Point of Sale System: Advantages, Disadvantages, and Risks

This report covers compete analyses of point of sale can be defined as a service that manages the sales part of the business by taking care of customers’ orders and returns. This report covers the telecommunication media that could be used, risk associated with point of sale and its measure. It also covers the advantages and disadvantages of using point of sale systems, how they help businesses gain competitive advantages, and how they can help in making decisions. Additionally, the report discusses the benefits of using centralised databases and the risks associated with point of sale systems.

IT for Business

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Executive Summary
This report covers compete analyses of point of sale can be defined as a service that
manages the sales part of the business by taking care of customers’ orders and returns. This report
covers the telecommunication media that could be used, risk associated with point of sale and its
measure.

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Table of Contents
Introduction...........................................................................................................................................2
Answer 1- Advantages and disadvantages of using POS system...........................................................2
Answer 2- POS system help the business gain competitive advantages................................................2
Answer3 – Centralised data base...........................................................................................................3
Answer 4- Point of sale system helps in making decisions....................................................................3
Tracking information through manual method..................................................................................3
Question that could be resolved.........................................................................................................3
Answer 5- Telecommunication for point of sale system........................................................................3
Answer to question no 6- Risk associated with POS.............................................................................4
Conclusion.............................................................................................................................................5
References.............................................................................................................................................6

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Introduction
Point of sale system enhances the flexibility and transparency in a business. This
report covers up the topics related to point of sale system, its advantages and disadvantages.
Point of sale helps in making decision making sand the risk linked with these system has been
analysed.
Answer 1- Advantages and disadvantages of using POS system
The point of sale system offers various advantages and disadvantages by making
business operation easy by eliminating manual work.
Advantage- The implementation of point of sale system is easy and if used properly it could
enhance the efficiency of business. The issue of data redundancy is also resolved as the
operations are updated automatically. The efforts as well as time are saved by using Point of
sale system. There are less chances of attack and errors as the operations are done
automatically (Arachchi & Medis, 2017). It helps in tracking the sales and transitions of the
business instantly. The paper work is also eliminated as reports are generated automatically.
It helps in analysing the activities deeply to know which product is running low so that
decisions could be made accordingly. It also helps in enhancing the customer relation as it
provides flexibility to user. The trust is built among customers as detailed reports are
generated. The maintenance and labour cost is very low as most of the operations are
generated automatic. They provide alert regarding the hot deals that exist in the system
Disadvantage- If a business is using point of sale system they are completely dependent for
all the decisions and sale on it. Thus it is important to keep the system updated. If the point of
sale system is not updated regularly then there are chances that system will have higher
attacks (Kuroda, Sato & Chihara, 2015). The online based point of sale system requires a
working internet connection to stay available. It is difficult to resolve the hardware related
issue in point of sale system.
Answer 2- POS system help the business gain competitive advantages
Point of sale can also help in improving the sale of the company by offering greater
benefits and capturing more audience. It is true that Pos system helps the business to gain
competitive advantage as it helps in knowing the reason of profit revenue in eh business. So

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that plans are designed in such a way that increase the sale (Katis, Panttaja, Panttaja &
Ranney, 2017). Point of sale system also keeps knowledge about the competitors in the
market so that they could stand out in the market. The analyses gained through point of sale
system helps in innovating new strategies so that they attain greater growth.
Point of sale system has changed the way of working as it permits online payment
options that add up ease of flexibility (Dewaele & Goldenberg, 2015). It has changed the
entire working of an organisation. It allows two way communications so that all queries are
cleared and build up strong customer relation management. It helps the business to expand by
lowering the upfront cost.
Answer3 – Centralised data base
Centralized database store all the information at single server rather than storing at
multiple servers. It helps in enhancing the performance as accessing the data is easy. The data
can be retrieved at faster rate as it is stored ta single location (Ahmed & Vasudevan, 2017).
There are various advantages due to which it is used instead of using distributed database.
 It avoids the chances of data redundancy by offering higher security.
 Data sharing becomes easy as information is not scattered at different locations.
 Recovery is also easy as data backups are made of single server. At time of system
failure data is recovered from the backups and assure that it do not cause any loss if
information (Ahmed & Vasudevan, 2017).
 Integrity of information is easy and centralised database allow data to be updated
easily and there are less chances of errors.
 The maintenance cost is low in centralised database as only one server need to be
maintained.
 The space required to store the information is less as compared to distributed
database.
 It is flexible as well as reliable.
Answer 4- Point of sale system helps in making decisions
Point of sale makes it possible to firstly analyse the operations of business thoroughly
so that decisions could be made easily. It makes use of data driven approach for making

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correct decisions. Point of sale generates report regularly that to automatic as in old
traditional manual reports were generated and there are chances of errors (Saxena & Pushkar,
2017). Point of sale helps in providing a transparent picture about all the operations.
Tracking information through manual method
Information can be tracked through manual methods but there are chances of errors.
The inaccurate information might lead to chances of wrong decision which may decrease the
productivity of a business. It requires lot of human efforts and time that is not exact (Smith,
Brennan, Meyer, Sahin, Nadler,John & Keefe, 2016). Thus it is recommended to use point
of sale system rather than old traditional method.
Question that could be resolved
Point of sale system helps the business to resolve queries regarding all products and
services. All the queries related to shortage of stock, sales, transactions, deals as well as
money related issues can be resolved. It also helps in making decisions regarding the
operations (Bogdanovica, Szatkowski, McNeill, Spanopoulos & Britton, 2015).
Answer 5- Telecommunication for point of sale system
Point of sale system requires a telecommunication media and network to
communicate between devices. Telecommunication media is used to exchange the
information and data signals (Edwards, Ajmal, Healey & Hoek, 2016). Some of the
telecommunication channels that are available are:
Metropolitan Area Network- The speed of MAN is very high and is generally used in
multi-national organisations. They are generally controlled and managed via government
author ties.
Wide area network- It is used to connected system that is not so close enough. The speed at
which data is transferred depends upon the distance of the routers (Kim, Nonnemaker,
Loomis, Shafer, Shaikh, Hill & Farrelly, 2014). The Wide area network is controlled by
distributed ownership rather than single individual.
Local area network- it is mostly used for small businesses as it connects all the systems
within an organisation situated in small area. The speed at which data is transferred is
10mbps and it connects around 1000 users at a time (Kim, Nonnemaker, Loomis, Shafer,
Shaikh, Hill & Farrelly, 2014). LAN is generally controlled by an individual.

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The telecommunication technology could be either wireless or wired. The wired
telecommunication makes use of cable and wires to communicate. The wireless technology
offer benefits in terms of mobility speed as well as flexibility. On the other hand wireless
technology has high chances of attacks as hackers try to enter the system via side doors.
Wired technology is difficult to install and also increases the cost of implementation.
Point of sale system has issue associated with it in terms of privacy, security and
confidentiality of data. There are chances that invalid user gets the right to access the
information and this might leak the sensitive data. It is important to secure the information by
providing proper access control, using encryption techniques to secure the data or using
antiviruses to secure the system (Al-Shawabkeh, 2017). The admin need to assign the right
regarding who can read, write and modify the data. It is necessary to maintain the security of
information as well as network.
Answer 6- Risk associated with POS
The risk associated with point of sale system is privacy, confidentiality and security.
The data is sometimes not secure on these systems as they give the right to unauthorised user
to access the sensitive data. Privacy of data is necessary to keep sure that data remains
confidential for this proper access should be assigned about who can read, write and modify
the information (Al-Shawabkeh, 2017). Thus it is important to maintain the security of data
by using proper encryption techniques and software’s to secure the data from thefts.

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Conclusion
It can be concluded from this report that point of sale system helps in improving the
efficiency of business. This report covers the advantage and disadvantage of using point of
sale system. It helps in gaining competitive advantage and also helps in making decisions.
This report also covers the benefits of using centralised database. Point of sale system help
business to answer many questions related to sales and transactions. Some of the risk
associated related to point of sale system has been discussed along with their measures.

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Recommendation
It is recommended that every business should make use of point of sale system as it
adds up transparency in making decisions. The use of centralised database adds up extra
benefits while retrieving eh data. There are various security issues thus to eliminate such
issues proper precautions need to be taken.

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References
Ahmed, S. T., & Vasudevan, B. (2017). U.S. Patent No. 9,703,646. Washington, DC: U.S.
Patent and Trademark Office.
Al-Shawabkeh, K. M. (2017). Impact of Knowledge Sharing on Competitive Priorities: The
Moderating Role of Social Media (An Applied Study in Jordanian
Telecommunication Companies). International Business Research, 10(10), 113.
Arachchi, L. A. C. P. L., & Medis, A. (2017). The Relationship between Social Media
Marketing Activities and Consumer Purchase Intention: A Study with Special
Reference to Mobile Telecommunication Industry in Sri Lanka, 780-99.
Bogdanovica, I., Szatkowski, L., McNeill, A., Spanopoulos, D., & Britton, J. (2015).
Exposure to point‐of‐sale displays and changes in susceptibility to smoking: findings
from a cohort study of school students. Addiction, 110(4), 693-702.
Dewaele, P. D., & Goldenberg, D. (2015). U.S. Patent No. 9,112,730. Washington, DC: U.S.
Patent and Trademark Office.
Edwards, R., Ajmal, A., Healey, B., & Hoek, J. (2016). Impact of removing point-of-sale
tobacco displays: data from a New Zealand youth survey. Tobacco control,
tobaccocontrol-2015.
Katis, T. E., Panttaja, J. J., Panttaja, M. G., & Ranney, M. J. (2017). U.S. Patent No.
9,621,491. Washington, DC: U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
Kim, A. E., Nonnemaker, J. M., Loomis, B. R., Shafer, P. R., Shaikh, A., Hill, E., ... &
Farrelly, M. C. (2014). Influence of point-of-sale tobacco displays and graphic health
warning signs on adults: evidence from a virtual store experimental study. American
journal of public health, 104(5), 888-895.
Kuroda, T., Sato, K., & Chihara, K. (2015). s-tel: an avatar based sign language
telecommunication system. International Journal of Virtual Reality (IJVR), 3(4), 20-
26.

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Saxena, V. K., & Pushkar, S. (2017). Fuzzy-Based Privacy Preserving Approach in
Centralized Database Environment. In Advances in Computational Intelligence (pp.
299-307). Springer, Singapore.
Smith, A. T., Brennan, E., Meyer, K., Sahin, A., Nadler, M., John, O. W. I., & Keefe, J. D.
(2016). U.S. Patent No. 9,519,441. Washington, DC: U.S. Patent and Trademark
Office.