Point of Sale: Benefits, Drawbacks, and Competitive Advantage

This report discusses the benefits and drawbacks of point of sale systems, how they can provide a competitive advantage, and the risks associated with them. It also covers telecommunication options and the use of centralized databases. The case study of Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery Company is used to illustrate the points made.

Running Head: Point of sale
IT for Business

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Point of sale
Table of Contents
Introduction...........................................................................................................................................2
Benefits and Drawbacks of new POS system.........................................................................................2
Competitive benefit through POS system..............................................................................................2
Benefits of using centralized database..................................................................................................3
POS system facilitating decision making............................................................................................3
POS systems process business activities effectively...........................................................................3
Questions that could be answered....................................................................................................3
Information used for better management of businesses..................................................................4
Telecommunication options..................................................................................................................4
Type of network................................................................................................................................4
Type of media....................................................................................................................................4
Risk associated with POS.......................................................................................................................4
Conclusion.............................................................................................................................................6
References.............................................................................................................................................7

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Point of sale
Introduction
To gain the competitive advantage for any business they should adopt hi-tech
technology. Point of sale is one such technology that helps in smoothing the operations by
making the work easy (Cummins & Cummins, 2018). It helps in analysing the businesses in a
better way. The report is based on the case study of Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery
Company that gains competitive advantage by using point of sale system (Fleyder, Kerner,
Rabinovich, Salinas, Ben-Porat & Frank, 2018). It helps in gaining making decisions by
analysing the sales and transactions effectively. This report covers various security issues
along with the telecommunication media that exist in POS system.
Benefits and Drawbacks of new POS system
Point of sale system has helped businesses to increasing their efficiency but it offers
various advantages and disadvantages that have been discussed below.
Advantage
 Point of sale system enhances the efficiency of an organisation by recording all the
transaction related to sale (Sidlo, Kovacs, Brock, O'keefe, Humpherys, Whiddett &
Kurani, 2017). The traditional method use to make use of manual method which has
been replaced by automatic report generation.
 The result gained through point of sale system is more accurate and also makes the
work easier for employees as it is generally done automatically (Sidlo, Kovacs,
Brock, O'keefe, Humpherys, Whiddett & Kurani, 2017).
 The profit margins and revenues are calculated automatically which has eliminated
manual efforts.
 Point of sale system helps to keep track of all the stocks so that it could be managed
easily
 Deployment of system is easy.
Disadvantages
 With the use of system regularly the maintenance cost also increases.

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Point of sale
 Point of sale system is prone to cyber-attacks also as most of the data is stored online
which increases the chances of data leakage (Sidlo, Kovacs, Brock, O'keefe,
Humpherys, Whiddett & Kurani, 2017).
 It requires an internet connection to make the system assessable to end user.
Competitive benefit through POS system
Point of sale offers various advantages in the business environment. The competitive
advantages help in enhancing the efficiency of a business. The make use of effective
technology which in turn improves the efficiency of an organisation. The make use of IT
activities to get the knowledge about the target market. It helps in reducing the work load
of the organisation so that focus could be made on the profit margin. It helps in maintain
the records easily and on time. It also enhances customer’s experiences as they do not
need to wait longer. The company make use of ERP activities so that they work
effectively. Point of sale system processes activities to support the organisation.
Benefits of using centralized database
In the case study of four seasons’ greenhouse and nursery the use of centralized database has
offered various advantages.
 As there is single area where attacks can be possible, in this manner the chances for
the framework to get hacked diminishes as it is troublesome for the hackers to break
the framework in which all data is put away (Coles-Kemp, Reddington & Williams,
2011).
 While settling on a critical choice, data can be effectively benefited from the
framework. The best component of incorporated framework is the organization can
accessing the data from a single location rather than multiple servers.
 It is fast as compared to distributed database.
 The process is cost effective as it’s requires less assets and give more abilities to users
(Coles-Kemp, Reddington & Williams, 2011).
 Changing the procedure and dealing with the information turns to be easy.
POS system facilitating decision making
Information gained through point of sale system helps in making decisions. The data
analysed through point of sale system helps in making efficient decisions. To attract the

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Point of sale
target market highly data drive approach is used. It also helps the company to know the loop
holes in the system so that plans could be designed accordingly. This also helps in knowing
the competitors in the market so that sales could be managed (Tsuchida & Oishi, 2017). The
POS framework encourages the basic leadership process by giving careful and exact
information to the organization and coordinating different capacities in order to accomplish
the fulfilment level of the clients. The choice of the organization turns out to be more
adjusted with the presentation of this framework.
POS systems process business activities effectively
Point of sale system helps in tracking the information to find out the actual
information. This procedure requires time; in this way it is not recommended to be used in
modern businesses. Likewise, if the employees track the data utilizing the manual technique
it might lead to make wrong choices (Yu, Wang, Liu & Dou, 2018). Consequently, it should
be noticed that under this procedure the representatives need to put full endeavours to
accomplish the data that too not exact. The manual method is not quick as well as accurate.
Questions that could be answered
It resolves all the queries related to sales and transactions in the system. It can also
help in finding the target market and the sale of product. Then analyses are done of
information stored so that accurate decisions could be done (Breithaupt, 2010). In case study
of Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery is used to decide which stock need to be enhanced
and which stock need to be decreased. Point of sale helps in setting priority of services.
Can the information be traced manually
Information could be tracked manually but it requires lot of human efforts as well as
time. Thus it is recommended to use point of sale system.
Information used for better management of businesses
The information stored on point of sale system is important thus it should be secured.
Point of sale system stores information related to all the clients, sales and transaction so that
expenses could be analysed. This helps in managing the business efficiently by analysing the
sale. It helps the company to find the errors in the operations so that they run effectively. It
helps in highlighting those areas in which more focus is required to enhance the profit. Some
recovery strategies are also discovered so that at time of failure some techniques could be
adopted.

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Point of sale
Telecommunication options
To assure that company attains market growth the innovation of telecommunication
media is used. There are many telecommunication media that are available that helps an
organisation to meet the necessities (Trott & Hoecht, 2014). Some of the advanced type of
network and media that are available are discussed below.
Type of network
There are various type of network that are available that could be used in an
organisation. From all the available option LAN is mostly used even in the case study of Four
Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery Company. The use of LAN offers many benefits to an
organisation especially its high speed and cost effective. For small business it is
recommended to use LAN has it is cost effective (Trott & Hoecht, 2014). It connects all the
computers in nearby are and the speed is also high as compared to other telecommunication
network.
Type of media
If the company has single store than wired technology could be used otherwise
wireless technology need to be used. Wired technology is hard to implement but maintenance
is easy. There are fewer chances of attacks as compared to wireless network. The wireless
network has high speed of connection and there are less chances of data breach (Fischer,
Maggi & Rammer, 2012). Wired technology helps the business to attain profit at low costs.
Risk associated with POS
In case of Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery Company there are various risk that
are associated with point of sale system. Some of the risks associated with the system have
been discussed below (Silverbrook, 2017). It is important to resolve all the risk associated in
an organisation so that they could work effectively.
 Security- Point of sale system stores complete information about an organisation.
Thus it is the liability of owners to secure the data so that only authorised users can
access the data. The security of system is important to assure that hackers do not
attack the system and read the sensitive data (Silverbrook, 2017).

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Point of sale
 Privacy- As most of the data is stored among clouds these days. Hence, it is necessary
for a company to assure that sensitive data would not be leaked and only valid user
will be able to access the data (Antonucci, 2017). Hackers are increasing day by day
thus proper techniques need to be undertaken.
 Confidentiality- Most of the payment in an organisation is done by online methods.
Thus it is important for point of sale system to provide appropriate access control so
that only authorised user can access the data (Wolfe, Romanelli, Sanjay & Kelly,
2018).

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Point of sale
Conclusion
It can be concluded from this report that point of sale system is beneficial for
business. The advantages and disadvantages of point of sale system have been discussed. The
case study of Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery Company has been analysed and then it
is stated that POS system helps in gaining competitive advantage. The benefits of using
centralized database have been listed. In this report various telecommunication media and
network that can be used in an organisation has been discussed. Apart from that the risk
associated with point of sale system and their mitigation measures has been discussed.

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References
Antonucci, D. A. (2017). U.S. Patent No. 9,747,614. Washington, DC: U.S. Patent and
Trademark Office.
Breithaupt, H. (2010). The future of medicine: Centralised health and genetic databases
promise to increase quality of health care while lowering costs. But to get there, many
legal and social obstacles will have to be overcome to prevent abuse. EMBO
reports, 2(6), 465-467.
Coles-Kemp, L., Reddington, J., & Williams, P. A. (2011). Looking at clouds from both
sides: The advantages and disadvantages of placing personal narratives in the
cloud. Information security technical report, 16(3-4), 115-122.
Cummins, M. J., & Cummins, I. (2018). U.S. Patent No. 9,881,289. Washington, DC: U.S.
Patent and Trademark Office.
Fischer, M. M., Maggi, R., & Rammer, C. (2012). Telecommunication Media Choice
Behavior in Academia: An Austrian‐Swiss Comparison. Geographical
Analysis, 24(1), 1-15.
Fleyder, U., Kerner, R., Rabinovich, Z., Salinas, R., Ben-Porat, L., & Frank, D. (2018). U.S.
Patent No. 9,912,692. Washington, DC: U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
Sidlo, P., Kovacs, W., Brock, P. J., O'keefe, J., Humpherys, J., Whiddett, A., ... & Kurani, A.
(2017). U.S. Patent No. 9,600,813. Washington, DC: U.S. Patent and Trademark
Office.
Silverbrook, K. (2017). U.S. Patent No. 7,236,271. Washington, DC: U.S. Patent and
Trademark Office.
Trott, P., & Hoecht, A. (2014). Enterprise resource planning and the price of efficiency: the
trade off between business efficiency and the innovative capability of
firms. Technology Analysis & Strategic Management, 16(3), 367-379.
Tsuchida, S., & Oishi, S. (2017). U.S. Patent No. 9,684,895. Washington, DC: U.S. Patent
and Trademark Office.

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Wolfe, J., Romanelli, M., Sanjay, A. K. U. T., Kelly, M., & Kelly, M. J. (2018). U.S. Patent
No. 9,971,996. Washington, DC: U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
Yu, T., Wang, Y., Liu, X., & Dou, S. (2018). U.S. Patent No. 9,928,697. Washington, DC:
U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.