Advantages and Disadvantages of the New POS System
Write a report include the major benefits and disadvantages of the new POS system.
POS stands for point on sale. Here, the implementation of the new POS system has created a major advantages for the new business. Moreover, the implementation of new POS system has helped managers to manage all the overall activities of the business in a better way. It has created a digital platform for its users.
New POS system has several advantages as well as disadvantages. The new POS system was entered in the year 2009 as per the case study mentioned. The advantages of the new POS system are given below:
- It has created a huge support to all the business and organization that helps to maintain the record of all the data which are related to sales contracts, minimizes the manual work activities and combines the sales history in the system.
- It reduces the work of Cash register and delivers functions such as inputting, tracking and distribution of data to control all the activities of the business.
- POS helps to create accuracy and reliability which managers can use to predict the actual demand of the product in the business (Armentrout, Do, Hargett and Maximilien, 2011).
- This system helps to know the detailed information of the products that has been procured, rejected and sold. It helps the business to earn more amount of profits (Tempelmeier, 2011).
Apart from this, the disadvantages of new POS system are also given below:
- It minimizes the goals and objectives which are established by the owners of the business but all the activities are dependent on the system.
- The cost related to the system might be too high which cannot be easily affordable by all the business because it costs about £2000 to establish POS system.
- The maintenance charge for POS system is very high which becomes difficult for the organizations to manage it on a regular basis.
- The problems related to power failure and training cost is also one of the major disadvantages of the new POS system.
POS system helps all the business to gain a competitive advantage. In the given case study, POS helps to assist the business by minimizing the manual work. In addition to this, information and knowledge about any particular products helps to know the accurate price of the product which will help managers to earn huge amount of profit. Shifts in the price of the product can easily be done either in a permanent way or in a temporary way. Product margin can easily be gained when shifts on the price takes place on a temporary basis (Bauer et al., 2012). Moreover, managers are supposed to work with great efficiency and they are concerned about generating huge amount in output. The managers’ report all the information on a timely manner which minimizes the time because of the implementation of the new POS system. The new POS has the capability to process the sales history, inventory stock and purchase necessary transactions which automatically reduces the need of the data entry that has to be done manually. It also minimizes the paper work as well. The new POS system has implemented primarily Four seasons’ management control over the worker’s routines to monitor and assign labor costs to specific heads. An additional benefit assists the managers to delegate more responsibilities to their workers and implement accountability. Thus, POS system helps to remain competitive in the market (Pakhira, 2012).
There are huge number of organizations which works the centralized database system and it has provided huge number of benefits to the company as well. However, many companies lacks such centralized database and this becomes one of the serious issue in the business. Centralized data base helps the business helps to maintain the record of membership, sales history, events and supplementary process. Apart from this, centralized database also helps to keep all the data at a single platform which becomes easy for the user to extract the right information from the right place. Centralized database is a place where each employee can find their name along with the address at a single platform rather than searching for multiple platforms (Paton, 2012).
POS System Help the Business Gain Competitive Advantages
Centralized database helps to maintain the data integrity by avoiding the replication of multiple similar data at single platform or multiple platforms. It helps to combine the entire data with individual contact information which do not break the rule of dissimilarity. Every employees working in an organization must have unique identification code which must not match with other (Wild, 2017). In addition to this, centralized database also helps to maintain he reports and monitor all the activities and operations of the business at one place so that it will save the time as well. Moreover, if the single platform will be provided then it will be easy for the employees not to invest time on learning the multiple platforms (Porter, 2011).
POS system supports to take the decisions related to operational activities of the business. The new POS system aims taking the right decision at the right time in order to earn big amount of profits. If the decisions taken by the managers are not effective, the company will not be able its desired goals and objectives as set. POS supports managers to take the control of all the activities which exist inside the organizations and all the activities take place in a system rather than getting the works done manually. Since all the information are available at the single platform, managers can easily withdraw the required information and take the wise decisions (Coffing and Bonfiglio, 2017).
Moreover, the new POS system also helps to manage the stock and inventory units which helps managers to take good inventory decisions as well. The price of the goods are quoted by the managers and POS helps to quote the actual price of the product which assists managers to know what is the actual demand and the estimated supply of the product as well. They get to know all the necessary information related to the purchase, sales and restocking of the products with the help of new POS system. Thus, they can easily earn effective competitive benefits such as inputting, tracking and circulation of data. However, managers can take a wise decision on the actual demand and supply of the products in an organization (Özsu and Valduriez, 2011).
The types of telecommunication network that are widely used are MAN, WAN and LAN. Apart from this, there are also some other networks which are also commonly used are as PAN (Personal area network), SAN (Storage area network), EPN (Enterprise area network) and VAN (Virtual area network). However, MAN, WAN and LAN are the telecommunication network which helps to connect one computer to another computers and then provide the service for communication. The major differences found in those network is the geographical areas. WAN (Wide Area Network) is the biggest network which serves the entire country globally (Xu, Teo, Tan and Agarwal, 2012). Usually WAN covers the huge area and it is generally expensive. Similarly, MAN (Metropolitan Area network) is bigger telecommunication network as compared to LAN and it usually covers buildings or apartments in the similar town or city. Likewise, LAN (Local Area Network) is the grouping of multiple computers which is linked in a same building. This type of network is very cost effective (Tsoulos, 2000).
Advantages of Having a Centralized Database
Wireless technologies are also used in the organization which includes GPS units, garage door openers, wireless computer mice, keyboards and headsets, headphones, radio receivers, satellite television, broadcast television and cordless telephones (Latré et al., 2011). Moreover, wired technologies includes cables given below:
- Unshielded Twisted Pair (UTP) Cable.
- Shielded Twisted Pair (STP) Cable.
- Coaxial Cable.
- Fibre Optic Cable.
- Cable Installation Guides.
- Wireless LANs (Perrig and Tygar, 2012).
The major risks involved in the implementation of the new POS system involves:
- Security: All the required data must be highly secured under the organization because once the data are hacked or leaked, then it may generate loss for the company and the company may face the issues related to threats. So, all the recorded data must be fully secured and the companies should manage this by hiring cyber experts who can easily manage and control all the information (Ryan, 2011).
- Privacy: Privacy is one of the risk factory found in the new POS system. All the recorded data must have be private and they must be not easily accessible by every employees in an organizations. Privacy of data once leaked can introduce unnecessary issues to the company which might create a situation to end the company as well (Bygrave, 2014).
- Confidentiality: Confidentiality is also a prime risk factor found in an organization. All the business must have confidential documents which should be protected by security passwords. Apart from this, all the recorded data must be available at the single platform rather than multiple platforms (Culnan and Armstrong, 2010).
Here are few recommendation that the business need to take care of. All the strategy and the decisions are based on the digital platform. The new POS system has reduced the manual work which sometimes might become an issue in case of if the power supply do not help out. Small and medium scale business cannot afford such system because of the high cost
Conclusion
Thus, as a whole, it can be concluded that the implementation of the new POS system might have many advantages but it also include certain cons. In addition to this, the new POS system has helped the business to take of all the inventory units in a more digital form as well.
References
Armentrout, G.H., Do, P.K., Hargett Jr, B.R. and Maximilien, E.M., International Business Machines Corp, 2011. Method for more efficiently managing complex payloads in a point of sale system. U.S. Patent 7,889,384.
Bauer, D.G., Campero, R.J., Rasband, P.B. and Weel, M.D., Sensormatic Electronics Corp, 2012. Inventory management system. U.S. Patent 8,321,302.
Bygrave, L.A., 2014. Data privacy law: an international perspective (Vol. 63). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Coffing, D. and Bonfiglio, L., 2017. Transaction system for business and social networking. U.S. Patent 9,600,674.
Culnan, M.J. and Armstrong, P.K., 2010. Information privacy concerns, procedural fairness, and impersonal trust: An empirical investigation. Organization science, 10(1), pp.104-115.
Latré, B., Braem, B., Moerman, I., Blondia, C. and Demeester, P., 2011. A survey on wireless body area networks. Wireless Networks, 17(1), pp.1-18.
Özsu, M.T. and Valduriez, P., 2011. Principles of distributed database systems. Springer Science & Business Media.
Pakhira, M.K., 2012. Database Management System. PHI Learning Pvt. Ltd.
Paton, N.W. ed., 2012. Active rules in database systems. Springer Science & Business Media.
Perrig, A. and Tygar, J.D., 2012. Secure Broadcast Communication: In Wired and Wireless Networks. Springer Science & Business Media.
Porter, M.E., 2011. Competitive advantage of nations: creating and sustaining superior performance (Vol. 2). Simon and Schuster.
Ryan, M.D., 2011. Cloud computing privacy concerns on our doorstep. Communications of the ACM, 54(1), pp.36-38.
Tempelmeier, H., 2011. Inventory management in supply networks. Norderstedt: Books on Demand. Hua, G., Cheng, T.C.E. and Wang, S., 2011. Managing carbon footprints in inventory management. International Journal of Production Economics, 132(2), pp.178-185.
Tsoulos, G.V., 2000. Adaptive antennas for wireless communications. Wiley-IEEE Press.
Wild, T., 2017. Best practice in inventory management. Routledge.
Xu, H., Teo, H.H., Tan, B.C. and Agarwal, R., 2012. Research note—effects of individual self-protection, industry self-regulation, and government regulation on privacy concerns: a study of location-based services. Information Systems Research, 23(4), pp.1342-1363.