Report: Analysis of Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery POS System

This report examines the implementation of a Point of Sale (POS) system at Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery, a small Colorado-based business. The analysis highlights the advantages of the system, including automated sales data tracking, inventory updates, and improved decision-making through data-driven insights. The report also identifies the disadvantages, such as the need for reliable internet connectivity and potential security risks associated with customer data. Furthermore, it explores how the POS system provided a competitive advantage by enabling real-time insights, enhanced employee productivity, and centralized operations. The report concludes with recommendations for maximizing the benefits of the POS system, such as using wireless LAN, staff training, and implementing robust security measures. Finally, the report emphasizes the importance of data analysis for inventory management, customer offers, and overall business strategy.

Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery POS
Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................1
Advantages of POS system........................................................................................................1
Disadvantages of POS system....................................................................................................2
Competitive Advantage with POS.............................................................................................2
Risks...........................................................................................................................................4
Recommendations......................................................................................................................5
References..................................................................................................................................6
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Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery POS
Introduction
Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery is a small nursery based out of Colorado. The
company used manual processes for tracking and maintaining inventory and identifying most
profit generating products. This did not include review f individual product margins. Profits
obtained from the nursery were actually negligible. The company lacked access to full data
that could assist them in managing operations in better ways. In 2008, the company installed
a new POS system, which got the company several benefits through provision of operational
data. This report explores the case of the company with the objectives to understand how
information technologies can help organizations create competitive advantage or assist
decision-making. It would also explain the foundation of the technology and the risks it
brings related to security, privacy, and confidentiality.
Advantages of POS system
 It allowed automatic tracking of the sales data driven transactions and thus, keeping
the recorded of the same manually was not required
 When making sales, the system would also update the inventory such that the
availability status of the items sold remains updates
 The system would maintain a record of sales data and could be used for generating
historical data reports to give the company decision makers an insight into the trends
in sales
 Inputting, tracking, and distributing data with the organizational staff had become
easy and helped employees to manager day to day business with efficiencies
 Procurement decisions for the inventory could be taken using the data with more
accuracy
 System reports provided detailed insights into inventory including products
purchased, products sold or discarded.
 It helped company identify less profitable products as well as most profitable products
and as a result the company could take a decision to shift its production from low
profits to high profits products
 Implementing price changes for a short time or long time was easier
 As the data was recorded at the time of sales using which inventory was automatically
updated, the need to enter any data manually was mostly eliminated
 The system also allowed managers to review schedules of their employees
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Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery POS
 Expenses needed for individual departments to function could be allocated using POS
system
 Managers could use the system for delegating their work to their teams or staff which
established both responsibility and accountability for managers as well as employees
as everything was system recorded and thus, had transparency
Disadvantages of POS system
 It is a web based system and thus needs high internet connectivity which can be a cost
to the company and would have problems if the internet connectivity is not sound
 If the system faces any issues with the hardware, the repairs can be both time
consuming and costly for the organization
 Customers using credit cards are at the risk of exposing their personal data which can
result into the compromise of their privacy and security as web based system is prone
to security threats like hacking
 The system would need to be continuously updated which can add complications as
well as cost to the organization
Competitive Advantage with POS
Competitive advantage is the ability of an organization to defend itself against competition
through unique business model and selling preposition such that barriers are created for the
factors that can take away the competitive edge of the organization. A competitive advantage
puts an organization into a better position in the market as compared to its rivals (Sirolikar &
Haridas, 2016).
As per dynamic capability theory, dynamic capabilities in an organization can bring
competitive advantage to it. The capabilities of the firm can be directly related to the
company’s processes, position in the market and the growth path. Competitive advantage can
be achieved in a retail organization in various ways such as through improved R&D, product
innovation, and resource divestment (Ivanov & Mayorova, 2015).
A major competitive advantage can be achieved if the managers of the organization are able
to learn faster than their competition. IT infrastructure that supports decision making forms a
base for building competitive advantage. With the POS system installed, the managers of the
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Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery POS
company would receive real time data and thus, can take decisions in the real time and thus,
can have an edge over competition (Consuegra, 2006).
With the installation of new POS system, the company would be able to gain a competitive
advantage in following ways:
 With the real tie insights available, the company managers would be able to take
decisions faster than competition as they would be able to identify sales trends and
understand customers in the real time
 A dynamic learning environment would be created for employees to keep taking
insights from the POS data study and keep learning continually
 With responsibility and accountability of employees enhanced, the company would
have more productive staff (Sampath, 2016).
POS wold make a centralized system for recording transactions, managing employee
schedules, and managing inventory operations. There are several advantages of using such a
centralized system such as:
 All departments of the company are connected with the central database and thus, all
have the same level of insight on the inventory and sales
 With centralized system, delegation across the organization becomes easy to handle as
roes and responsibilities of all are clear and the work allocation would be unbiased
 With centralized operations, all employees would remain updated and thus, there
would not be any duplication of work
 Centralization of systems would need standardization of processes which would
enhance the productivity of employees
 With centralized system, the company wide data can be stored and accessed from the
single place which makes data management easy and effective
Use of a centralized POS system has many benefits including enhanced capability for the
decision making in managers which is facilitated in following ways:
 As all sales data, inventory records, and employee data are recorded through POS, the
managers can understand what is happening in the company and can take decisions on
when to place orders for stocking items, which products to sell more to get more
profitability, and so on.
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Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery POS
 The reports generated by the system on the basis of historical sales data would help
managers understand how the retail shop had been performing and identify
opportunities for exploration which would help them build strategies for production
management and marketing
 POS system processed data would help company answer operational questions like
the following:
o Which products are giving least profits to the company?
o Which products are giving most profitability to the company?
o Which products are selling most in the store? (Michael, 2016)
o What should be the frequency for ordering items that are selling more?
o When should the product be replenished to ensure it is available at the time of
sales?
o Which promotional schemes are working more with the customers of the
store?
o What tasks have been delegated to whom and what is the status of the same?
o What schemes out of those run by the company are giving results and which
are not? (Mukharji, et al., 2011)
Risks
While POS system gives a variety of operational and management advantages to the
organisation, it also poses certain risks that have to be managed such as the following:
 As the system is connected to the internet, the data that is obtained from the customers
through their credit card swipes can be exposed to the hackers who may try to steal or
confiscate the private or confidential data online. Sufficient security measures would
be needed to protect the POS data from hackers.
 The POS system allows the company to record the confidential data of the customer
and this data can be misused if it goes into wrong hands.
 The company can also have insider threats from the people who could be misusing the
customer data
Security of the POS system can be enhanced using several strategies like using end-to-end
data encryption, installing an antivirus solution on the POS system, locking the systems when
not in use, ensure the compliance of the system with Payment Card Industry Data Security
standard, and hire security experts to keep things updated (MARTINEZ, 2016).
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Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery POS
Recommendations
Based on the study of the POS system of the company, certain recommendations can be made
to ensure that company is able to make the best use of POS systems and gain a sustainable
competitive advantage. These include:
 POS can be used with a Wireless LAN as it would help multiple POS systems connect
over the wireless network and the hassle of maintaining and managing wires would be
eliminated.
 The staff can be trained based on the regular insights obtained from the sales and
inventory and sales data such that they can be made to perform better by making them
understand the changing customer requirements to serve them better
 Managers can use the sales data insights to take decisions related to offers in the retail
store, marketing consumers, bundling items for sales, products to focus more on to
gain profitability, and placing them at locations where they sell most
 The system can make the people accountable and responsible for their work if the task
delegation is done no manually but through the POS system as it would record
everything and thus, build transparency in the organization
 Company can set the stock refresh schedules based on the sales and inventory data
such that the orders are fulfilled as per the consumer demand on time so that the
products that customers are looking for in the store can always be made available
without fail.
 Staff can use the POS system to communicate status updates, ideas, and experiences
such that they are all the same page and can take better decisions.
 The company must take appropriate security measures to ensure that the customer
data is protected. These measures could be data encryption and antivirus installation
Conclusions
This report was prepared to explore the case of For Seasons Greenhouse and nursery to
understand how small retail organisations make use of technology to gain competitive
advantages. A POS system was installed in the company that reduced the manual work that
company used to do and automated several tasks such as sales data recording, inventory
updates, and task delegation. This brought several advantages to the company such as
increase in accuracy of prediction for inventory management, better decision making about
operations with the availability of real time insights, real tie update of data allowing all staff
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Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery POS
to have the latest status of inventory and other things in hand. There were also some privacy,
confidentiality, and security risks identified that were recommended to be taken care of by
taking steps like antivirus installation and data encryption. Recommendations that were made
for the company to take the best advantage of a POS system included use of POS for task
delegation to bring transparency, scheduling of orders based on the buying patters, use of data
analysis to take important decisions related to inventory ordering, customer offers, and more.
References
Consuegra, O. I., 2006. Own labels in the United Kingdom: A source of competitive
advantage in retail business, s.l.: Pensamiento & Gestión.
Ivanov, G. & Mayorova, E., 2015. Intangible Assets and Competitive Advantage in Retail:
Case Study from Russia. Asian Social Science;, 11(12), pp. 38-45.
MARTINEZ, J., 2016. 6 Steps to Securing Your Point-of-Sale System, s.l.: PC MAG.
Michael, 2016. 20 Inventory Management Questions You Should Be Asking. [Online]
Available at: https://www.action-storage.com/blog/retail/20-inventory-management-
questions/
[Accessed 19 May 2018].
Mukharji, P. et al., 2011. Inventory management: 10 questions to diagnose your inventory
health, s.l.: Bain & Company.
Sampath, G., 2016. Exploring the Significance of Strategic Agility in Building Sustainable
Competitive Advantage for Retail Banks, s.l.: NMIMS.
Sirolikar, P. & Haridas, S., 2016. Competitive Advantage for Business Organizations using
Cloud Business Intelligence: A Case of Retail Industry in India Pavitra Sirolikar, s.l.:
Symbiosis International .
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