Merits and Demerits of the new POS System
The particular place or time where one specific transaction is being completed is known as point of sale or point of purchase (Ståhlberg & Maila, 2012). The merchant evaluates the actual amount that is owed by any particular customer and also indicates the amount for the preparation of an invoice. After the invoice is made, the customer proceeds towards payment.
This report explains about the popular case study of an organization, namely, Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery. The report demonstrates about the system of point of sale in the mentioned organization (Refer to Appendix 2). The several advantages and disadvantages of this system are also provided here. Noteworthy recommendations are also provided for this organization.
1. Merits and Demerits of the new POS System
There are various advantages of the point of sale system. Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery will be enjoying significant benefits from this system. The main merits of POS system are as follows:
- i) Rapidity andEfficiency: The point of sale system helps to improve the efficiency of the transactions taking place (Rese, Schreiber & Baier, 2014). Moreover, the pace of these transactions also gets improved from this system.
- ii) Inventory Management: This is the second most important advantage of POS system. Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery was having trouble in managing their inventory manually. Point of sale system will be the best option for this purpose.
iii) Precision in any Financial Transaction: Point of sale system also helps in providing financial transactions with accuracy and without errors.
This system even has few demerits. They are as follows:
- i) Expensive: The initial implementation cost of the point of sale system is extremely high and is often unaffordable for the smaller and medium enterprises (Profeta, Balling & Roosen, 2012). Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery is a small nursery and therefore, they will be suffering from financial crisis if they will implement the system of point of sale.
- ii) Periodical Maintenance: The second disadvantage of point of sale system is the requirement of regular maintenance (Frisby et al., 2012). This can become a major problem for Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery as the entire system of business transactions and operations will be stopped.
2. How can POS system help any organization for obtaining competitive advantages
The system of point of sale simplifies the entire system of transactions in a simpler version (Nikolova & Inman, 2015). It can easily recognize each and every detail of a business operation from transactions. Due to the simplification of transaction procedure, the work load of the employees is reduced. Previously, they had to track and mange everything manually. However, with the implementation of point of sale system, everything is done automatically. Moreover, this system has the benefit of acknowledgement of those products that would be beneficial for the Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery organization and would bring huge profit (Polasik et al., 2012). The point of sale also helps in decision making process for any organization and provides cost effectiveness to all the organizations. It brings more revenue in the business and thus the organization of Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery can enjoy immense profit and can complete their business activities effectively and speedily.
3. Benefits of a centralised database
A centralized database can be either a centralized computer or a simple system of database. In any particular organization, a centralized database is often utilized for accessing data or information (Ko et al., 2012). The users generally access the centralized database with the help of a specific computer network. These types of databases are ideal for small and medium enterprises, as they have limited data. The various benefits of any centralized database are as follows:
- i) Recovers Preservation of Data: The preservation of data is eventually enhanced and improvised with the help of any centralized database. It has an in built setup of fault tolerance that helps in preserving the confidential data, even after hardware failure.
- ii) Improvises the Physical Security of Data: Physical security is extremely required for the security of confidential data (Gomzin, 2014). Centralized databases are utilized for restricting the physical access to any particular location.
How can POS system help any organization for obtaining competitive advantages
iii) Cost Effectiveness: The third advantage of a centralized database is its cost effectiveness (Polasik et al., 2012). It is extremely cost effective and can be afforded by any small or medium sized organizations.
- iv) Gives Security to Data: A centralized database also provides security to the confidential data or information.
4. How can POS system facilitate decision making
The point of sale system or POS makes it possible the procedure of decision making (Frisby et al., 2012). Previously, the organization of Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery used to order their items by simply assuming the requirement and even maintained the rack of all things manually (Chavali, Yang & Nehorai, 2014). However, the implementation of point of sale system in their business would be changing the complete process. They would be getting extremely efficient and fast services and would be taking various critical decisions through this system. Various questions such as what should be bought or what should be sold and in which procedures can be easily answered with the help of point of sale system (Cui et al., 2016). Moreover, the information that will be gained from these questions would be extremely beneficial for the better management of the business as Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery would be utilizing this information in their business (Refer to Appendix 1).
5. Recommendations of telecommunication options for POS system
This organization of Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery should firmly opt for WAN. It helps in easy access of data within the network. LAN provides local network in a smaller area (Ståhlberg & Maila, 2012). MAN provides network in an area larger than LAN. WAN provides network for a huge area like a city or a country. It is extremely larger in size and provides network in excess speed.
Wireless technologies would be the best option for Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery as it does not have any complexities or complications of wires. The involvement of wires is always an extra expense and thus wireless technologies would be the best (Rese, Schreiber & Baier, 2014). Moreover, it provides high speed from network. The best example is Wi-Fi.
6. Possible risks in POS system and their mitigation plans
The three aspects are as follows:
- i) Security: The most significant risk in security is the network. If the network is not protected, there is high chance that hackers would hack the system and the data would be theft or lost (Profeta, Balling & Roosen, 2012). This type of risk can be eradicated with the help of a good antivirus program that can prevent the entry of hackers into the system.
- ii) Privacy: Malware attacks are the most vital risks in case of privacy. These types of attacks are extremely common in present world and can be eradicated with the help of passwords (Chavali, Yang & Nehorai, 2014). All the customers and personnel of Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery should have their unique password and ID for logging into the system.
iii) Confidentiality: All the personnel of Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery should not breach the confidential data and also should not allow anyone to do such activities (Nikolova & Inman, 2015). Firewalls are the best solution for maintaining confidentiality.
Conclusion
Therefore, from this above discussion conclusion can be drawn that, the organization had utilized manual registers for tracking and maintaining their inventories. However, they were having problem in managing the business and were facing losses in their business. They undertook the significant decision of acquiring the point of sale system within the organization. The above report has solely discussed about the merits and demerits of point of sale system with appropriate suggestions.
References
Chavali, P., Yang, P. & Nehorai, A., (2014). A distributed algorithm of appliance scheduling for home energy management system. IEEE Transactions on Smart Grid, 5(1), pp.282-290.
Cui, B., Jiang, J., Huang, Q., Xu, Y., Gui, Y. & 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.
Frisby, W., Moench, B., Recht, B., & Ristenpart, T. (2012, August). Security Analysis of Smartphone Point-of-Sale Systems. In WOOT (pp. 22-33).
Gomzin, S. (2014). Hacking Point of Sale: Payment Application Secrets, Threats, and Solutions. John Wiley & Sons.
Ko, S., Maciejewski, R., Jang, Y., & Ebert, D. S. (2012, June). Marketanalyzer: an interactive visual analytics system for analyzing competitive advantage using point of sale data. In Computer Graphics Forum (Vol. 31, No. 3pt3, pp. 1245-1254). Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
Nikolova, H. D., & Inman, J. J. (2015). Healthy choice: the effect of simplified point-of-sale nutritional information on consumer food choice behavior. Journal of Marketing Research, 52(6), 817-835.
Polasik, M., Górka, J., Wilczewski, G., Kunkowski, J., Przenajkowska, K., & Tetkowska, N. (2012, June). Time efficiency of Point-of-Sale payment methods: Empirical results for cash, cards and mobile payments. In International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems (pp. 306-320). Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.
Profeta, A., Balling, R., & Roosen, J. (2012). The relevance of origin information at the point of sale. Food Quality and Preference, 26(1), 1-11.
Rese, A., Schreiber, S., & Baier, D. (2014). Technology acceptance modeling of augmented reality at the point of sale: Can surveys be replaced by an analysis of online reviews?. Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, 21(5), 869-876.
Ståhlberg, M., & Maila, V. (2012). Shopper marketing: How to increase purchase decisions at the point of sale. Kogan Page Publishers.
Natek, S. & Zwilling, M., (2014). Student data mining solution–knowledge management system related to higher education institutions. Expert systems with applications, 41(14), pp.6400-6407.
Olivares, D.E., Lara, J.D., Cañizares, C.A. & Kazerani, M., (2015). Stochastic-predictive energy management system for isolated microgrids. IEEE Transactions on Smart Grid, 6(6), pp.2681-2693
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