IT For Business: POS System

This report discusses the implementation of POS system for Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery, its advantages and disadvantages, and recommendations for telecommunication options. It also covers the probable risks in POS system and their remedies.

Running head: IT FOR BUSINESS
IT For Business: POS System
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author’s Note:

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Abstract
The aim of the report is learning about this case of a nursery, called Four Seasons
Greenhouse and Nursery. This nursery has decided to deploy POS system within their
business. POS system helps in transactions. The respective vendor or the trader is responsible
for calculating the original amount that is to be paid by the customer. Next, the trader
indicates that an invoice is to be prepared for the specific amount. The entire process is much
easy with the involvement of point of sale system. The report has perfectly described the
benefits and demerit of this POS ystem. Moreover, few recommendations are also provided
for the telecommunication implementation.

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Table of Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................3
Discussion..................................................................................................................................3
1. Advantages and Disadvantages of New POS System........................................................3
2. POS System in Business for Gaining Competitive Advantages........................................4
3. Advantages of Having Centralized Database.....................................................................5
4. Facilitation of Decision Making by POS System..............................................................6
5. Recommendation for Telecommunication Options for POS Systems...............................6
6. Probable Risks in POS System and the Remedies.............................................................7
Conclusion..................................................................................................................................7
References..................................................................................................................................9
Bibliography.............................................................................................................................10
Appendix..................................................................................................................................11

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Introduction
The point of sale system or POS system can be defined as the specific place or time,
in which any type of transaction could take place or could be completed. This is again called
as the POP system or point of purchase system (Cui et al. 2016). When the invoice is made,
the respective customer eventually pays the amount and the vendor or the trader uses several
significant machines like barcode scanners, weighing scales as well as cash registers to
successfully calculate the amount. The inventory management and customer relationship
management are the major functions of this system (Lee, Lee and Won 2014). This report
will be providing a description regarding a nursery. They are tracking and controlling the
inventories manually, which was bringing losses in the business (See Appendix). Thus, they
decided to implement POS system. Various facts as well as recommendations would also be
demonstrated within this report.
Discussion
1. Advantages and Disadvantages of New POS System
This specific system of the POS majorly consists of various advantages as well as
disadvantages (Jones 2011). The nursery, namely Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery is
expected to enjoy the various benefits from this point of sale system (Nanda 2016). The
numerous vital and noteworthy benefits of this specific POS system are listed here:
i) High Speed as well as Efficiency: The first and the foremost advantage of the point
of sale system is that it helps in improvising the transactional efficiencies and even the
overall speed of those transactions. Moreover, the total effectiveness of all the transactions is
eventually improved by implementing the accounting information system of POS.

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ii) Management of the Inventories: The next benefit that this nursery would be
getting is that they could easily manage the inventories and the stock replenishment would be
easier for them (Yang and Hwang 2015).
iii) Accuracy in the Transactions: The third important advantage is that the system of
POS does not provide erroneous data for any transaction.
In spite of having these benefits; there some of the major demerits that are present in
this system of point of sale. The major demerits of this POS system are listed below:
i) Quite Expensive: The first and the foremost demerit of the point of sale system is
that it is extremely expensive and hence could not be afforded by everyone (Dahlstrom,
Walker and Dziuban 2013). The entire cost of implementation is extremely high and hence it
is often avoided by the customers.
ii) Requires Periodical Maintenance: The other vital demerit of this specific POS
system would be that this requires periodical maintenance. The business operations are often
hampered with this system and hence losses are possible.
2. POS System in Business for Gaining Competitive Advantages
Point of sale system is responsible for helping all businesses or organizations to
acquire the various competitive advantages in those businesses. The most significant benefit
of the system of point of sale is that it helps in simplifying the complete system of transaction
to a much smaller as well as simpler version (Dahlstrom and Bichsel 2014). The proper
recognition of each and every detail regarding all the specified business operation is easily
completed by undertaking the help of POS system. Now, as the complete process of
transaction is extremely simple, all the staffs of this particular company do not need to work
more and hence the work load could be reduced to a greater level. Throughout the past

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business related transactions, the proper management and tracking of this complete inventory
register will be completed by manual interventions. Moreover, whenever this specific system
of the point of sale is implemented in the business, the complete tracking or management of
their inventory register is done systematically (Eason 2014). The POS system also helps in
selecting the appropriate products and services for their business, which would bring proper
success within their organization. The organizational income will also be raised to a level and
thus this nursery would be able to execute all the business related functionalities efficiently.
3. Advantages of Having Centralized Database
A centralized database can be defined as the database, which could be easily and
promptly managed as well as stored within any particular location. Two distinct kinds of the
centralized database are also present here. The first kind is the simplified database system and
the next kind is centralized computer database. When a centralized database is being utilized
by a user, he gets proper information access without many complexities (Marchewka 2014).
This user can use this centralized database by means of computer networks. This centralized
database is considered as the most suitable alternative for any small or medium organization
as the confidential data in these organizations are restricted. The numerous merits of the
centralized database are listed below:
i) Improvising the Data Preservation: The data preservation could be easily
improved by the help of a centralized database. Hence, the sole feature of fault tolerance
within the database enables the preservation or storage of this confidential data.
ii) Cost Effective: The respective centralized databases are quite cheaper and hence
can be promptly paid for by each and every user.
iii) Gives Data Security: The security of the confidential data is the next noteworthy
merit of all centralized databases (Nanda 2016).

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4. Facilitation of Decision Making by POS System
This system of POS is majorly responsible to facilitate the procedure of decision
making. This nursery can hence easily as well as promptly organize all of their inventories or
stocks. Moreover, the data appropriateness is also checked or validated by this particular
system. In the previous days, this nursery used to order their products by the assumptions of
the needs and next they used to preserve their total products’ rack by manual adjustments
(Lee, Lee and Won 2014). Therefore, they should select the system of POS for the proper
tracking or monitoring of their products automatically. All the services of this business are
quite speed and efficient and hence is easier for taking the various important decisions. Thus,
this particular nursery must deploy the system of POS in the business operations.
5. Recommendation for Telecommunication Options for POS Systems
Three imperative and noteworthy options are eventually present for the major purpose
to adapt the telecommunications for their major POS system within the nursery of the
provided case study. The three important alternatives would be LAN, the next alternative
would be MAN and finally the third alternative would be WAN. Amongst these three
alternatives, the most suitable option is wide area network. The local area network will not be
feasible for them since the network area is extremely smaller. The metropolitan area of
network will not be feasible for this specific organization since it provides the network to the
maximum extent of some of the buildings. The wide area network would provide network in
the larger area and the data access would be easier.
The most imperative and appropriate solution for the nursery of the provided case
study would be a wireless technology. The major benefit of this wireless technology is that it
does not comprise of any kind of complexities. The other important benefits of this
technology are that it is cost effective and provides high speed. The best example of these
wireless technologies is the wireless fidelity or Wi-Fi connection.

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6. Probable Risks in POS System and the Remedies
Three discrete features are present for all the possible threats within any particular
system of POS. These features are listed below:
i) Privacy: The various malicious codes or the computer viruses are the major risks
related to privacy (Eason 2014). The passwords are considered as the best remedies for this
particular type of risk.
ii) Confidentiality: The previous working employees within a company must not
breach the respective confidentiality of the data of a company. The most suitable remedy of
the risk is implementation of firewalls.
iii) Security: The attackers could easily attack the particular system and hence there is
a high chance that the data is lost (Marchewka 2014). The best solution for the specific risk is
by upgrading their implemented antivirus software.
Conclusion
Hence, a proper conclusion is drawn that the nursery of the provided case study is
present within Colorado, United States. The diverse smaller or medium sized garden centres
or business are ultimately attached with the company. There are various registers in the
organization that could be easily controlled or managed manually. All of these registers are
then utilized to manage or track their respective inventories. Moreover, it was even observed
that the company was subsequently suffering from several issues for this type of manual
inventory management. This nursery within the provided case study has undertaken the
specific decision for using their POS system in the business. This above provided report has
perfectly explained the numerous benefits as well as demerits of POS for this specific
nursery. The various threats of this system are well explained in this report and the best

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option for telecommunication is also selected here. The selected option of Wide Area
Network is provided here with relevant details.

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References
Cui, B., Jiang, J., Huang, Q., Xu, Y., Gui, Y. and Zhang, W., 2016. POS: A high-level system
to simplify real-time stream application development on storm. Data Science and
Engineering, 1(1), pp.41-50.
Dahlstrom, E., and Bichsel, J. 2014. ECAR Study of Undergraduate Students and Information
Technology, 2014. Educause.
Dahlstrom, E., Walker, J. D., and Dziuban, C. 2013. ECAR study of undergraduate students
and information technology(p. 2013). 2013.
Eason, K. D. 2014. Information technology and organisational change. CRC Press.
Lee, H.J., Lee, Y. and Won, D., 2014. Protection Profile for PoS (Point of Sale) System.
In Mobile, Ubiquitous, and Intelligent Computing (pp. 495-500). Springer, Berlin,
Heidelberg.
Marchewka, J. T. 2014. Information technology project management. John Wiley & Sons.
Nanda, V., 2016. Quality management system handbook for product development companies.
CRC Press.
Yang, D. and 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.
Jones, R. 2011, May. Garden Center 2.0. Today's Garden Center, 8, 14-16.

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Bibliography
Bloom, N., Garicano, L., Sadun, R., and Van Reenen, J. 2014. The distinct effects of
information technology and communication technology on firm organization. Management
Science, 60(12), 2859-2885.
Holtshouse, D. K. 2013. Information technology for knowledge management. Springer
Science & Business Media.
Lloyd, I. 2017. Information technology law. Oxford University Press.
Schwalbe, K. 2015. Information technology project management. Cengage Learning.

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Appendix
Case Study