IT for Business: Evaluating POS System for Four Seasons Greenhouse

This report examines the case study of Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery, a small business that transitioned from manual inventory management to a Point of Sale (POS) system. The report details the advantages and disadvantages of the POS system, highlighting improvements in transaction speed, inventory control, and financial accuracy. It explores how a POS system can provide competitive advantages and facilitate better decision-making through a centralized database. The report also provides recommendations for telecommunication options, specifically favoring Wireless technologies, and addresses potential risks associated with POS systems, offering corresponding remedies. In conclusion, the report underscores the benefits of implementing a POS system for small businesses, like Four Seasons Greenhouse, to streamline operations and improve overall efficiency. This report is contributed by a student to be published on the website Desklib, a platform which provides all the necessary AI based study tools for students.

Running head: IT FOR BUSINESS
IT For Business
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author’s Note:

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Executive Summary
The major objective of the following report is to gain knowledge about the Four Seasons
Greenhouse and Nursery case study. This organization was having trouble in tracking and
managing their inventories. They opted for POS system and this report helps to understand
about the major merits and demerits of point of sale system in the organization. Proper
recommendations are also provided in the report.

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Table of Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................3
Discussion..................................................................................................................................3
1. Advantages and Disadvantages of the new POS system...................................................3
2. POS system helping business to gain competitive advantages..........................................5
3. Advantages of having a centralised database.....................................................................5
4. Facilitation of decision making by POS system................................................................6
5. Recommendations of telecommunication options for POS system...................................7
6. Probable risks in POS system and their remedies..............................................................7
Conclusion..................................................................................................................................8
References..................................................................................................................................9
Bibliography.............................................................................................................................11
Appendices...............................................................................................................................12
Appendix A..........................................................................................................................12
Appendix B..........................................................................................................................12

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Introduction
POS or simply point of sale is the typical time or place, where any significant
transaction is solely completed. The other name for this point of sale is POP or simply point
of purchase (Cui et al., 2016). The trader or the vendor calculates the real amount, which is to
be paid by any client or customer and even indicates that particular amount to prepare the
invoice. Once this making of invoice is completed, the client proceeds for paying the amount.
The trader or the vendor utilizes various machines such as scanners of barcode, cash registers
or any weighing scale for the successful calculation of amount (Refer to Appendix A).
Several payment options like touch screens, software, hardware and payment terminals are
utilized by the customer. The customer relationship management, inventory management,
warehousing or financials are the functionalities of point of sale. The point of sale system is
extremely popular for any organization irrespective of its size.
The following report discusses about the popular case study of a small nursery,
namely, Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery. This organization tracked and controlled
their inventories by manual management (Refer to Appendix B). Due to this manual
management, they suffered major losses within the business. Hence, they took the decision of
implementing the system of point of sale. This report explains about the merits and demerits
of this new point of sale system and how this organization would be able to utilize this
system within their business (Laudon & Laudon, 2016). Moreover, significant
recommendations are also given in the report.

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Discussion
1. Advantages and Disadvantages of the new POS system
The system of point of sale comprises of several benefits or advantages. The
organization of Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery would be solely enjoying several
advantages from the point of sale. The most important advantages of point of sale system are
given below:
i) Pace and Efficiency: the system of point of sale or POS is utilized for the
improvement of transactional efficiency and the speed of the transactions (Lee et al., 2014).
Furthermore, the effectiveness of any transaction is improvised with the help of the system of
point of sale.
ii) Managing the Inventories: Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery organization is
having major problem in controlling their inventories (Chavali, Yang & Nehorai, 2014). This
particular problem can be easily solved if they will implement the system of point of sale
within the business.
iii) Accurate Financial Transactions: There is always a high chance of coming
erroneous data in the financial transactions. With the POS system, the chance of this problem
is almost zero.
Apart from these advantages, there are several disadvantages of point of sale system.
These disadvantages are not at all feasible for the organization. The disadvantages or
demerits of point of sale system are given below:
i) Lack of Cost Effectiveness: Although this system of point of sale is extremely
advantageous, the lack of cost effectiveness of this system makes it unpopular for many
organizations (Zhong et al., 2016). The implementation expense of this particular system is

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very high and the organization of Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery would be facing
major crisis in finances.
ii) Daily Maintenance: This system of POS needs daily maintenance. Due to this
daily maintenance, the regular business operations or financial transactions can be hampered
and the organization may suffer huge losses.
2. POS system helping business to gain competitive advantages
The system of POS always helps any business or organization for acquiring
competitive benefits or advantages within the business. The major advantage of this system is
that it helps in the simplification of the total transaction system to a smaller and simple
version (Lee, Lee & Won, 2014). The recognition of all the details of any particular business
operation is done with the help of the system of point of sale. Now, since the entire
transaction process is simplified, the personnel of the organization do not have to work much
and their work load is minimized to several steps. During the earlier business transactions, the
management and the tracking of the inventory register was done manually. Nevertheless,
when the system of point of sale would be implemented within the business, this tracking and
management would be done systematically (Yang & Hwang, 2015). Furthermore, this system
would be helping to select the correct products for the organizations that would be bringing
significant success in the business. The total revenue of the business would also be raised and
this organization of Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery would complete their business
processes efficiently.
3. Advantages of having a centralised database
The centralized database is the specific type of database that can be managed or stored
in any place. There are two types of centralized databases. One is the simpler database system
and the second one is the centralized computer. Any centralized database is solely used for

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the perfect access of information within all organizations (Nanda, 2016). The user, who is
utilizing a centralized database, does this by computer network. The centralized databases are
the best options for medium and smaller sized companies, since the data of these companies
are of limited or restricted amount. The various important advantages of any centralized
database are given below:
i) Improvising Data Preservation: The preservation of data is solely improvised by
centralized database (Kobersy et al., 2015). The fault tolerance feature of this database allows
to preserve or store important and confidential information.
ii) Improving the Physical Security: The confidential data is secured by centralized
database and the physical access is limited to any specific location.
iii) Inexpensive: In spite of having several advantages, the centralized database is not
at all expensive (Lee, Lee & Won, 2014). Since Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery is a
small nursery, it will not be a problem for them to utilize centralized database in their
business.
iv) Gives Data Security: The security of the data is provided by the centralized
database.
4. Facilitation of decision making by POS system
The system of point of sale helps to facilitate the procedure for decision-making. The
Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery organization can simply and easily manage their
stocks and inventories (Missaoui et al., 2014). The data accuracy is always checked by the
system of point of sale. In the earlier days, this particular company of Four Seasons
Greenhouse and Nursery ordered the products by means of assumptions of the requirements
and also preserves the overall rack of everything manually. Nevertheless, when the system of

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point of sale would be implemented within the business, this tracking and management would
be done systematically (Yang & Hwang, 2015). The entire services of the business would be
extremely speedy and effective and they would be able to take several tough decisions by this
system of point of sale. The most significant questions like which of the products must be
bought or which products must be sold or in which of the processes could be easily executed
by the system of point of sale.
5. Recommendations of telecommunication options for POS system
There are three specific options for telecommunication adaptation for the point of sale
system within the organization of Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery. They are the Local
Area Network or LAN, Metropolitan Area Network or MAN and Wide Area Network or
WAN (Nanda, 2016). LAN is not feasible for this organization as it provides network is small
area. MAN is also not feasible as it gives network to maximum of few buildings. The best
recommended solution for their telecommunication problem would be WAN as it provides
network in large area and easy data access.
The best solution would be wireless technologies for this particular organization. The
main advantage of these wireless technologies is that there is no complexity of wire (Cui et
al., 2016). Moreover, it is cost effective and speedy. The best example of wireless technology
is Wireless Fidelity or Wi-Fi.
6. Probable risks in POS system and their remedies
The three major characteristics of risks are given below:
i) Security: The hackers can easily hack down the system and the important
information would be lost. The remedy for this risk is an updated antivirus software.

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ii) Privacy: The virus or malicious codes are the risks for privacy. Passwords is the
best remedy for this risk (Lee, Lee & Won, 2014).
iii) Confidentiality: The ex employees of the organization should not breach the
confidentiality of the company’s data. The best remedy for this risk is firewalls.
Conclusion
Therefore, from the above discussion, it can be concluded that, Four Seasons
Greenhouse and Nursery is a smaller nursery that is located in Colorado, United States.
Several small and medium businesses and centres for garden are attached under this
particular organization. Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery have always used such
registers for their organization, which are manually managed or controlled. These registers
are used for the sole purpose of management and tracking of the inventories. Nevertheless, it
has been observed that, this organization was suffering from excess problem due to this
manual management of inventories. Furthermore, Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery was
suffering from loss and at that point of time, they decided to acquire the specific and
systematic system of point of sale. POS system or simply the system of point of sale is any
particular time or place, where any significant transaction is solely completed. The above
report has discussed regarding the various merits and demerits of the system of point of sale
within the organization of Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery. The possible threats or
risks with the system of point of sale are also given here with proper countermeasures. There
are various options of telecommunication for this organization. The best option i.e. Wide
Area Network is also given here.

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References
Chavali, P., Yang, P. & Nehorai, A., (2014). A distributed algorithm of appliance scheduling
for home energy management system. IEEE Transactions on Smart Grid, 5(1),
pp.282-290.
Cui, B., Jiang, J., Huang, Q., Xu, Y., Gui, Y. & Zhang, W., (2016). POS: A high-level system
to simplify real-time stream application development on storm. Data Science and
Engineering, 1(1), pp.41-50.
Kobersy, I.S., Barmuta, K.A., Muradova, S.S., Dubrova, L.I. & Shkurkin, D., (2015). The
system of the methodological principles of management of enterprise
development. Mediterranean Journal of Social Sciences, 6(3 S4), p.25.
Laudon, K.C. & Laudon, J.P., (2016). Management information system. Pearson Education
India.
Lee, H., Ahn, H., Choi, S. & Choi, W., (2014). The SAMS: Smartphone addiction
management system & verification. Journal of medical systems, 38(1), p.1.
Lee, H.J., Lee, Y. & Won, D., (2014). Protection Profile for PoS (Point of Sale) System.
In Mobile, Ubiquitous, and Intelligent Computing (pp. 495-500). Springer, Berlin,
Heidelberg.
Missaoui, R., Joumaa, H., Ploix, S. & Bacha, S., (2014). Managing energy smart homes
according to energy prices: Analysis of a building energy management
system. Energy and Buildings, 71, pp.155-167.
Nanda, V., (2016). Quality management system handbook for product development
companies. CRC Press.

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Yang, D. & Hwang, I., (2015), May. Security enhancement methods for mobile POS system.
In Mobile Software Engineering and Systems (MOBILESoft), 2015 2nd ACM
International Conference on (pp. 152-153). IEEE.
Zhong, M., Cao, Q., Guo, J. & Zhou, D., (2016). Simultaneous Lever-Arm Compensation
and Disturbance Attenuation of POS for a UAV Surveying System. IEEE
Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement, 65(12), pp.2828-2839.

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Bibliography
Natek, S. & Zwilling, M., (2014). Student data mining solution–knowledge management
system related to higher education institutions. Expert systems with
applications, 41(14), pp.6400-6407.
Olivares, D.E., Lara, J.D., Cañizares, C.A. & Kazerani, M., (2015). Stochastic-predictive
energy management system for isolated microgrids. IEEE Transactions on Smart
Grid, 6(6), pp.2681-2693.

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Appendices
Appendix A
POS System
Point at which a sale is made, the ownership (and usually the possession) is
transferred from the seller to the buyer, and indirect taxes (such as VAT) become payable is
known as point of sale. Commonly, a retail outlet.
Appendix B
Case Study
Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery, is a nursery located in Colorado. This small
nursery was like many other small businesses and garden centres. They used manual registers
to track and maintain its inventory as well as determine which products were realizing the
most profit. The profits from the nursery were either "negligible" or a loss. They did not have
access to useful operational data to effectively manage their business. For example, they did
not track or review the margins of individual products. However, they believed that they
needed to do something different for their $1M business operation. Enter a new point-of-sale
system (POS) in 2008. The system allowed the owners to track useful business data from the
sales transactions immediately at the time of the sale; eliminating the need for tracking sales
manually. The system processes and stores data from the sale while updating the inventory as
well as compiling a sales history. This eliminates reliance on manual entry of sales
transactions and reduction of inventory units for the items sold. POS systems provide much
more than a cash register.