Benefits Of Point-of-Sale (POS) System For Small Business – Four Seasons Greenhouse And Nursery

HC1041 IT for Business in Project Management

Adoption of POS System for Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery

Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery plans to adopt the POS system to flourish the business activities. The report illustrates the beneficial aspects of point-of-sale in details. There are several advantages and disadvantages associated with adaptation of POS system. Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery must consider all those issues before adopting the POS system (Abel and Obeten 2015). Recommendations will help to identify all the risks associated and will help Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery to acknowledge how they should adopt POS system and conduct business activities. POS can give them the edge so that they can get a competitive advantage and stay ahead of other companies.

Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery is a small nursery based in Colorado. They conduct business activities like other small businesses. They use manual registers to track the inventory and manage the inventory. They use the manual registers to identify which items yield maximum profit (Refer to Appendix A).

A point-of-sale is the area where sales are made. POS system contains the software as well as the hardware components. POS systems offer flexibility and ease daily transactions. POS also makes business operations faster. Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery have decided to take up the POS system to furnish the business activities. They must choose the POS software and will have to consider various aspects of the POS software (Pantano and Viassone 2014). At first, they will have to verify all the functionality of the system; they will have to notice that the POS system meet all the business deliverables. They will have to consider the budget while taking up the POS system. Bindo, Vend, ShopKeep and TouchBistro are some of the popular POS systems.

Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery can acquire several benefits adopting POS. The report explains all the advantages in the report as follows-

1. Financial Accuracy-It is natural for the humans to make mistakes while calculating the financial data. However, the POS comes with advanced solutions by which Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery can get error-free solutions. The company even can get fast and accurate results with the aid of POS system (Siahpush et al. 2017). POS make use of some algorithms and give results. Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery can get the bestoutcome configuring POS in the system.
2. Accountability-POS can facilitate Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery to keep records of the products usually they manufacture and sell in the market. POS can facilitate them too in tracking the shipment of the products. Even, the POS is helpful for tracking the employees’ activities (Pantano and Priporas 2016). Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery can monitor and control all the activities of the employees working in the company with the assistance of POS system.

iii. Speed- The business activities of Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery can get furnished with the aid of POS system. POS can make the employees of Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery to serve customers proficiently (Greco 2015). The products transaction of Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery can get increased with the help of POS system.

1. Stock Management- The stock of Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery can get managed by adopting POS system. POS system can facilitate the company so now they can check the stock (Ephraim and Samual 2016). Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery can get an overviewof how much products they are dealing with.
2. Reporting-The business reports can be developedwith the aid of POS system. The POS helps in generating data analysis. POS also facilitates measurement of annual profit margin. Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery adopting POS system can get an overall view of the business operations-
3. Costing-POS system is quite expensive to adopt. The small companies, even the mid-size companies,struggle to adopt the POS system for their company. Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery is a mid-size company, and for this reason, they will face immense crisis and difficulties to implement and configure POS system on their premises. The company will have to subscribe POS system monthly or yearly basis, and they will have to pay heavy for the system (Garvey 2014). This is the issue for which Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery can face while adopting POS system.
4. Maintenance- High level of maintenance is requiredfor configuring the POS system. POS requires maintenance on a daily basis. Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery will have to interrupt the business at the time of maintaining POS system.

The business transaction details can be well traced from the sales transactions made, and this is only possible because of adaptation of POS system. POS system can facilitate the employees of the company (Rese, Schreiber and Baier 2014). POS system can ease the labour of the employees so the employees will not have to make an effort to keep a record of all the sales manually. Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery after configuring POS system can store data, can access data and can process data profoundly. The POS system also furnishes inventory management. Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery design several products and POS system can help them to analyse which product will yield maximum productivity. POS system is efficient and is way better than the traditional cash register used by Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery right now. The point-of-sale system aids tracking, inputting and distribution of data. The company can set price for every item they manufacture and can earn maximum profit. The POS system helps in decision-making as well. The management staff of Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery with the aid of POS system can offer responsibilities to the workers of the company. They can monitor the products’ manufacturing; they can monitor the employees’ activities. Thus Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery can get the opportunity to earn maximum profits. All these factors give the competitive edge, because of POS system they can stay ahead of all others and perform all the business activities.

Benefits of POS System for Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery

The centralised database has multiple benefits to offer, and this report illustrates all the benefits in details. The centralised database can benefit all small and mid-size companies.

1. Data preservation offers facilities like the redundant storage and the fault tolerant setup. The company’s system can fail, andtheir hardware failure can cause data loss. Data preservation procedures help Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery to accumulate, store and preserve data so that the data can be usedin future (Rese, Schreiber and Baier 2014). The data preservation techniques also offer backup functionalities. So Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery can protect their data by taking necessary backup where there is a chance of data loss. Thus Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery by data preservation can protect all the confidential data, and they will not have to worry about hardware failure.
2. Data preservation also offers security. The security breaches and data breaches can lead to data loss. However, the data preservation ensures data security (Lloyd 2017). Data preservation thus can mitigate the chance of data breaches as well as the data loss.

iii. The centralised database can offer cost-effective, profitable services. Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery can enjoy several advantages the centralised database offers. Though the configuration for the centralised database storage is quite expensive, however, the maintenance cost of the database is relatively less.

Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery can maintain the accuracy of the inventory data due to the adaptation of POS system. The POS provides the facilities for decision making. The inventory of Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery can be better managed by advanced decision making. The company carries out the business operations on the basis of the assumptions (Kumar, Singh and Shankar 2015). They place orders solely based on assumptions. Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery follow strategies to carry out their business however, those strategies contain multiple flaws.  The adaptation of POS system can give them new ray of hope. Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery can control inventory, can control the stock with the aid of the POS system (Renko and Druzijanic 2014). The managers of Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery can be able to decide what to buy, what to buy, how to buy, what to be sold by the assistance of POS adaptation.

Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery must choose the WAN connectivity as that can help them to furnish their business activities. WAN network simplifies file access, and that is why the company can access the files relatively faster (Kallweit, Spreer and Toporowski 2014). The workers of the company can be benefitted with the aid of WAN network. WAN network also facilitates communication among the employees, and so they stay connected all the time. The employees can provide cost-effective, profitable service to the clients with the help of WAN connectivity. WAN connectivity can provide the security solutions to the customers, stakeholders and the clients of the company so that they can conduct the business activities securely and smoothly (Rodríguez 2017). Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery can get the competitive edge and can stay ahead of all other companies with the aid of the WAN network.

Security- The insecure system and insecure network are deadly for any companies and Four Seasons Greenhouse, and Nursery is no exception. The hackers seek an opportunity of this weak network and attack. They make the system vulnerable to use. The attackers steal all the confidential data, modify those data and even delete those data. the company must take initiatives to protect those data from being hacked or compromised (Lee et al. 2015). The company database contains all the financial data. The security breach can prove fatal for the company. The installation of antivirus program can help them to protect from the attackers.

Centralised Database for Cost-Effective Services

Confidentiality- Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery must assure safety and security of the database and the system. The company must take initiatives to protect the data of the customers and the employees. Due to a security breach, the company can lose the confidential data of the employees and the customers (Guoet al., 2015). The financial data can get compromised due to eth security breaches. Thus confidentiality can get threatened due to the intruders’ attack.

Privacy- Due to the malware attack the employees’ privacy can get endangered. The can attack, and the can access and steal all the information from the database and the system. Privacy of the employees can be ensured by installing a suitable antivirus program (Guan et al. 2015). The workers of the company must set up username and password, and they must not share the password with anyone else. Sharing of the password can lead to a privacy breach.

Conclusion

It can be concluded from the above discourse that the Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery can be benefitted with the help of the POS system. POS system provides various multiple facilities to the company. Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery can get a competitive advantage by configuring POS system in their premises.  WAN connectivity can enhance the communication among the employees. The company can face issues related to security, privacy and confidentiality. Recommendations have been made in the report. The recommendations will help to know that the Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery can flourish their business with the aid of the POS configuration in their premises.

1. Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery must appropriately adopt the POS system,andthey must meet all the business needs. The company with the aid of POS system can get fast effective and error-free solutions.
2. Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery must configure antivirus program in all their system. The sensitive data of the company along with the customers’ data can be protectedwith the help of the antivirus program. The company can get rid of intruders’ malicious activities.  

iii. POS system provides facilities for decision making. They must focus on the innovation as this can help them to scale up the business.

Abel, E.E. and Obeten, E., 2015. Restaurant Customer Self-Ordering System: A Solution to Reduce Customer/Guest Waiting Time at the Point of Sale. International Journal of Computer Applications, 111(11).

Ephraim, B. and Samual, J., 2016. Advanced Cycloshift Encryption (ACE) for Point of Sale Barcode System. Imperial Journal of Interdisciplinary Research, 2(10).

Garvey, W.D., 2014. Communication: the essence of science: facilitating information exchange among librarians, scientists, engineers and students. Elsevier.

Greco, A.J., 2015. The Integration of Short and Long Range Planning for Retailers through Expanded Point-of-Sale Based Information Systems. In Proceedings of the 1984 Academy of Marketing Science (AMS) Annual Conference (pp. 348-348). Springer, Cham.

Guan, H., Li, J., Yu, Y., Chapman, M. and Wang, C., 2015. Automated road information extraction from mobile laser scanning data. IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems, 16(1), pp.194-205.

Guo, B., Chen, H., Yu, Z., Xie, X., Huangfu, S. and Zhang, D., 2015. FlierMeet: a mobile crowdsensing system for cross-space public information reposting, tagging, and sharing. IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing, 14(10), pp.2020-2033.

Kallweit, K., Spreer, P. and Toporowski, W., 2014. Why do customers use self-service information technologies in retail? The mediating effect of perceived service quality. Journal of retailing and consumer services, 21(3), pp.268-276.

Kumar, R., Singh, R.K. and Shankar, R., 2015. Critical success factors for implementation of supply chain management in Indian small and medium enterprises and their impact on performance. IIMB Management Review, 27(2), pp.92-104.

Lee, J.G., Henriksen, L., Rose, S.W., Moreland-Russell, S. and Ribisl, K.M., 2015. A systematic review of neighborhood disparities in point-of-sale tobacco marketing. American journal of public health, 105(9), pp.e8-e18.

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

Pantano, E. and Priporas, C.V., 2016. The effect of mobile retailing on consumers’ purchasing experiences: A dynamic perspective. Computers in Human Behavior, 61, pp.548-555.

Pantano, E. and Viassone, M., 2014. Demand pull and technology push perspective in technology-based innovations for the points of sale: The retailers evaluation. Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, 21(1), pp.43-47.

Renko, S. and Druzijanic, M., 2014. Perceived usefulness of innovative technology in retailing: Consumers? and retailers? point of view. Journal of retailing and consumer services, 21(5), pp.836-843.

Rese, A., Schreiber, S. and 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), pp.869-876.

Rodríguez, R.J., 2017. Evolution and characterization of point-of-sale RAM scraping malware. Journal of Computer Virology and Hacking Techniques, 13(3), pp.179-192.

Siahpush, M., Tibbits, M., Soliman, G.A., Grimm, B., Shaikh, R.A., McCarthy, M., Wan, N., Ramos, A.K. and Correa, A., 2017. Neighbourhood exposure to point-of-sale price promotions for cigarettes is associated with financial stress among smokers: results from a population-based study. Tobacco control, 26(6), pp.703-708.