Point of Sale System: Advantages, Disadvantages, Risks and Telecommunication Options

IT for Business 1
Point of Sale System
May 9, 2018

IT for Business 2
Abstract
This business report is based on the case study of a Four Season Greenhouse and Nursery which
is located in Colorado. In this nursery, the process of inventory management is done at the
manual basis. Manual registers are used for tracking and maintaining the inventory of whole
nursery. Moreover, the measurement of the profit for each product is also done manually. This is
really a time consuming job and does not provide accurate information about the manufacturing
of products, business revenue and the profit and loss that is generated from the sales of goods at
the business level. To overcome this problem, Four Season Greenhouse and Nursery started to
use a new system i.e. Point of Sale (POS). This system is so much helpful for this organization
and it has replaced the manual system for managing the inventory with automatic system. The
purpose of making this report is to emphasize on the advantages, disadvantages, effectiveness
and risks factors of this POS system in detail.

IT for Business 3
Introduction
Point of Sale system is considered as a central component or a hub of a business. It is actually a
place where payment is paid by the customers for purchasing goods and services. POS is a sale
system which is combination of the software and hardware and it allows business owners to
make transactions and other activities properly. Four Season nursery has implemented this
system to manage its inventory appropriately and for accurate measure of the profit and loss of
business. Now in further sections of this report, I will focus on some essential factors of point of
sale system (Harbortouchpossoftware.com, 2018).
Advantages and Disadvantages of the new POS System
According to the case study of Four Season Greenhouse and Nursery, some key advantages are
found of point-of-sale system and those advantages are listed as below:
 The first key advantage of new POS system is that it allowed business owners to trail the
useful business data from the sale transactions immediately at the time of sale. This data
can be used further to perform different activities related to business inventory. This
feature of POS has also resolved the problem of manual process of tracking sales.
 Another advantage of POS system is for Four Season Nursery is that while updating
inventory the process of data processing and storing is done by the POS system. Due to
this, now company managers no need to count on the manual entry of the sales
transactions and decrement of the inventory units for the sold items (Compass.fhcrc.org,
2018).

IT for Business 4
 Next advantage of POS is that it works more than like a cash register and provides most
strong functionality in inputting, tracking and distributing data to obtain the useful
information that will be helpful to operate and manage business properly.
Besides advantages of POS system, there are some disadvantage of it that have not yet
encountered by the business of Four Season Greenhouse and Nursery. One of the key
disadvantages of POS system is that it requires periodic updates. After installing the POS system,
it is essential for the managers of Four Season nursery to schedule updates for this system and
these updates must download and install by the POS vendor. Furthermore, an ongoing
maintenance fee is also required to cover regular updates of the POS system. Another
disadvantage of the Point-of-Sale system is its security risks. In case of irregular updates of the
system, the chances of data breaches will be increased considerably. Therefore, due to vulnerable
security breaches, sensitive inventory information can be violated by the cyber-criminals. So, it
is mandatory for Four Season nursery to be aware about these security issues while executing
POS system (Chia, 2018).
How POS will help company to gain the competitive advantage?
For a business organization, it is essential to be competitive and agile and to achieve this goal,
POS system helps business enterprises. In case of Four Season garden center, Point-of-Sale
system helps this organization for enhancing its competitive advantage among its competitors.
The implementation of POS system cleared many misunderstandings of owners of garden center
about their business. After reviewing the reports of POS system, they got to know that some
items are not less profitable for business than they thought. Moreover, they also got to know that
which products are more profitable for their business. Besides this, with the help of POS system,
garden center obtains detailed information about the market value of their products and now