Benefits Of Implementing Point Of Sales System For Small And Medium-Sized Enterprises Essay.

Advantages of POS System Implementation

The use of information technology is needed by every industry size and type of business. Small businesses can realize the positive effects through adopting technology. However, small businesses often do not have the resources and expertise of large corporations to implement information technology strategies. However, the benefits of technology for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are just as crucial to business operations and strategy.

Consider Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery, located in Colorado. This small nursery was like many other small businesses and garden centers. They used manual registers to track and maintain its inventory as well as determine which products were realizing the most profit. The profits from the nursery were either "negligible" or a loss. They did not have access to useful operational data to effectively manage their business. For example, they did not track or review the margins of individual products. However, they believed that they needed to do something different for their $1M business operation.

Enter a new point-of-sale system (POS) in 2008. The system allowed the owners to track useful business data from the sales transactions immediately at the time of the sale; eliminating the need for tracking sales manually. The system processes and stores data from the sale while updating the inventory as well as compiling a sales history. This eliminates reliance on manual entry of sales transactions and reduction of inventory units for the items sold. POS systems provide much more than a cash register. These systems provide more robust functionality in inputting, tracking, and distributing data to provide useful information to operate and manage the business.

Accurate inventory data maintained by the POS helped with decision making. Decisions on how many units of a product to order were no longer based on speculation about current inventory units. Now, accurate inventory counts eliminate the guesswork on how much to order, helping the business to operate on leaner inventory units. The system's reporting can provide the detail transactions for an inventory item, such as how many were purchased, discarded, and sold.

The implementation of a POS system also confirmed that the owners did not know as much about their business as they thought they did. As they reviewed reports from the new system, they saw that some products were less profitable than they thought. The more detailed cost reporting by item helped them to understand which products contributed the most profit to the operation. Their new perspective of the "real costs" provided the opportunity to shift production to the higher-profit items, thereby gaining more profit. Prior to implementing the POS system, they simply did not have the time to approach this level of decision making.

Knowledge of their detailed product costs helps them to price products more profitably. Price changes can be implemented temporarily (for a promotion) or permanently and still remain within acceptable product margins. The accurate and timely reporting of this information assists them to be more effective managers of their business operations.

The ability of the system to process sales, inventory, and purchasing transactions immediately reduces the need for data entry of paper information. The time savings can be used for managing the business rather than mundane clerical functions.

The new system has expanded Four Seasons' management control over employee schedules to review and allocate labour expenses to specific departments and functions. An additional benefit allows the owners to delegate more responsibility to the staff and establish accountability. Instead of the owners establishing goals, they provide the system's data and ask staff to submit their sales goals for the next reporting period. Ultimately, the information technology system creates a solid infrastructure to process and report the businesses operations for the entire enterprise.

The garden centre is an excellent example of how technology can realize benefits for a business. The ability for organizations to remain competitive and agile is crucial. These systems allow organizations large and small to leverage business data to gain a competitive advantage and operational efficiency.

• What are the advantages and disadvantages of the new POSsystem?
• How will this POS system help the business gain competitiveadvantages?
• What are the advantages of having a centraliseddatabase?
• How could this POS system facilitate decision making? Address the followingpoints:
  • Why do point-of-sale systems process business activities moreeffectively?
  • Can the information be tracked manually in an effective manner? Why or whynot?
  • What types of questions could be answeredeffectively?
  • How could the information be used to better manage thebusiness?

• Types of networks – LAN, WAN orMAN?
• Types of media? --Wired or wireless technologies? Which types of cables should be used for wired technologies? Which types of wirelesstechnologies?

• What type of risks does the POS system bring and how to protect the business against therisks?

Address the following points:

• Security
• Privacy
• Confidentiality

Your report will be assessed on the quality of your research and quality of report. Discussion must be relevant to the case study business. Your report is to be in the style of a business report.

Advantages of POS System Implementation

Implementation of the information technology has been acting as one of the major technological advancement in today’s society. The usage of the information technology has been proven beneficial in the case Small and Medium sized enterprise. This is the main prospect that leads to increase in efficiency of the commencing of the business processing. This report deals with the advantages and disadvantages that are present in the course of implementation of the Point of Sales system. This report also states the advantage that the organization will enjoy on implementing the centralization of the data centre. This report also states the methodology that increases the efficiency of the implementation of the system. Recommendation of the most suitable networking system is also stated in this report. This report also provides the risks that nature present in the digitization of the data.

The major advantages that the organization enjoys on implementing POS system are as follows: -

• Providing offers as per the demand of the clients: POS helps in understanding the offers that the users wants. This helps n implementing the offers that will be well accepted by the users (Sana 2016)
• Lack of downtime: since the data that are stored can be controlled by the remote access, though there might be fail in the data base of the system it will not affect the business organization if POS is implemented

The major disadvantages that are faced by the business organization due to the implementation of the POS system are as follows: -

• The security of the data that are gathered during the performance of the POS system is treated as one of the major disadvantage of this system
• The data that are stored can be accessed by the imposter who can affect the business organization in a negative way (Nagamachi and Lokman 2016)

The main aspect that beneficiates the business management is the processing of the audience of the business. This methodology helps in understanding the demands of the clients that affects the point of sales. In case the business organization does not understand the demand of the clients, the products and services that will be manufactured by the organization will not satisfy the clients of the organization. In case the client of the business organization gets dissatisfied, the clients will not stay loyal to the brand and will be forced to look for substitutes of the business organization (Lin 2013). This will lead to an increase in brand equity of the business organization. This is the reason that the Four seasons green house and the nursery system. In the process of implementation of the information technology in the small and medium scale industry, the main aspect that is to be performed will constitute the processing of the Point of Sales.

The advantages that are enjoyed by the business organization due to centralization of data are as follows: -

• Better access to the data by the higher authority: the data that are stored in the data base can be accessed by the higher authorities of the business organization. This access of the data by the higher authority leads to an increase in the processing of the data management system. This also helps in understanding the fact that the data management of the business that has been collected helps in procuring the decision making (Kühn, Strelow and Gallinat 2016)
• Data Reference setting: the data that are stored in the data base can be treated as a reference which will ensure the fact that the data present in the data base acts as the reference to the functioning of the business management system. This reference setting data helps in increasing the efficiency of the procurement of the task that will be commenced with the help of the procurement of the task with much lesser time. This process will also help in decision making as experience form the past experience can be taken in order to perform the duty that is to be commenced (Nayak, Poriya and Poojary 2013)

The major benefits that are enjoyed buy the business organization or the commencing of the usage of POS for decision making are as follows:-

• With the help of the implementation of the POS system, the main concern that arises is that this terminology helps in understanding the processing of the system and demands of the clients are understood with the help of rigorous effort, after collection of the data of the clients it get easier for the higher authorities to make decisions regarding a particular situation (Mehta and Chugan 2013). After collection of the data the main functioning is to execute the job processing. During the completion of the video that is to be made incurs the fact that the data management can be performed ad this will helps in better coordination of the project management system (Gómez and Ricketts 2013).
• Another benefit that POS provides in decision making is that the data that are collected for understanding the client need. The main aspect to tis terminology is that he data that are gathered during the processing of the same situation helps the worker to unction accordingly to achieve their goals. The decision making gets easier as the reference that is initially present in the project helps the employees to learn from the previous experience. This helps in better transcription of the task with higher efficiency (Zorpas and Lasaridi 2013).

Tracking of data manually is not possible as the amount of data that are gathered in the course of business management includes the fact that the processing of the data management can be performed with the highest efficiency. For proper tracking of the data implementation of the EMR is really important. With the help of the implementation of the EMR, the data that are gathered can be racked and this leads to the fact that the data management and can be performed with highest priority. Usage of EMR and POS system helps in storing the data and decentralizing the data in order to procure the proper business related and this helps in understanding the requirement of the business (Xia and Wong 2014).

Disadvantages of POS System Implementation

The data that are stored on the data base can be used in the processing of the reference setting that will enhance the processing of the tracking of the data that are to be stored ad saved for the procurement of data manifestation. This tracking of the data can only be possible only if the data is stored in digital platform as this methodology provides the proper access to the data.

The questionnaire that can be answered after the processing of the data management of the process are as follows: -

Question 1: What are the effects that has changed the processing of the implementation of the Point of Sales?

Question 2: What are the advantages that the business organization faces due to the implementation of the POS System?

Question 3: what are the disadvantages of implementing the POS in the regular day to day life?

It is seen that after the implementation of the POS system in the terminology of performing the process of business management gets easier. This is due to the fact that the data that are collected are used in future use. This leads to the fact that the processing of the data that are collected helps them to understand the processing of the job. This will help in understanding the flow of the task and the terminology is set for procuring the data that are required for the completion of the task (Caridà and Colurcio 2013). These acts beneficial in managing the business as the data that are to be stored gets digitized. This digitization of the platform helps in setting reference and this is the way that the business management gets affected in a positive way due to the implementation of the POS system and digitization of the platform.

Types of Network

The networking system that must be implemented for the better commencing of the POS system is MAN services. The major reason of selecting this processor for completion of the POS system is due to the fact that the Metropolitan Area Network helps to take into consideration a huge scope of area that will be required for the commencement of the project (Ford, Honeycutt and Joseph 2015).

Types of media (wired or unwired)

The technology that will be used must be wireless in nature. The wireless networking will be chosen due to the fact that the vast area is to be covered with the help of the Metropolitan Area Networking system. Bluetooth, WiMax and the platform of DECT can be used for commencing the task with the help of the wireless mode (Johnston and Marshall 2013). This wireless mode helps in having a wider range of networking system that will endorse a better data collection. This wider range of data collection will provide an accuracy in the data collection as the exposure will be quite high.

The Importance of Understanding Client Demands

Security Risks

The Security risks that are present in the POS system are as follows: -

• Networking and Software weaknesses: the software that are used in the processing of the data collection are not very robust in nature. This lack of robustness incurs the fact that the data processing will be performed by the imposter with unfair means. This will lead to the fact that the data that are gathered will be modulated and corrupted (Gilliam and Zablah 2013)

Mitigation: Implementation of the security software

• Device fault: In this case the device that is used for storage of data gets validated and the data that are stored in the data base gets affected and deletion of data is one of the major aspect in this case.  

Mitigation: Using pass codes can be made to keep the platform secured

• Malware: In this case the data that are present gets blocked and the genuine users cannot use the data that are present in the data base

Mitigation: Installation of firewall

• Skimming: Skimming is a very dangerous process that harms the users as the bank details are stolen with the help of the skimming process, hence proper care must be taken in order to oppose this problem (van't Riet 2013)

Mitigation: Setting strong password

Conclusion

From the above discussion it can be concluded that after implementation of the Point of Sales system and digitization of the platform the platform in which the gathered data will be stored must be robust in nature and the protection of the platform must be very high. The reason of providing high security system is that the data that are stored in the platform can be easily accessed by unauthenticated people in case no proper security measures are taken. This might affect the users of the platform. The data gathering process that will be implemented must be transparent in nature as the data that will be gathered will be playing an important role in the commencement of the project.

References

Caridà, A. and Colurcio, M., 2013. Viral Marketing Communication: just sales or more?.

Ford, J.B., Honeycutt, E.D. and Joseph, M., 2015. New Zealand Students’ Preferences for Careers in Sales: Implications for Marketing Educators. In Proceedings of the 1995 Academy of Marketing Science (AMS) Annual Conference (pp. 312-316). Springer, Cham.

Gilliam, D.A. and Zablah, A.R., 2013. Storytelling during retail sales encounters. Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, 20(5), pp.488-494.

Gómez, M.I. and Ricketts, K.D., 2013. Food value chain transformations in developing countries: Selected hypotheses on nutritional implications. Food Policy, 42, pp.139-150.

Johnston, M.W. and Marshall, G.W., 2013. Sales force management: Leadership, innovation, technology. Routledge.

Kühn, S., Strelow, E. and Gallinat, J., 2016. Multiple “buy buttons” in the brain: Forecasting chocolate sales at point-of-sale based on functional brain activation using fMRI. NeuroImage, 136, pp.122-128.

Lin, H.J., 2013. Reducing lost-sales rate on the stochastic inventory model with defective goods for the mixtures of distributions. Applied Mathematical Modelling, 37(5), pp.3296-3306.

Mehta, N. and Chugan, P., 2013. The impact of visual merchandising on impulse buying behavior of consumer: A case from Central Mall of Ahmedabad India.

Nagamachi, M. and Lokman, A.M., 2016. Innovations of Kansei engineering. CRC Press.

Nayak, A., Poriya, A. and Poojary, D., 2013. Type of NOSQL databases and its comparison with relational databases. International Journal of Applied Information Systems, 5(4), pp.16-19.

Sana, S.S., 2016. Optimal production lot size and reorder point of a two-stage supply chain while random demand is sensitive with sales teams' initiatives. International Journal of Systems Science, 47(2), pp.450-465.

van't Riet, J., 2013. Sales effects of product health information at points of purchase: a systematic review. Public health nutrition, 16(3), pp.418-429.
Xia, M. and Wong, W.K., 2014. A seasonal discrete grey forecasting model for fashion retailing. Knowledge-Based Systems, 57, pp.119-126.

Zorpas, A.A. and Lasaridi, K., 2013. Measuring waste prevention. Waste Management, 33(5), pp.1047-1056.