Merits And Demerits Of Point Of Sale Systems In Four Seasons Greenhouse And Nursery, Essay.

Advantages of Point of Sale System

Discuss about the new POS system implemented by Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery.

POS or simply point of sale is the typical time or place, where any significant transaction is solely completed. The other name for this point of sale is POP or simply point of purchase (Cui et al., 2016). The trader or the vendor calculates the real amount, which is to be paid by any client or customer and even indicates that particular amount to prepare the invoice. Once this making of invoice is completed, the client proceeds for paying the amount. The trader or the vendor utilizes various machines such as scanners of barcode, cash registers or any weighing scale for the successful calculation of amount (Refer to Appendix A). Several payment options like touch screens, software, hardware and payment terminals are utilized by the customer. The customer relationship management, inventory management, warehousing or financials are the functionalities of point of sale. The point of sale system is extremely popular for any organization irrespective of its size.

The following report discusses about the popular case study of a small nursery, namely, Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery. This organization tracked and controlled their inventories by manual management (Refer to Appendix B). Due to this manual management, they suffered major losses within the business. Hence, they took the decision of implementing the system of point of sale. This report explains about the merits and demerits of this new point of sale system and how this organization would be able to utilize this system within their business (Laudon & Laudon, 2016). Moreover, significant recommendations are also given in the report.

Advantages and Disadvantages of the new POS system

The system of point of sale comprises of several benefits or advantages. The organization of Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery would be solely enjoying several advantages from the point of sale. The most important advantages of point of sale system are given below:

1. i) Pace and Efficiency: the system of point of sale or POS is utilized for the improvement of transactional efficiency and the speed of the transactions (Lee et al., 2014). Furthermore, the effectiveness of any transaction is improvised with the help of the system of point of sale.
2. ii) Managing the Inventories: Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery organization is having major problem in controlling their inventories (Chavali, Yang & Nehorai, 2014). This particular problem can be easily solved if they will implement the system of point of sale within the business.

Accurate Financial Transactions: There is always a high chance of coming erroneous data in the financial transactions. With the POS system, the chance of this problem is almost zero.

Apart from these advantages, there are several disadvantages of point of sale system. These disadvantages are not at all feasible for the organization. The disadvantages or demerits of point of sale system are given below:

1. i) Lack of Cost Effectiveness: Although this system of point of sale is extremely advantageous, the lack of cost effectiveness of this system makes it unpopular for many organizations (Zhong et al., 2016). The implementation expense of this particular system is very high and the organization of Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery would be facing major crisis in finances.
2. ii) Daily Maintenance: This system of POS needs daily maintenance. Due to this daily maintenance, the regular business operations or financial transactions can be hampered and the organization may suffer huge losses.

The system of POS always helps any business or organization for acquiring competitive benefits or advantages within the business. The major advantage of this system is that it helps in the simplification of the total transaction system to a smaller and simple version (Lee, Lee & Won, 2014). The recognition of all the details of any particular business operation is done with the help of the system of point of sale. Now, since the entire transaction process is simplified, the personnel of the organization do not have to work much and their work load is minimized to several steps. During the earlier business transactions, the management and the tracking of the inventory register was done manually. Nevertheless, when the system of point of sale would be implemented within the business, this tracking and management would be done systematically (Yang & Hwang, 2015). Furthermore, this system would be helping to select the correct products for the organizations that would be bringing significant success in the business. The total revenue of the business would also be raised and this organization of Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery would complete their business processes efficiently.

Disadvantages of Point of Sale System

The centralized database is the specific type of database that can be managed or stored in any place. There are two types of centralized databases. One is the simpler database system and the second one is the centralized computer. Any centralized database is solely used for the perfect access of information within all organizations (Nanda, 2016). The user, who is utilizing a centralized database, does this by computer network. The centralized databases are the best options for medium and smaller sized companies, since the data of these companies are of limited or restricted amount. The various important advantages of any centralized database are given below:

1. i) Improvising Data Preservation: The preservation of data is solely improvised by centralized database (Kobersy et al., 2015). The fault tolerance feature of this database allows to preserve or store important and confidential information.
2. ii) Improving the Physical Security: The confidential data is secured by centralized database and the physical access is limited to any specific location.

iii) Inexpensive: In spite of having several advantages, the centralized database is not at all expensive (Lee, Lee & Won, 2014). Since Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery is a small nursery, it will not be a problem for them to utilize centralized database in their business.

iv) Gives Data Security: The security of the data is provided by the centralized database.

The system of point of sale helps to facilitate the procedure for decision-making. The Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery organization can simply and easily manage their stocks and inventories (Missaoui et al., 2014). The data accuracy is always checked by the system of point of sale. In the earlier days, this particular company of Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery ordered the products by means of assumptions of the requirements and also preserves the overall rack of everything manually. Nevertheless, when the system of point of sale would be implemented within the business, this tracking and management would be done systematically (Yang & Hwang, 2015). The entire services of the business would be extremely speedy and effective and they would be able to take several tough decisions by this system of point of sale. The most significant questions like which of the products must be bought or which products must be sold or in which of the processes could be easily executed by the system of point of sale.

There are three specific options for telecommunication adaptation for the point of sale system within the organization of Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery. They are the Local Area Network or LAN, Metropolitan Area Network or MAN and Wide Area Network or WAN (Nanda, 2016). LAN is not feasible for this organization as it provides network is small area. MAN is also not feasible as it gives network to maximum of few buildings. The best recommended solution for their telecommunication problem would be WAN as it provides network in large area and easy data access.

Facilitation of Decision-making Process

The best solution would be wireless technologies for this particular organization. The main advantage of these wireless technologies is that there is no complexity of wire (Cui et al., 2016). Moreover, it is cost effective and speedy. The best example of wireless technology is Wireless Fidelity or Wi-Fi.

The three major characteristics of risks are given below:

1. i) Security: The hackers can easily hack down the system and the important information would be lost. The remedy for this risk is an updated antivirus software.
2. ii) Privacy: The virus or malicious codes are the risks for privacy. Passwords is the best remedy for this risk (Lee, Lee & Won, 2014).

iii) Confidentiality: The ex employees of the organization should not breach the confidentiality of the company’s data. The best remedy for this risk is firewalls.

Conclusion

Therefore, from the above discussion, it can be concluded that, Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery is a smaller nursery that is located in Colorado, United States. Several small and medium businesses and centres for garden are attached under this particular organization. Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery have always used such registers for their organization, which are manually managed or controlled. These registers are used for the sole purpose of management and tracking of the inventories. Nevertheless, it has been observed that, this organization was suffering from excess problem due to this manual management of inventories. Furthermore, Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery was suffering from loss and at that point of time, they decided to acquire the specific and systematic system of point of sale. POS system or simply the system of point of sale is any particular time or place, where any significant transaction is solely completed. The above report has discussed regarding the various merits and demerits of the system of point of sale within the organization of Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery. The possible threats or risks with the system of point of sale are also given here with proper countermeasures. There are various options of telecommunication for this organization. The best option i.e. Wide Area Network is also given here

References

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Kobersy, I.S., Barmuta, K.A., Muradova, S.S., Dubrova, L.I. & Shkurkin, D., (2015). The system of the methodological principles of management of enterprise development. Mediterranean Journal of Social Sciences, 6(3 S4), p.25.

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

Missaoui, R., Joumaa, H., Ploix, S. & Bacha, S., (2014). Managing energy smart homes according to energy prices: Analysis of a building energy management system. Energy and Buildings, 71, pp.155-167.

Nanda, V., (2016). Quality management system handbook for product development companies. CRC Press.

Yang, D. & 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.

Zhong, M., Cao, Q., Guo, J. & Zhou, D., (2016). Simultaneous Lever-Arm Compensation and Disturbance Attenuation of POS for a UAV Surveying System. IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement, 65(12), pp.2828-2839.