POS System Assessment: Benefits, Risks, and Recommendations

This report provides a comprehensive assessment of Point of Sale (POS) systems, focusing on their impact on small and medium enterprises (SMEs). It begins with an executive summary highlighting the benefits of POS systems in increasing productivity and efficiency, followed by an introduction that emphasizes the revolutionary impact of computers and networking on various industries, including direct retailing. The report explores the advantages and limitations of POS systems, such as reduced human effort, improved strategy development, increased productivity, and secure record-keeping, while also addressing limitations like software updates and cyber threats. It further analyzes the role of POS systems in gaining a competitive advantage, focusing on resource management and decision-making. The advantages of centralized databases are discussed, along with how POS systems facilitate better decision-making through product success analysis and inventory management. The report also covers telecommunication aspects relevant to POS systems, including LAN, WAN, MAN, wired, and wireless technologies. A risk assessment of POS systems is presented, addressing potential threats to confidentiality, security, and privacy, and suggesting mitigation strategies. The report concludes by summarizing the key findings and offering recommendations for businesses considering POS system implementation.

Running head: POS SYSTEM ASSESSMENT
POS SYSTEM ASSESSMENT
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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Executive Summary:
Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are equipping POS system to increase their
productivity and it is proving to be great efficiency. The system has been assessed in the
report and evaluated to present its strength and weakness. The report has taken the case study
of the Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery which changed from being in loss to a
successful level after implementing the system. Appropriate recommendations have been
made relevant to the queries that are associated with the system. And in conclusion the report
offers the threats and recommendations for the same.

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Table of Contents
Introduction:................................................................................................................................3
Advantages and limitations of POS:...........................................................................................3
POS role in competitive advantage:............................................................................................4
The advantage of the centralized database:................................................................................4
POS felicitates in decision making:............................................................................................5
Telecommunication:...................................................................................................................6
Risk assessment of POS system:.................................................................................................7
Conclusion:.................................................................................................................................8

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Introduction:
Computers and networking are the most significant innovation of the 20th century.
Two of them together have revolutionized the world. Education to warfare and industries all
of the industries are the evidence of the change. Small stores and direct retailing services have
also been benefited one of the sources for that benefit is Point of sales (POS) system (Rahman
and Ripon 2014). This report is an attempt to assess POS system and various factors involved
in it with the help of the case of Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery. Four Seasons has
been greatly benefitted since the application of the system. The usability of the system, along
with the management and implementation of the system in the business are also discussed in
the report. The report has been concluded with an evaluation of the potential threats to the
system.
Advantages and limitations of POS:
The key advantages and limitations of the POS system have been discussed as
follows:
Advantages:
 The system reduces the human effort and expenses associated with management of the
business (Meeker 2015). The success ratio of the offered product can be analyzed, and hence strategy for
sustainability can be developed. The system also offers an increase in the productivity as saves a lot of time and effort
(Zhu, Mukhopadhyay and Kurata 2012). Another advantage of equipping the system is that offers a hassle-free safekeeping of
the information and financial records.

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Limitations:
 Regular update required for the software can be troublesome. As the system is connected to the central network, hence cyber threats are a
concerning issue (Stadler 2015). It is not cost-efficient.
POS role in competitive advantage:
One of the most significant reasons for adopting POS system is to get a competitive
advantage over the competitors. The main resources of a firm are stakeholders, information,
inventory and financial (De Judicibus et. al 2013). The organization that has adopted POS
system will be able to work more rapidly and with increased efficiency that will be an asset
for customer attraction. Employee management and decision making is another benefit
offered by the system. In case of Four seasons goal defining for the employees also got and
boosted which increased their productivity and hence competitive advantage. The information
resource also receives a boost on the implementation of the system. The easy handling of
financial records and inventory is also advantageous for the organization.
The advantage of the centralized database:
The advantages of the centralized database can offer the following advantages:
 Increase in data integrity while reducing data redundancy.
 The centralised database offers more preservative method for data preservation.
 Easier information administration and data transmission is an additional benefit
offered by the centralized database.
 It is cost effective and ease of use than other databases.
 End-user gets a notification when there is a data tampering attempt.

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POS felicitates in decision making:
POS system allows the owners to measure the success ratio of a product and
depending on the success ratio the latter can decide on the size of inventory they want to
store. The success ratio also influences the approach of the owners towards the care and
presentation of the product omitting the guesswork. In case of the Four Seasons, the owners
decided to shift their profit towards the higher-profitable products. The system also enables
the owners to derive more understanding of their business and hence further enhancing the
decision making capabilities.
POS systems offer multiple advantages to a business. The most significant of them is
that it increases the productivity of the resources (Kumar, Luthra and Haleem 2014). The
human resources get a boost in their productivity level as they are felicitated through different
programs for an effective output. The informational resources are safe, organized and easily
administrable increasing their productivity. The financial resources also offer higher
efficiency due to the security offered by the cash register, real-time records for the orders and
an organized approach to the maintaining the ledger.
Manual tracking of the information is possible in the system in an effective manner.
The reason for stating the above statement is because bar-code scanners are used in the POS
system to scan and store the information of an order. Real-time tracking of the information is
also possible after implementing the considered system.
The questions revolving around the decisions that need to be made about the size of
inventory and the profitability of the products (Stahlberg and Maila 2012). The goal-setting
for the employees are also met after the implementation of the system. It also helps in the
decisions regarding the expansion and importance of the information. The pricing of the
products can also be answered after the implementation of the considered system.

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Implementation of the new system enables the organizations to get a detailed review
of their business and hence to enable them to ignore guesswork. As discussed earlier the
system organizes the data as per their relevance, and hence they can be used to define the size
of inventory and focus on the profitable products.
Telecommunication:
The most commonly known network types are LAN, WAN, and MAN. They are
differentiated depending on the geographical range.
LAN: LAN or Local Area Network is the method of interconnecting some systems within a
campus or a building. The connection is achieved using co-axial cables. It mostly offers high
speed; at some location, the speed can go up to 1GBPS (O’connor 2012).
WAN: Wide area network, as the name suggests is the interconnecting of multiple systems in
a wide domain. It can extend throughout the world or can be limited to a state or country. The
most popular example of WAN is the internet. It can use cables or wireless mode for the
transmission (Mclnerney and Nascimento 2012).
MAN: Metropolitan area network refers to the network that has a domain range between LAN
and WAN. The considered network can spread to multiple buildings or campuses within a
town or city.
Wired: Wired technologies refer to the method which equips the cables as the physical
medium. In this mode, the information is carried as electrical signals through the cables from
one node to the other (Swiatek et. al 2012). Copper cables, fiber optics cables or twisted
cables can be equipped with the medium. Copper or twisted cables are the most commonly
used cables because of their natural availability and cost-effectiveness. However, fiber optics
cable offers high reliability, security, and speed when compared to other cables.

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Wireless: Wireless technology refers to the medium where the transfer is data is done through
wireless mode. The considered technology uses electromagnetic or infrared waves for the
transmission. Considered technology equips sensors (sender and receiver) to transmit or
retrieve the data (Thomas et. al 2013). The type of wireless technology varies accordingly
with the range of light spectrum it uses for the transmission purpose. Infrared communication,
microwave communication, shortwaves communication, electromagnetic communication and
others are the types.
The system is equipped in SMEs, and hence depending on the range of the business, it
should use wired telecommunication mode. The reason for stating the above-made argument
is that the wired mode of communication is safer than the wireless mode. As the wired
communication call only be tampered physically while the wireless mode can be tampered
both physically and remotely.
Risk assessment of POS system:
POS is assessing the small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in various ways however
it has also made the latter vulnerable to various threats that include confidentiality, security
and privacy threats. The system connects and centralizes the information of the SME to a
single point over severs making it vulnerable to cyber-attacks (Hurst 2012). A single breach
will result in exposing all the informational resource (finance statements, employee details,
future strategies, projects/plans and others) of the firm. Successful attacks can leak the
strategy and plans of the firm. It will also threaten the privacy of the employees as the firm’s
store data of the employees in their systems for future use which will be open to the attackers
(Hruska 2012). Though equipping some tools and techniques the threat can be neutralized and
they are discussed as follows (Graylin 2013):

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 Monitoring the system can help determine if there are attempts for tampering the
system and hence necessary measures can be done.
 Keeping the data encrypted will help to keep the data safe and difficult to hack in.
 Regular testing of the system will keep the system software updated keeping it secure
while making it more usable.
 Equipping the security measurements like POS security can help keep the security and
privacy threats away.
Conclusion:
POS systems have proved to be the new mode of business development, and hence the
report has attempted to develop an insight of the same. The report discusses the various
advantages and limitations that are proposed to business after the implementation of the POS
system. The influence possessed on the business management is also discussed.
Recommendations are made for the telecommunication options that can be used in the
organization. Finally, the security threats and their remedies have been stated to conclude the
report.

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