Key Advantages and Limitations of POS System

Discusss about the Implementation of POS System in the Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery.

Computers and networking are the most significant innovation of the 20^th century. Two of them together have revolutionized the world. Education to warfare and industries all of the industries are the evidence of the change. Small stores and direct retailing services have also been benefited one of the sources for that benefit is Point of sales (POS) system (Rahman and Ripon 2014). This report is an attempt to assess POS system and various factors involved in it with the help of the case of Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery. Four Seasons has been greatly benefitted since the application of the system. The usability of the system, along with the management and implementation of the system in the business are also discussed in the report. The report has been concluded with an evaluation of the potential threats to the system.

The key advantages and limitations of the POS system have been discussed as follows:

Advantages:

• The system reduces the human effort and expenses associated with management of the business (Meeker 2015).
• The success ratio of the offered product can be analyzed, and hence strategy for sustainability can be developed.
• The system also offers an increase in the productivity as saves a lot of time and effort (Zhu, Mukhopadhyay and Kurata 2012).
• Another advantage of equipping the system is that offers a hassle-free safekeeping of the information and financial records.

Limitations:

• Regular update required for the software can be troublesome.
• As the system is connected to the central network, hence cyber threats are a concerning issue (Stadler 2015).
• It is not cost-efficient.

One of the most significant reasons for adopting POS system is to get a competitive advantage over the competitors. The main resources of a firm are stakeholders, information, inventory and financial (De Judicibus et. al 2013). The organization that has adopted POS system will be able to work more rapidly and with increased efficiency that will be an asset for customer attraction. Employee management and decision making is another benefit offered by the system. In case of Four seasons goal defining for the employees also got and boosted which increased their productivity and hence competitive advantage. The information resource also receives a boost on the implementation of the system. The easy handling of financial records and inventory is also advantageous for the organization.

The advantages of the centralized database can offer the following advantages:

• Increase in data integrity while reducing data redundancy.
• The centralised database offers more preservative method for data preservation.
• Easier information administration and data transmission is an additional benefit offered by the centralized
• It is cost effective and ease of use than other databases.
• End-user gets a notification when there is a data tampering attempt.

POS system allows the owners to measure the success ratio of a product and depending on the success ratio the latter can decide on the size of inventory they want to store. The success ratio also influences the approach of the owners towards the care and presentation of the product omitting the guesswork. In case of the Four Seasons, the owners decided to shift their profit towards the higher-profitable products. The system also enables the owners to derive more understanding of their business and hence further enhancing the decision making capabilities.

Advantages of Centralized Database

POS systems offer multiple advantages to a business. The most significant of them is that it increases the productivity of the resources (Kumar, Luthra and Haleem 2014). The human resources get a boost in their productivity level as they are felicitated through different programs for an effective output. The informational resources are safe, organized and easily administrable increasing their productivity.  The financial resources also offer higher efficiency due to the security offered by the cash register, real-time records for the orders and an organized approach to the maintaining the ledger.

Manual tracking of the information is possible in the system in an effective manner. The reason for stating the above statement is because bar-code scanners are used in the POS system to scan and store the information of an order. Real-time tracking of the information is also possible after implementing the considered system.    

The questions revolving around the decisions that need to be made about the size of inventory and the profitability of the products (Stahlberg and Maila 2012). The goal-setting for the employees are also met after the implementation of the system. It also helps in the decisions regarding the expansion and importance of the information. The pricing of the products can also be answered after the implementation of the considered system.

Implementation of the new system enables the organizations to get a detailed review of their business and hence to enable them to ignore guesswork. As discussed earlier the system organizes the data as per their relevance, and hence they can be used to define the size of inventory and focus on the profitable products.

The most commonly known network types are LAN, WAN, and MAN. They are differentiated depending on the geographical range.

LAN: LAN or Local Area Network is the method of interconnecting some systems within a campus or a building. The connection is achieved using co-axial cables. It mostly offers high speed; at some location, the speed can go up to 1GBPS (O’connor 2012).

WAN: Wide area network, as the name suggests is the interconnecting of multiple systems in a wide domain. It can extend throughout the world or can be limited to a state or country.  The most popular example of WAN is the internet. It can use cables or wireless mode for the transmission (Mclnerney and Nascimento 2012).

MAN: Metropolitan area network refers to the network that has a domain range between LAN and WAN. The considered network can spread to multiple buildings or campuses within a town or city.

Productivity Advantages of POS System

Wired: Wired technologies refer to the method which equips the cables as the physical medium. In this mode, the information is carried as electrical signals through the cables from one node to the other (Swiatek et. al 2012). Copper cables, fiber optics cables or twisted cables can be equipped with the medium. Copper or twisted cables are the most commonly used cables because of their natural availability and cost-effectiveness. However, fiber optics cable offers high reliability, security, and speed when compared to other cables.

Wireless: Wireless technology refers to the medium where the transfer is data is done through wireless mode. The considered technology uses electromagnetic or infrared waves for the transmission. Considered technology equips sensors (sender and receiver) to transmit or retrieve the data (Thomas et. al 2013). The type of wireless technology varies accordingly with the range of light spectrum it uses for the transmission purpose. Infrared communication, microwave communication, shortwaves communication, electromagnetic communication and others are the types.

The system is equipped in SMEs, and hence depending on the range of the business, it should use wired telecommunication mode. The reason for stating the above-made argument is that the wired mode of communication is safer than the wireless mode. As the wired communication call only be tampered physically while the wireless mode can be tampered both physically and remotely.

POS is assessing the small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in various ways however it has also made the latter vulnerable to various threats that include confidentiality, security and privacy threats. The system connects and centralizes the information of the SME to a single point over severs making it vulnerable to cyber-attacks (Hurst 2012). A single breach will result in exposing all the informational resource (finance statements, employee details, future strategies, projects/plans and others) of the firm. Successful attacks can leak the strategy and plans of the firm. It will also threaten the privacy of the employees as the firm’s store data of the employees in their systems for future use which will be open to the attackers (Hruska 2012). Though equipping some tools and techniques the threat can be neutralized and they are discussed as follows (Graylin 2013):

• Monitoring the system can help determine if there are attempts for tampering the system and hence necessary measures can be done.
• Keeping the data encrypted will help to keep the data safe and difficult to hack in.
• Regular testing of the system will keep the system software updated keeping it secure while making it more usable.
• Equipping the security measurements like POS security can help keep the security and privacy threats away.

Conclusion:   

POS systems have proved to be the new mode of business development, and hence the report has attempted to develop an insight of the same. The report discusses the various advantages and limitations that are proposed to business after the implementation of the POS system. The influence possessed on the business management is also discussed. Recommendations are made for the telecommunication options that can be used in the organization. Finally, the security threats and their remedies have been stated to conclude the report.

References:

De Judicibus, D., Leopardi, S., Modeo, L. and Pergola, N., Toshiba Global Commerce Solutions Holdings Corporation, 2013. Method and system for secured transactions over a wireless network. U.S. Patent 8,352,360.

Graylin, W.W., Roam Data Inc, 2013. System and method for incorporating one-time tokens, coupons, and reward systems into merchant point of sale checkout systems. U.S. Patent Application 13/663,561.

Hruska, J., 2012. Secure financial transaction system using a registered mobile device. U.S. Patent Application 13/136,218.

Hurst, D.J., Mocapay Inc, 2012. Virtual point of sale terminal and electronic wallet apparatuses and methods for processing secure wireless payment transactions. U.S. Patent Application 13/210,125.

Kumar, S., Luthra, S. and Haleem, A., 2014. Critical success factors of customer involvement in greening the supply chain: an empirical study. International Journal of Logistics Systems and Management, 19(3), pp.283-310.

McInerney, J. and Nascimento, F.L., Motorola Mobility LLC, 2012. Content sharing between a universal plug and play device and a wide area network device. U.S. Patent Application 12/966,005.

Meeker, M., 2015. Internet trends 2015-code conference. Glokalde, 1(3).

O’connor, D.M., Intel Corporation, 2012. Techniques to share multimedia and enable cellular phone conference calling using ad-hoc wireless networks. U.S. Patent 8,284,740.

Rahman, M. and Ripon, S., 2014. Elicitation and modeling non-functional requirements-a POS case study. arXiv preprint arXiv:1403.1936.

Stadtler, H., 2015. Supply chain management: An overview. In Supply chain management and advanced planning (pp. 3-28). Springer Berlin Heidelberg.

Ståhlberg, M. and Maila, V., 2012. Shopper marketing: How to increase purchase decisions at the point of sale. Kogan Page Publishers.

?wia?tek, P., Stelmach, P., Prusiewicz, A. and Juszczyszyn, K., 2012. Service composition in knowledge-based SOA systems. New Generation Computing, 30(2-3), pp.165-188.

Thomas, Y.R., Picot, M., Carer, A., Berder, O., Sentieys, O. and Barriere, F., 2013. A single sediment-microbial fuel cell powering a wireless telecommunication system. Journal of Power Sources, 241, pp.703-708.

Zhu, X., Mukhopadhyay, S.K. and Kurata, H., 2012. A review of RFID technology and its managerial applications in different industries. Journal of Engineering and Technology Management, 29(1), pp.152-167.