Four Seasons Greenhouse POS System Analysis - Holmes Institute HC1041

This report analyzes the implementation of a Point of Sale (POS) system at Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery Company, highlighting its role in enhancing business operations and driving growth. The report explores the advantages and disadvantages of the POS system, emphasizing its impact on automating processes, reducing data redundancy, and improving overall efficiency. It discusses the benefits of using a centralized database for data integration, security, and accessibility, and examines how the POS system facilitates better decision-making through automated report generation and improved customer relationship management. Furthermore, the report recommends suitable telecommunication options, including LAN, WAN, and MAN, and addresses the associated security, privacy, and confidentiality risks, along with mitigation strategies. The analysis concludes that the POS system has significantly transformed the way Four Seasons Greenhouse operates, contributing to increased efficiency and informed decision-making, while also emphasizing the importance of addressing potential security threats.

IT for Business

P a g e | 1
Executive summary
This report covers the analysis of case study of Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery
Company that make use of point of sale system and how it has proven to be efficient in
company’s growth. The report covers the importance of point of sale system and how it has
helped in making better decisions. Along with the use of centralised database has been
discussed. Taking into consideration the risk caused by the POS system can been discussed
along with their count measures.

P a g e | 2
Table of Contents
Introduction...........................................................................................................................................2
Answer to question 1.............................................................................................................................2
Answer to question 2.............................................................................................................................3
POS Gains competitive advantage of point of sale........................................................................3
Answer to question 3.............................................................................................................................3
Benefits of using centralised database..........................................................................................3
Answer to question 4.............................................................................................................................4
Decision making with help of POS.................................................................................................4
Answer to question 5.............................................................................................................................4
Telecommunication for point of sale system.................................................................................4
Answer to question 6.............................................................................................................................5
Recommendation..................................................................................................................................6
Conclusion.............................................................................................................................................7
References.............................................................................................................................................8

P a g e | 3
Introduction
Point of sale is a combination of software and hardware that is used for making the
business operations work effectively. It takes care of all the transactions that happen in a
business. It has replaced the old traditional methods that required lot of human efforts. Point
of sale systems are the emerging trend in the marketplace. It has somewhere increased the
revenue of the company by improving the way operations are performed. Point of sale system
has turned out to be very beneficial for businesss (Fleyder,et. al, 2018). In this report various
benefits and drawbacks associated with it has been analysed. The report covers analysis of
point of sale system from different aspects. Centralised database has also added flexibility in
the business as it has eliminated the issue of updating the data at different locations. Point of
sale system offers ease in making better decision regarding the betterment of an organisation.
Addition to it the report covers the telecommunication media and type of network that could
be used by businesses to communicate between different parties. There are various risk
associated with the point of sale system. Thus it is important to protect the system by using
various mitigation techniques.
Answer to question 1
Point of sale system is a technology that has been widely used among businesses these
days. It not only helps in analysing the sale and return policies of products rather than it
makes the business automatic by eliminating all the manual efforts.
There are various advantages and disadvantages that businesses face. Some of them are listed
below:
Advantage

P a g e | 4
 It has transformed the way of working in a business by making it automatic and
removing human efforts and chances of flaws.
 It also removes the problem of data redundancy which in turn enhances the overall
efficiency.
 Point of sale makes deployment of system easy.
 It makes the working of a business easy by generating the automated report which in
turn reduces human efforts.
 It also helps in monitoring the system regularly so that a proper analysis is figured out
about the sale.
 It build better customer relationship management as it keep tracks of all the all
transactions that are proceeded in a business (Wiesmann, et. al, 2010).
 It provides detailed description of all the transactions thus helps in building trust
among customers.
 It also reduces maintenance and labour cost as all most all the work is done
automatically.
Disadvantages
 Point of sale has some drawback as the business is completely depended on this, thus
it is important to update the system regularly (Saeed, Hasnain and Rao, 2017).
 If the system is not updated it led to high security issues.
 The web based point of sale system is dependent on internet connection which makes
customers to inflexible if there is not internet connection.
 It requires an IT expert to resolve the hardware issues (Saeed, Hasnain and Rao,
2017).

P a g e | 5
Answer to question 2
POS Gains competitive advantage of point of sale
Point of sale system has number of benefits associated with it helps in increasing the
efficiency. These system offer extensive advantages related to utilization of data to make
better decisions. This framework is useful as they provide exact information regarding the
sales of the firm (Andratschke, et. al, 2016).It also helps in stock management and also helps
in controlling money related information which is essential for having higher benefits and
henceforth helps the organization in turning into a market pioneer.
Answer to question 3
Benefits of using centralised database
There are various advantages gained by users with the utilization of centralised
database. This is profoundly helpful for the bigger firms but on the other hand is beneficial
for small companies also. Some of the benefits are as follows:
 High data integration and low data repetition can be guaranteed by keeping
information at one place.
 It offers higher information security as place of attack is one.
 Easier access to information at times of making decisions as the information can
be collected from anywhere in the world. It is made accessible to the end user at
the time it is produced (Andratschke, et. al, 2016).
 Database administration and information transportability becomes flexible.
 Cost effective because lesser assets will be required for securing information.
 Updating and rolling out improvements in information is less demanding.

P a g e | 6
Answer to question 4
Decision making with help of POS
It is very time consuming process to track the transaction and sale process of a firm manually.
Point of sale system keeps track of all the information which in turn increases the efficiency
of the business and also helps in making decisions (Lyons, et. al, 2015). The reports are
generated are automatic that gives a detail view of all the sale transactions so that best
decision could be taken. It also helps the business to work for betterment of business.
Point of sale is a technology that has reduced the paper work which requires lot of
effort by making it automatic. This technology has helped in making better customer relations
by saving the time and making the work automatic (Cummins and Cummins,2018). Decisions
could be made in an efficient way as point of sale system helps in visualizing the business in
a presided way. It also helps in providing result that is accurate.
Answer to question 5
Telecommunication for point of sale system
The Point of sale system exchanges the information between different parties by using
a proper telecommunication media (Huvio, Grönvall and Främling, 2012). To transmit the
message or signal a secure link need to be set up. Some of the telecommunication networks
that could be adopted for the system are:
 Local area network- It helps in connected all the devices that are in same area in
same organisation. The speed at which data packets are transferred is 10Mbps. It can
connect max 1000 users at a time. Local area network are generally managed and
controlled by an individual authority (Huvio, Grönvall and Främling, 2012). For point
of sale speed it is better to use LAN as it has speed of transmission is fast.

P a g e | 7
 Wide Area Network- It is used to connect all the LAN’s over a network. The
transferring speed of WAN is directly related to the implementation cost of routers
which is dependent on the distance between routers (Katis, et. al, 2017). The wide
area network is managed and controlled by a distributed ownership.
 Metropolitan Area Network- The speed at which MAN works is comparatively very
fast and it is used to establish a connection between all the nearby LAN’S. They are
generally controlled and managed by government department (Katis, et. al, 2017).
The telecommunication media can be either wired or wireless. By adopting wired
technology connection need to be established between devices by using cables and in case of
wireless technology they connect to each other by radio waves. The wireless technology offer
the benefits of mobility as users can move their system from one place to other which is not
possible in case of wired technology (Collard, et. al, 2016). Wireless technology offer
challenges to the system in terms of security and speed of data. Apart from that it is difficult
to install the wired network and also increases the chances of attacks. The transmission cost
of is very high in case of wireless system but they are easy to maintenance and do not require
additional cost.
Answer to question 6
Risk associated with point of sale system is in terms of security, privacy and
confidentiality of data. It is necessary to secure the information as it stores all the sensitive
information like credit/debit card details as well as personal information. It also runs on every
kind of operating system like Windows, Linux as well as UNIX which also increases the
chances of errors (Kim, Lim and Oh, 2016). The network suffers from risk like it provides
access to third party user which leads to violation of confidentiality of data packet. It is
necessary to allow user to make proper decisions so that no threats hit the system.

P a g e | 8
Security- the data packet should be kept in such a way that it available to end users anytime
by ensuring only authenticated user to access the data (Suresh, 2015).The security of system
is violated due to increase in criminal activities.
Privacy- The sensitive data should be made available to only valid users thus proper aces
rights should be given regarding who can read, write or modify the data. Privacy is a key
factor for a business to build trust among users (Smith and Holmes, 2016).
Confidentiality- Businesses store their sensitive data on the system which should not be lost
to maintain the trust among customers (Suresh, 2015). Hackers have found various ways to
enter the system and access or modify the data which lead to violation of control.

P a g e | 9
Recommendation
It can be recommended that to make sure that biasness work efficiently and achieve
better growth updated technology should be used. In the world of It technology it is
recommended for business to use point of sale system as it helps in analysing their operations
in a better way. It gives a complete view regarding what is going in the business. Thus point
of sale system makes the business tasks automatic and error free. Thus all the businesses
should adopt POS system so that they make better decisions. Apart from that various threats
are faced by point of sale system which needs to be resolved. That could be made possible by
protecting the information by using encryption techniques so that actual data could not be
leaked.

P a g e | 10
Conclusion
It can be concluded that point of sale system has transferred the way in which
businesses work. It has helped the firm to gain better efficiency and also helps in enhancing
growth. In this report the advantages and disadvantages of using point of sale system has
been discussed. The point of sale system has helped in making better decisions as it analyses
all the sales operation of a business in an effective manner. The use of centralized database
has been discussed and the reason it is better from distributed database has been listed. POS
is mostly used by businesses to make better decision that would turn out to be profitable for
the company. In this report various telecommunication network and media that are available
has been discussed.

P a g e | 11
References
Andratschke, N., Alheid, H., Allgäuer, M., Becker, G., Blanck, O., Boda-Hegemann, J.,
Brunner, T., Combs, S., Duma, M., Gerum, S. and Guckenberger, M. (2016). OC-0445:
Patterns of care and outcome analysis of SBRT for liver metastases-a DEGRO database
initiative. Radiotherapy and Oncology, 119, p.S208.
Collard, N., Davidson, C., Beardsall, A., Godley, H., Hulmes, C. and Head, C., Wm Morrison
Supermarkets PLC (2016). Point of sale system and method. U.S. Patent Application
14/580,479.
Cummins, M.J. and Cummins, I., Pomo Search Ltd (2018). System and method for point of
sale transaction logging. U.S. Patent 9,881,289.
Fleyder, U., Kerner, R., Rabinovich, Z., Salinas, R., Ben-Porat, L. and Frank, D., EMC IP
Holding Co LLC (2018). Point of sale system protection against information theft attacks.
U.S. Patent 9,912,692.
Huvio, E., Grönvall, J. and Främling, K. (2012). Tracking and tracing parcels using a
distributed computing approach. In Proceedings of the 14th Annual conference for Nordic
researchers in logistics (NOFOMA'2002), Trondheim, Norway(pp. 29-43).
Katis, T.E., Panttaja, J.J., Panttaja, M.G. and Ranney, M.J., Voxer Ip Llc,
(2017). Telecommunication and multimedia management method and apparatus. U.S. Patent
9,621,491.
Kim, J.S., Lim, S.S. and Oh, J.W., Pantech Co Ltd, (2016). Method for displaying
transmission status of MMS (multimedia messaging service) message and telecommunication
terminal using the method. U.S. Patent 9,357,363.

P a g e | 12
Lyons, R.A., Lo, S.V., Heaven, M. and Littlepage, B.N (2015). Injury surveillance in
children--usefulness of a centralised database of accident and emergency attendances. Injury
Prevention, 1(3), pp.173-176.
Saeed, F., Hasnain, Z. and Rao, A., Innowi Inc (2017). Smart Integrated Point of Sale
System. U.S. Patent Application 14/850,943.
Smith, M. and Holmes, D. (2016). System and method for point of sale product software
enhancement. U.S. Patent Application 14/849,935.
Suresh, V. (2015). Data science with social media to support customer satisfaction in
telecommunication industry. Srm management digest, 4(2).
Wiesmann, M., Pedone, F., Schiper, A., Kemme, B. and Alonso, G. (2010). Understanding
replication in databases and distributed systems. In Distributed Computing Systems, 2000.
Proceedings. 20th International Conference on (pp. 464-474). IEEE.
B2C, (2018) , The Importance of Information Technology In Business Today,viewed 24
January,<https://www.business2community.com/tech-gadgets/importance-information-
technology-business-today-01393380>.
SolutionDots, (2014) , Top 25 Advantages of Point of Sale System ,viewed 24 January, <
https://solutiondots.com/blog/point-of-sale-system.html>.

P a g e | 13