Advantages and Disadvantages of New POS System

The system of point of sale or simply POS is solely defined as one of the specified time as well as place, where any particular transaction can eventually occur or can be easily and promptly completed (Lee, Lee and Won 2014). As soon as the invoice is being made, the significant client is responsible for paying the required amount of money and even the vendor and the trader utilizes various important machineries such as the cash registers, weighing scale and also the barcode scanner for proper calculating and evaluating that particular amount (Dahlstrom and Bichsel 2014). This particular report would be solely depicting the proper description about the case study of Blooming with Technology.  Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery is a Nursery in Colorado that track and control their inventories manually. Hence, they were facing major losses; then they took the decision of implementing POS system. This report describes various facts related to the case study.

The significant system of the point of sale system mainly comprises of the several benefits as well as demerits. These advantages are responsible for making the system of point of sale extremely popular and noteworthy for all the users (Cui et al. 2016). Similarly, the disadvantages are responsible for creating some of the major issues for all the customers, who are using this particular system. This particular case study is demonstrating about the nursery of Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery. The nursery would be enjoying some of the most significant advantages after proper implementation of point of sale system. The various important and significant advantages of the point of sale system are as follows:

i) Higher Speed as well as Better Efficiency: Point of sale system is extremely effective and efficient for all types of transactions for the users and could be utilized in each and every type of business (Dahlstrom, Walker and Dziuban 2013). Moreover, the speed of the transactions is effectively increased in this system and the respective transactional efficiencies are enhanced.

ii) Managing the Inventories: Another important advantage of this system of point of sale is that it helps to manage the inventories and stocks of the organization. Moreover, it is even responsible for the significant stock replenishment within the business (Eason 2014).

iii) Accuracy within the Transactions: The third vital and significant benefit of the system of point of sale is that it is responsible for providing perfection and accuracy within the transactions and hence the respective data is absolutely error free.

Although, this specific system of point of sale is extremely advantageous for the organization of Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery, few of the disadvantages are also present that often create issues for the users (Yang and Hwang 2015). These disadvantages of a point of sale system are as follows:

i) Extremely Costly: The major and the most significant disadvantage of this system of point of sale would be that this particular system is extremely costly and thus it often becomes an issue to afford this system (Jones 2011). Implementation and maintenance costs of POS are quite higher than any other accounting information system.

POS System in Business for Gaining Competitive Advantages

ii) Needs Proper Maintenance: POS system needs regular and proper maintenance to avoid any type of issues and hence the business processes are stopped during this maintenance, which eventually brings losses to the company.

The system of point of sale subsequently helps the businesses and companies for perfectly acquiring the several significant competitive benefits within these companies (Bloom et al. 2014). The major advantage of the POS system for Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery would be that it is helpful for simplifying the entire transaction system into a small and simple version than any other system. This type of recognition of all the details about the respective specific business process could be easily and promptly completed by simply undertaking a help of this POS system (Holtshouse 2013). Now, since this entire process of transactions is much simplified, each and every employee of the Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery do not require working much more and thus the entire load of work can be minimized to a higher level. During the previous business transactions, there is a significant tracking and management of the total inventory register that would be eventually completed by the manual intervention. Furthermore, as soon as the POS system is being deployed within their business; a proper tracking as well as management of the inventory registers are done systematically (Lloyd 2017). Hence, this organization would be gaining various competitive advantages.

The centralized database is stated as a database that can be perfectly and properly managed or stored in any specific location. There are two specific types of the centralized database (Schwalbe 2015). Amongst these two, the first type would be the simply system of data and the second type would be the centralized database. Both of these comprise of some of the major features for storing of confidential data. The main advantages of having a centralized database are as follows:

i) Improving the Proper Preservation of Data: Centralized database helps in improvising the proper preservation of the sensitive and confidential data (Laudon and Laudon 2016). Thus, fault tolerance feature is present within this database.

ii) Cost Effectiveness: This centralized database is extremely cost effective and can be properly utilized by all the respective users of this database.

iii) Provides Data Security: The centralized database even provides security to the sensitive data or information and thus is being used properly.

Thus, Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery would be having some of the most significant advantages when they will implement a centralized database within their business.

The respective system of the point of sale is solely responsible for facilitating the entire process to take major and significant decisions for the business (Gallagher and Sixsmith 2014). Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery could then easily or promptly arrange the respective stocks and inventories. Furthermore, the accuracy of the confidential data is also validated or verified by the implementation of a point of sale system. Previously, this particular nursery substantially used to order the products as per the various assumptions made by them of the customers’ needs. Then, they had to preserve the product rack completely by manual help. Thus, they should be selecting this typical system of point of sale for their perfect tracking as well as monitoring the products in an automated manner. Each and every distinct service of the business would be much more effective, efficient and could be completed with high speed (Bajdor and Grabara 2014). Moreover, the entire process of decision making would be extremely easier and prominent for this particular nursery of Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery. Hence, they must implement this particular POS system within their business processes (See Appendix).

Advantages of Having Centralized Database

There are three important and imperative alternatives for the telecommunications within the system of point of sale. These alternatives are present to gain the main purpose of adapting the telecommunications options. These three significant options of the telecommunications for this particular organization of Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery is local area network or LAN, the second option for them is metropolitan area network or MAN and lastly the third and the final alternative for this Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery is the wide area network or WAN. Within these three above mentioned options of telecommunications for Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery, the most appropriate alternative for telecommunications would be wide area network or WAN. The respective local area network would not at all be feasible for Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery as the complete area of network is extremely small. The second option that is the metropolitan area of network would also not be feasible for Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery as it provides its network for the maximum extent to fewer buildings only. Hence, the third option of wide area network would be the best for them as it allows network access in a large area and the entire access of data is much easier.

The most accurate solution for Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery will be the wireless technology. One of the basic advantages of the wireless technology would be that this particular technology does not consist of any complexity. The other prominent advantages of the wireless technology would be that this technology is much cost effective and also given higher speed. The most accurate example of the wireless technology would be the Wi-Fi or the wireless fidelity connectivity.

There are three important and specific features for each and every possible threat in the typical system of point of sale. All of these features for the threats are as follows:

i) Privacy: The several computer viruses and the malicious codes would be the most significant threats that are solely related to the privacy (Dahlstrom and Bichsel 2014). Implementation of various passwords and proper up gradation of those passwords are considered as the most effective and efficient remedies for these above mentioned risks in privacy feature.

ii) Confidentiality: The ex employees and staffs in the company should not breach their confidential and sensitive data within the organization. The best remedy for this particular risk would be the proper implementation of various firewalls.

iii) Security: The various hackers can easily and promptly hack the specific system for the major purpose of data theft and data leakage (Eason 2014). The best remedy for this particular risk would be proper up gradation of the deployed antivirus software.

Conclusion:

Hence, from this above report, the conclusion can be drawn that Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery is a Nursery in Colorado that was facing some of the most significant issues related to their business activities and processes. The diversified small and the medium sized garden centre and business are properly attached with this particular nursery. Since, they were managing their registers manually, several human errors were occurring within those registers. Thus, inventory management was becoming more problematic for the respective administrators and employees of the nursery. They were even facing business losses to a subsequent level. Thus, they undertook the decision that they would implement point of sale system within their business. The above report has properly demonstrated the various advantages and disadvantages of the basic system of point of sale for Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery. Several threats are identified here and a recommendation is provided for the telecommunications of this nursery.

References:

Bajdor, P. and Grabara, I., 2014. The Role of Information System Flows in Fulfilling Customers’ Individual Orders. Journal of Studies in Social Sciences, 7(2).

Bloom, N., Garicano, L., Sadun, R., and Van Reenen, J. 2014. The distinct effects of information technology and communication technology on firm organization. Management Science, 60(12), 2859-2885.

Cui, B., Jiang, J., Huang, Q., Xu, Y., Gui, Y. and 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.

Dahlstrom, E., and Bichsel, J. 2014. ECAR Study of Undergraduate Students and Information Technology, 2014. Educause.

Dahlstrom, E., Walker, J. D., and Dziuban, C. 2013. ECAR study of undergraduate students and information technology(p. 2013). 2013.

Eason, K. D. 2014. Information technology and organisational change. CRC Press.

Gallagher, S. and Sixsmith, A., 2014. Engaging IT undergraduates in non-IT content: Adopting an eLearning information system in the classroom. Interactive Technology and Smart Education, 11(2), pp.99-111.

Holtshouse, D. K. 2013. Information technology for knowledge management. Springer Science & Business Media.

Jones, R. 2011, May. Garden Center 2.0. Today’s Garden Center, 8, 14-16.

Laudon, K.C. and Laudon, J.P., 2016. Management information system. Pearson Education India.

Lee, H.J., Lee, Y. and Won, D., 2014. Protection Profile for PoS (Point of Sale) System. In Mobile, Ubiquitous, and Intelligent Computing (pp. 495-500). Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.

Lloyd, I. 2017. Information technology law. Oxford University Press.

Schwalbe, K. 2015. Information technology project management. Cengage Learning.

Yang, D. and Hwang, I., 2015, May. Security enhancement methods for mobile POS system. In Mobile Software Engineering and Systems (MOBILESoft), 2015 2nd ACM International Conference on (pp. 152-153). IEEE.