Use of computers and information system are essential to maintain and manage almost every business irrespective of its size and type. Not only the large business enterprises, but also smaller businesses are making use of technology for easier management and to gain business profits. The use of technology is small and medium sized organizations are limited mainly because these organizations do not have the expertise and the resources of that of large business organizations. The report discusses the adoption of point of sales (POS) system in Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery that is located in Colorado. This nursery is similar to many other businesses and garden centres that make use of manual registers in tracking and maintaining the inventory, sales and details of the products. The aim of the report is to establish the fact that the benefits of technology in small and medium sized enterprises are just as crucial to the business operations as it is for the large organizations (Pearlson, Saunders and Galletta 2016). The information tracking with the help of manual registers resulted in negligible profit for the organization or business loss. The Four Seasons nursery adopted POS system in the year 2008 that helped the organization in gaining certain business benefits (refer to appendix). The report discusses the benefits, advantages and disadvantages of the new POS system along with the risks associated with the use of such information system in the following paragraphs.
Point of sales systems are mainly designed to optimize the daily business processes. It helps in eliminating the need of paper work that is associated with the tracking of sales and inventory management. This process helps in saving a lot of time as it eliminates the need of manual calculations (Stair and Reynolds 2013). The use of POS therefore improves the efficiency of business management by generation of accurate reports, which in turn helps in enhanced decision making. The advantages of implementation of POS in Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery are as follows-
These are the main advantages of implementation of new point of sales system in business. However, there are a number of disadvantages as well, which are as follows (refer to appendix)-
With the help of a new point of sales system, a business can gain competitive advantage. This is possible as it helps in easier management of the different business operation. The accurate data about the sales and inventory helps in correct estimation of the business needs that helped the business in gaining a competitive advantage. With the implementation of the new point of sales system, proper pricing of the products were possible which helped in increasing the profits of the organization. This in turn helped the Four Seasons in gaining competitive advantages. The productivity of the employees increased with the implementation of new point of sales system (Baden-Fuller and Haefliger 2013). The data and reports generated by the POS system helped in keeping a track of the employee schedules thus increasing the employees’ productivity thus giving a competitive advantage. This is the process by which the enhancement of the different business operations with the help of new POS system helped the organization in gaining competitive advantages.
The centralized data management helps in easier transposition and transformation of the data. A centralized database is generally managed by experienced technical and statistical staffs to suit the various requirements and a specific need of a particular system, which is in this case, is POS system (Osman and Knottenbelt 2012). The advantages of having a centralized data base are as follows-
The above discussed points give an overview of the different advantages of using a centralized database.
The use of the point of sales system helps in enhancing the decision making. The process of decision making is enhanced as the live data about the inventory and sales can be easily recorded and tracked. Knowledge about the inventory sales helps in easier management of the business operations of the organization. The use of the point of sales system facilitates decision making in a number of ways.
The point of sale systems helps in processing the different business activities in an effective manner. With the help of the POS system, easier tracking of the live business operations are possible along with the easier tracking of the employee and labour schedule (Laudon and Laudon 2016). This helps in easier monitoring of the employees’ work schedule, which in turn helps in management of the business activities more effectively.
The point of sales system eliminated the need of manual tracking of the information and maintenance of the manual records. Effective tracking of the information in manual process may not be possible. There are a number of reasons behind the ineffectiveness of manual data tracking in comparison to the automatic tracking of information as supported by the new point of sales system (Stair and Reynolds 2013). Human errors can be a possible cause of ineffective information tracking in manual system. Furthermore, it is a time consuming task. Therefore, the effective management and tracking of the information by maintaining manual records may not be possible.
With the help of the new point of sales system, the questions that address the quantity of inventory units, the quantity of sales, accurate price of the products and their profit margins could be effectively answered (Jain and Paul 2013). Answer to these questions further helps in proper management of all the business operations associated with the organization.
The information provided by the new point of sales system helps in generating daily progress reports that helps in proper monitoring of all the business processes of the organization. The data about the sales and inventory units helps the organization in operating on leaner inventory units, thus helping the business owners and the managers in effective management of all the business activities associated with the organization.
Easier management of the products, sales, employees’ schedule and the inventory items therefore enhances the process of decision making as effective decisions can be made based on the accurate reports generated by the new point of sales system.
The telecommunication option that is recommended for connecting the devices associated with the new point of sales system is LAN or Local Area Network (Wang et al., 2015). A local area network can be described as a group of computers that share a common link to the servers, thus interconnecting all the digital devices that are present in a districts geographical area (Haigh et al., 2012). A metropolitan area network is used when the interconnection among the computer resources in a wider geographical area is needed. Wide area Network or WAN is considered for an even larger geographical area (Wang et al., 2014). Since Four Seasons is a small nursery, the choice of the LAN is appropriate.
The choice of media for establishing the LAN connection is wireless technology. It will help in creating a link to the server. The wireless technology is chosen instead of wired media as it is more advanced and easier to implement (Arnon et al., 2012).
Since POS is mainly a web based system, there are certain cyber security risks that can challenge the security, privacy and confidentiality of the data stored in the system (Stallings et al. 2012). Furthermore, it is exposed to the threats of hackers and insider threats (Von Solms and Van Niekerk 2013). These issues can be addressed by ensuring proper authentication and access control to the data stored in the system.
Conclusion
The report gives an overview of the use of point of sales system in business. The business of Four Seasons could achieve a greater business profit after replacing their manual system with the point of sales system. The advantages, disadvantages and the issues associated with the use of POS are discussed in the report. It is seen that the use of POS increases the operational efficiency of a business.
References
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