The Essay On The Impact Of POS System On Four Seasons Greenhouse And Nursery.

Advantages of POS System on Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery

Discuss about the International Journal Software Engineering.

The POS System is termed as point-of-sale system. POS System is a system for business purposes that combines software and hardware to allow merchants to keep a track on retail transactions (Bauer, 2014). The POS System is examined and described in terms of a chosen case study. The case study is on Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery where the newly introduced POS System is impacting the Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery. The Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery is a small nursery like many other small businesses in the market. The report focuses on detailed analysis and impact of POS system in the Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery. The report also focuses on the existing requirements of POS System and the requirements necessary for future business purposes in the Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery.

The outline of the report are impact of POS System in business growth, telecommunications options for POS System, risks associated with the POS System and how to protect from these risks.

The POS System is newly introduced in the Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery and is impacting the Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery efficiently however there are some disadvantages which are also discussed further. The implementation requirement for POS System and associated risks are also discussed further. 

The advantages of POS System in the Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery are many which can be seen from the case study. The first one is improved efficiency. The POS System improves the Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery’s confidence in various ways. The system allows the Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery to spend less time on memorizing prices of the product or manually inputting large amount of data as it was done in the traditional cash register in the Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery (Wheelen and Hunger, 2017). The system offers better customer service that rectifies the mistake done by the customer while transactions through traditional cash register. The error rate in the POS System is low and can be rectified easily. The speed of the entire transaction process is fast as compared to the traditional cash register which results in boosting the Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery’s revenue. The second one is stock management (Bhattacharya, 2014). The traditional approaches for stock management are time consuming and laborious. However, POS System enables the Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery to digitally enter the stock and helps them to review the overall stock at a glance reducing their time and labor. The third one is accurate reports. The POS System helps the Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery to maintain accurate reports. This ensures the elimination of any guesswork on the number of orders to do or number of purchased, discarded and sold orders. The fourth one is tracking of employee schedules. The employee schedule is controlled to review and allocate the labor expenses to particular departments and functions so that the staff can submit sales goals to the Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery.

Competitive gains of POS System on Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery

The competitive advantages that POS offer to the Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery for business gain are the following. The first one is the robust functionality that the system provides for inputting, tracking and distributing data to provide efficient and useful information to operate and manage the business development functions. The second one is real-time analysis that the system provides for evaluating the real-time detailed report of sales that allows the Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery to assess what products are sold or lagged in sales across the Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery (Cobanoglu et al., 2015). The third one is accuracy and time management. The accurate and timely reporting of information helps the Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery to have effective business operations by focusing on managing the business rather than focusing on other functions.

The advantages of having centralized database in the Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery are many and they are described in the following discussions. The first one is it improves preservation of data. The information system offer fault tolerance but very rarely. The centralized database includes fault tolerance setup and redundant storage which preserves the data even in the harshest conditions (Coronel and Morris, 2016). The second one is it improves physical security. Centralized database offers storage and proper security for server room that restrict direct physical access to a particular location by any individual or small group of people inside and outside an Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery. The third one is to improve data security. The vast quantities of sensitive customer details need to be protected and thus centralized database offers data security across multiple local storage databases with fewer challenges (Corsini et al., 2016). The fourth one is to that it provides reduced costs. The maintenance of centralized database is less costly than maintenance of distributed database. The centralized database also reduces the overall space requirement for storing and processing data within the Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery. The fifth one is improved reliability and update speed. The centralized database has high quality components and redundancy that makes the database more reliable. Centralized database also provides updating of data at anytime from anywhere in the world that applies on all the data that is in the centralized database.   

The disadvantages of POS Systems in the Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery are described in the following discussions. The first one is reliability of connection. The major necessity of POS System is reliable Internet connection. The maintenance of the system requires Internet connection that is web based and without the connection the Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery cannot access the system (Sathe et al., 2017). The second one is software upgrade are costly. The web based systems provide free upgrades to update the software however POS System has high cost software-based upgrades and when there is a need of software upgrade then the Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery has to pay for new licenses to expand the business. The third one is web-based POS fees are costly. The monthly subscription fee with web-based systems is high therefore monthly expenses of POS Systems need to be considered before buying. The fourth one is less convenient with software-based systems. The POS System is convenient more with web-based system than software-based system. The fifth one is security risks. There are some risks associated with the system as there is a risk of exposing personal details of customers to other people (Janczewski and Caelli, 2016). Although there are some security measures taken by the Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery however it does not provide full guarantee. 

Disadvantages of POS System on Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery

The decision making facilitation through POS System is elaborated in terms of the following evaluation. POS System is helpful in tracking beneficial information quickly and facilitates the business functions effectively. The accurate inventory data maintained and managed by the POS System is helpful in decision making. The accurate inventory counts using the POS System help to evaluate the number of orders to be done and number of orders purchased, discarded and sold in the Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery. This reason helps the business activities to process more effectively and efficiently (Sherif, 2016). The information cannot be tracked manually in terms of time management as the manual tracking of information is time consuming. The manual tracking of transaction for number of orders are not effective as it can have mistake which can lead to errors in future business operations. The questions that could be answered effectively are how much to order with accurate reports. The other question is detailed transactions of any item regarding how many items purchased, discarded and sold which facilitates the decision making (Kita and Grossmanová, 2014). This information could be used in a way that the Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery gets a real-time access of the data and also details regarding which products gain profit and which products lag to better manage the business.

The telecommunication options for the POS System in Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery is addressed in terms of following points. They are types of network and types of media. The type of network option for this POS System is Local Area Network (LAN). This is because the organization is small and it is in one particular location. The LAN provides centralized database server for POS System across the Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery. The type of media to be used by Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery are wireless technologies. The reason is that the wireless technology will help Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery to have mobility and reliability. The POS System can be operated from anywhere at any time with the use of wireless technology (Yang et al., 2017). Sale also increases when customers do not have to wait for long time in queues. Mobile POS or MPOS is the type of wireless technology that can be recommended to be used as it speeds the checkout and return lines efficiently, and it can boost sales in different areas of Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery (Ali et al., 2014). This wireless technology can boost the business operations in Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery.

Decision-making Facilitation through POS System

The risks associated with POS System in Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery are described in the following paragraph in terms of security risks, privacy risks and confidentiality risks.

The security risks are unauthorized access to POS System where fraudsters exploit POS System to steal the sensitive information of customer’s details such as credit card details. This can result in financial loss of customers (Gomzin, 2014). The privacy risks are that the POS System contains the sensitive details of customers and they need privacy from hackers and any other individuals. The privacy risk can be hazardous if not handled as customer first and foremost priority is privacy of their details. This can result in lack of trust on Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery’s POS System (Schneider et al., 2017). The confidentiality risks are that the POS system is vulnerable to cyber attack when hackers try to attack the POS System in Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery to gain access to customer’s details. This can result in disruption of customer’s data.

The protections against the risks discussed above associated with the POS System in Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery are described in terms of security risks, privacy risks and confidentiality risks (Sarkar Mitra and Roy, 2014). The protective measures for these risks are using firewall between business networks of Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery. The next is endpoint security software for complete security of the POS System (Marforio et al., 2014). The other protective measures are double encrypt data where encrypt data and then use SSL and Security Information and Event Management method for POS System.

Conclusion

The above discussions conclude that the POS System in the given organization in the case study are impactful and has huge potential in future. There are some advantages and disadvantages of the POS System in Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery which can be used in an efficient manner for future business purposes. The decision making and recommended telecommunication option are also discussed with an address to some given aspects. This concludes that these are the possible strategies which can be taken into account for effective impact of POS System in Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery. There are some risks however the possible protective measures are also discussed in this report with respect to some points. Therefore, it can be concluded from the overall discussions that the POS System introduction in Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery are a major turning point for them and with effective strategies their business will boost.

• To place the POS System in ventilated area as the system can generate heat while in use and results in wreak havoc.
• To clean and inspect the POS System timely for its effective use as unclean area can damage the system.
• To be used properly by the staff members as the POS System needs proper handling due to its hardware designed in a specific way.
• To have expert assistance for the maintenance of POS System as the experts are knowledgeable to handle the system and preventing any malfunctioning. 

References

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