Wide Area network or metropolitan area network is not considered for the POS system that is implemented in Four Season as the organization is small and does not require WAN or MAN.
With the LAN as a backbone, it is recommended for Four Seasons to use a wireless connection instead of wired media as its implementation is easier and cost effective (Arnon et al., 2012). The security risks associated with the use of wireless network is however needed to be addressed (Koenig et al., 2013).
The risks that are mainly associated with the use of POS in Four Seasons is cyber security risks as an internet connection is required to integrate the operations of the business organization (Chen & Zhao, 2012). The cyber security risks can challenge the security, privacy and the confidentiality of the data stored in the system and therefore, it is needed to be addressed. The risks can be reduced by ensuring proper access control and data protection by encryption.
Conclusion
The report addresses the different issues and the benefits associated with the use of point of sales system in business. The report considers the case of Four Seasons that faced a technology bloom and could achieve its benefits in no time. The risks and the issues of a POS system is addressed in the report and as a recommendation, proper access control is suggested to be enforced in the organization.
References
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Bharadwaj, A., El Sawy, O., Pavlou, P., & Venkatraman, N. (2013). Digital business strategy: toward a next generation of insights.
Chen, D., & Zhao, H. (2012, March). Data security and privacy protection issues in cloud computing. In Computer Science and Electronics Engineering (ICCSEE), 2012 International Conference on (Vol. 1, pp. 647-651). IEEE.
Coronel, C., & Morris, S. (2016). Database systems: design, implementation, & management. Cengage Learning.
Diallo, O., Rodrigues, J. J., & Sene, M. (2012). Real-time data management on wireless sensor networks: A survey. Journal of Network and Computer Applications, 35(3), 1013-1021.
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McDonald, M. P., & Rowsell-Jones, A. (2012). The digital edge: Exploiting information & technology for business advantage. Gartner, Incorporated.
Osman, R., & Knottenbelt, W. J. (2012). Database system performance evaluation models: A survey. Performance Evaluation, 69(10), 471-493.
Sako, M. (2012). Business models for strategy and innovation. Communications of the ACM, 55(7), 22-24.
Wang, Y., Chi, N., Wang, Y., Tao, L., & Shi, J. (2015). Network architecture of a high-speed visible light communication local area network. IEEE Photonics Technology Letters, 27(2), 197-200.
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