Point of Sale: Advantages, Disadvantages, and Importance of Centralized Database

This report discusses the advantages and disadvantages of point of sale system, the importance of using centralized database, and the risks associated with it. It also covers the telecommunication media that could be used by businesses. The report concludes with recommendations for businesses to adopt POS system and secure their network.

Point of sale

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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Point of sale is an important technology for businesses as they help in making businesses
faster and attain better success. In this report the advantages and disadvantages has been
discussed along with the importance of using centralised database. The effects of point of sale
system has been analysed and the telecommunication media used for point of sale system has
been discussed.

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Table of Contents
Introduction...........................................................................................................................................1
Point of sale system...............................................................................................................................1
Gaining completive advantage through POS system.............................................................................1
Centralised database system..................................................................................................................2
POS system facilitate decision making..................................................................................................2
Telecommunication media.....................................................................................................................3
Risk associated with PoS.......................................................................................................................3
Conclusion.............................................................................................................................................5
References.............................................................................................................................................6

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Introduction
Point of sale system is a booming technology used in businesses to keep track of all the sales
record and the details about what happens in an organisation. This in turn helps the business to make
profitable decisions by looking to all the records regularly. In this report the advantages of using POS
system has been discussed and how it supports the business to take proper decisions has been
analysed.
Point of sale system
Point of sale system is useful for an organisation as it make the business to analyse the sale
related data and figure out the outcome related to a particular product (Lyons, Heaven and
Littlepage, 2015). The data analysed through POS system helps in making better buying decisions.
Advantages
 It offers ease ability in using the software as it is designed in a user friendly manner.
 The information is managed automatically and has removed the issue of updating it manually.
 It offers variety of ways to keep track of information related to sales operations.
 Once the sales are tracked in a business it can automatically be updated.
 Deployment of point of sale system is easy (Huvio, Grönvall and Främling, 2012).
 It builds strong customer relationship management.
 It saves the overall cost of the business as less number of labours is required to complete the
task.
Disadvantages
 Point of sale system offers some of the drawback to the business.
 It is difficult to set up the system and businesses completely rely on the system for all their
sensitive data.
 The system need to be updated regularly so that no security bug hit the system.
 The web based PoS system requires a proper internet connection; if user does not have the
access to internet they cannot access the system as well (Huvio, Grönvall and Främling,
2012).
 It is time consuming process to fix up the hardware failures.
Gaining completive advantage through POS system
Point of sale system has proved to offer competitive advantage to business by increasing their
sale margins by offering better plans. The data analysed through POS system helps the organisation to
make better decisions by providing flexible facilities to customers (Smith and Holmes, 2016). The

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competitive advantage gained through the system helps in making better strategies to improve the
growth of the business.
Point of sale system offers businesses to attain quick response to customers by resolving their
concerns. Pos technology offers better customer satisfaction. It segregates the business from other
competitors by eliminating all the manual work and human efforts needed to complete the operations.
It generates the report regarding all the sale data that could be used by business to analyse why it is
lacking behind. It has improved the competitive advantage by implanting innovative ideas in the
market (Randle, et. al, 2016). It helps in making better decisions as the operations directly affect the
business growth. It also resolves the issue to data redundancy as point of sale system allow tracking
the data at the same time the transactions has occurred. The information gathered through use of POS
systems can be simply being sorted out and hence choices could be made very easily based on various
variables.
Centralised database system
It can be seen as collection of related database at one location. It is better to use centralized
database as it improves the performance and efficient of data (Lifewire, 2018).
 Data assets are secured as it is kept confidential and only authorised users and access it.
 It also resolves the issue of data redundancy and updating the changes.
 Data sharing is easy as it is not scattered at multiple location.
 It is easy to take backup of the data as it is stored at single location.
 It is easy to manage the data and maintain its integrity as modification needs to be done at
only one place.
 It reduces the overall cost as only one server need to be maintained as all the information is
stored at one place.
 It is more reliable as compared to distribute database as it facilities higher security.
 It is easy to maintain and manage the information as it is not scattered at different location.
 It offers high degree of control to only one individual rather than distributing the ownership.
 It allow accessibility of information from anywhere at any time (Lifewire, 2018).
 Centralized database system is more reliable.
POS system facilitate decision making
The Point of sale system helps in making decision for a business sit closely analyse the
operation of a business. Thus it can be stated that it helps in managing the business activities
effectively by removing the manual work and keeping track of all the sales transaction through
automated system. The reports related to the transactions takes place in a business are generated on
daily basis thus helps an organisation to decide the future plan.

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It is possible to track the information manually also but it requires lot of efforts and there are chances
of getting flaws in the result. The report generated through POS system is accurate thus helps in
making proper decisions (Fleyder, et. al, 2018).
There is variety of questions that could be answered by point of sale system. It helps in
deciding which product sale need to increase and the services that need to be stopped. It also links all
the accounts procedures within an organisation. It also provides answer regarding the trending
products or says about the major choices that are made by consumers.
Information could be used in a better way to making appropriate decisions regarding all the
operations. The information gathered helps in finding out of the disadvantage of business by removing
all the inefficiencies (SolutionDots, 2014). It helps in making accurate decisions as per the demand
in the market.
Telecommunication media
Selection a best telecommunication media is important as business rely completely for their
security on business. For any firm it is vital to select the media transmission alternative according to
their requirement (Good, et. al, 2018) . Some of the advanced telecommunication networks that
could be used are LAN, WAN or MAN.
LAN gives an organisation to interact with all at adjacent system in an organisation at high speed. It
also helps to connect max 1000 system at a single time and the speed of this network is very easy.
There is an extensive variety of choices available for a firm to connect their system. Every one of the
frameworks can be associated with both wired and wireless media (Reeder, 2010). The
determination of the media has been done on three bases:
• First is the way that wired associations are simpler to keep up.
• The speed of connection in case of wired media is quick.
• There is a less probability of information getting leaked through the wired association.
Using wired media is less subsequent as it increases the overall cost and also provides a secure
connection. It can only use if the system is close to each other otherwise it is difficult to implement
the connection.
Risk associated with PoS
There are various benefits offered by point of sale system but it is associated with various
risks. Point of sale system offers risk in terms of security, privacy and confidentiality of data packets.
Privacy- It is important to maintain all the collected data confidential (Kim, Lim and Oh, 2016).
Thus a proper management should be done regarding who can read, write or modify the data and

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guarantees that all the sensitive information is processed fairly. Thus the data should be kept in an
encrypted form so that even if the third party users access the data they do not access the actual data.
Security of information is very vital part for keeping the information safe in business organization.
Business relies on the files preserved online (Berezina,et. al, 2016). It involves protecting the data
and keeping the information confidential, available and integrated by properly encrypting the data and
ensuring that users are authenticated.
Confidentiality is the major risk in point of sale system. As there is no proper access right assigned to
end users which increases the chances of causing serious damage or loss of data to unauthorized user.

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Conclusion
Thus it can be concluded from this report that point of sale system has changed the working
of business by making it automated. It has removed the extra human efforts that were required to
record all the operation in a business. Point of sale system has transferred all the operations of a
business to be completed automatic and regularly .this has helped business to make better decisions
by looking to all the business requirements. In this report the importance of centralized database has
also been discussed. This report covers the challenges that are faced by the business due to use of
Point of sale system. It adds risk to the business as it is difficult to maintain the privacy, security and
confidentiality of information. This report covers the telecommunication media that could be used by
business.

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Recommendation
It can be recommended that point of sale system should be adopted by every business so that it
eliminates the manual work by making it automatic. It is important to secure the network by properly
encrypting the data and also provide proper access control should be provided so that security,
integrity and confidentiality is maintained.

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References
Alexander, C.R. and Schantz, J.M., Hartford Fire Insurance Co (2017). Graphical user
interface for tracking data access and data changes in a centralized database. U.S. Patent
Application 14/829,155.
Berezina, K., Semrad, K.J., Stepchenkova, S. and Cobanoglu, C. (2016). The managerial
flash sales dash: Is there advantage or disadvantage at the finish line?. International Journal
of Hospitality Management, 54, pp.12-24.
Fleyder, U., Kerner, R., Rabinovich, Z., Salinas, R., Ben-Porat, L. and Frank, D., EMC IP
Holding Co LLC (2018). Point of sale system protection against information theft attacks.
U.S. Patent 9,912,692.
Good, T., Kearney, S.P., Giordano, P.A., Van Horn, E., Pierce, R., Colavito, S., Wilz, D.,
Cunningham IV, C.J., Miraglia, M.V. and Xian, T., Hand Held Products Inc (2018). Point-of-
sale (POS) code sensing apparatus. U.S. Patent 9,898,635.
Huvio, E., Grönvall, J. and Främling, K. (2012). Tracking and tracing parcels using a
distributed computing approach. In Proceedings of the 14th Annual conference for Nordic
researchers in logistics (NOFOMA'2002), Trondheim, Norway(pp. 29-43).
Kim, J.S., Lim, S.S. and Oh, J.W., Pantech Co Ltd, (2016). Method for displaying
transmission status of MMS (multimedia messaging service) message and telecommunication
terminal using the method. U.S. Patent 9,357,363.
Lifewire (2018), Kinds of Area Networks[ONLINE], Available at
https://www.lifewire.com/lans-wans-and-other-area-networks-817376, [Accessed on 11
May’18]

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Lyons, R.A., Lo, S.V., Heaven, M. and Littlepage, B.N (2015). Injury surveillance in
children--usefulness of a centralised database of accident and emergency attendances. Injury
Prevention, 1(3), pp.173-176.
Randle, W. and Orkis, R., Randle William M and Orkis Randall E, (2016). Secure multi
function network for point of sale transactions. U.S. Patent Application 11/298,121.
Reeder, K.R., Lucent Technologies Inc, (2010). Point of sale method and system. U.S. Patent
6,014,636.
Smith, M. and Holmes, D. (2016). System and method for point of sale product software
enhancement. U.S. Patent Application 14/849,935.
SolutionDots (2014) , Top 25 Advantages of Point of Sale System [Online] Avaialble
at :https://solutiondots.com/blog/point-of-sale-system.html, [Accessed on 12 May’18]