IT for Business: POS System Implementation at Four Seasons Nursery

This report assesses the potential implementation of a Point of Sale (POS) system at Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery, a small nursery currently relying on manual record-keeping. The report delves into the advantages and disadvantages of adopting a POS system, emphasizing its potential to enhance data collection and streamline business operations. It explores how a POS system can improve accounting processes, enhance management control, and facilitate better decision-making through data analytics. Furthermore, the report discusses telecommunication options for integrating the POS system, identifies associated security, privacy, and confidentiality risks, and provides recommendations for successful implementation. The analysis also highlights the benefits of a centralized database for data security and preservation and concludes that a POS system can significantly improve inventory management and customer satisfaction, ultimately contributing to the company's competitive advantage.

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Abstract
This report will focus on the overall use of the technological tool named as point of sale system.
It will help to bring improvisation in the overall activities of the company. Four seasons
Greenhouse and Nursery is the small nursery which take into consideration the manual registers
to maintain the records of the business. Now company considered the POS system so that data
can be collected in an efficient manner. So, in this report the emphasis will be given on the
advantages and disadvantages related to the POS system and also risks and telecommunication
elements will be discussed.
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Table of Contents
Abstract............................................................................................................................................1
Introduction......................................................................................................................................1
Advantages and disadvantages of new POS System.......................................................................2
POS System for attaining competitive advantage...........................................................................3
Advantages of centralized database.................................................................................................3
POS system and decision making....................................................................................................3
Telecommunication options.............................................................................................................4
Risks................................................................................................................................................4
Recommendations............................................................................................................................5
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................5
References........................................................................................................................................6
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Introduction
In this report the emphasis will be given on the case related to Four Seasons Greenhouse and
Nursery. Information technology is one of the techniques that help the business to achieve
growth by offering new technology to the companies so that their overall business activities can
be simplified. It can be easy for the companies to consider innovative techniques with the help of
information technology. By considering the innovation it has been seen that it results to
collecting of the information, faster execution processes and also proper distribution of the data
in the company.
In this paper the emphasis is given on the innovation related to information technology in the
business which is related with POS system. The system of POS is considered as the combination
related to hardware and software and it is considered for taking the payments from the customers
so that business transactions can be done effectively.
It has been analyzed that discussion will be made on the advantages and disadvantages of POS
system, benefits of the centralized database and also how the POS systems is considered for
making the right decisions. Also, there are telecommunication options that will be recommended
for POS system and also risks concerned to POS system will be analyzed.
Advantages and disadvantages of new POS System
It can be evaluated that POS system can offer any company like Four Seasons Greenhouse and
Nursery with many advantages and also with the disadvantages. In context to Four Seasons
Greenhouse and Nursery the discussion will be made on the advantages and disadvantages.
It can been analyzed that the process of accounting process of Four Seasons Greenhouse and
Nursery will be improved by considering the new POS system. In the case it has been stated by
the accountant that company has to manage the many receipts which are one of the time
consuming process. The new system of POS will assist Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery to
focus on the reporting system that will help to manage the different department of the company.
The new POS system will help the company to enhance the overall control of the management in
relation with the employees schedule and also it will help to analyze the salaries of various
departments. With the help of new POS the company can easy consider the better accountability
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function and will offer the owner to have proper access of control on the employees. They can
now easily ask the personnel to offer the next objective of the sales for the coming years as data
analytics can be done with the help of the new POS system (Eason, 2014). By taking into
consideration new POS system it can be simple for Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery to
have infrastructure which is good so that activities of the company can be managed effectively.
There are also various disadvantages related to POS system. It has been seen that Cyber Attacks
can take place if there is no proper inventories set up in the overall list of inventory. The
centralized system can also help the company to maintain the private data of the customers and
employees which will help them to grow in the competitive market (Polasik et al., 2013).
POS System for attaining competitive advantage
It has been seen that POS of sale can be considered for many reasons in context to Four Seasons
Greenhouse and Nursery. The company can attain the competitive advantage by considering the
new technology.
POS is considered as the system which is less costly and also faster. It can be stated that the
information can be tracked with the help POS as to implement the system in the company is
simple and it helps the company in retaining the overall process of the business at the time of
installation phase. The system can also offer the overall competitive advantage by allowing
saving the human efforts for the long time. The customers can easily maintain the overall
transaction of the company just because of the peripheral bar code scanner which is in the
system. It can also assist the company in managing the overall track of the inventories and will
also help to access the inventory which is left. Just because of this the paper work will be
reduced and also it can be simple for the company to achieve the competitive advantage (Profeta,
Balling and Roosen, 2013).
Advantages of centralized database
In the Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery, it has been analyzed the centralized database will
assist the company in maintaining the overall security of the information as there are many
people who can access the information of the people. To collect the data from the single database
can be considered as secure if comparison is made with the collection of the data from many
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databases. The information from the centralized database will assist the company in managing
and storing the overall data. Also with the help of centralized database it can be simple for the
company manages the information preservation. With the help of the database it can be simple to
enhance the reliability of the data and advanced features can also be considered by the company
(Rese, Schreiber and Baier, 2014).
POS system and decision making
In Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery it has been seen that POS system can help the
company in making the reports so that decision of the business can be made in the correct
manner. If POS is installed effectively in the workplace then it can manage the entire activities of
the business. It has been seen that through this it can be easy to consider the answer of
maintaining the overall efficiency of the employees in the workplace. With the help of this it can
be easy to offer continuous feedback to the employees. The new system will offer the company
to maintain their overall capability related to decision making and will increase the inventory
system management (Ingram et al., 2015).
Telecommunication options
There are various recommendations in relation to Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery. It is
necessary to consider various types of network like LAN. It is considered as the network of
computers that can be seen on the small area. There are considered for having proper connection
with personal computers and work stations. With the help of this it can be easy to send emails
and chats. By focusing on this case it can be stated that for connecting the LAN with the terminal
of POS, 4 twisted pair shielded cable can be considered.
WAN is also considered as the wide area network that can help to link with bunch of LANs. It
can be seen that difference can be related to the geographical area which is covered. MAN is also
considered as the metropolitan area network that helps to consider the difference related to the
entire campus. It has been seen that MAN network are smaller as compared to WAN but it is
larger than LAN (Boddy, McCalman and Buchanan, 2018).
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It can be stated that wired communication medium can be considered in wired networks whereas
it has been seen that wireless network can consider the remote communication system which will
help to facilitate the data between the different areas.
Risks
There are various risks which are linked with the POS System. The risks are related to security,
privacy and confidentiality.
Security risks are considered as the risk in which hackers can consider the method to breach the
security of the POS device. By considering this case it can be seen that hackers consider
vulnerabilities of the POS system. In many recent cases, the system of POS can also lack in the
hardware system of encryption. If these situations arise then it can be simple for the hackers to
use the internal data. Also the phishing attack can be considered by the Spam mails which
consist of the fake login page in which the victim can login into the terminal of POS by
considering the fake webpages (Gomzin, 2014).
Privacy risk is also the risk in which it has been seen that digital ID of the employees and
customers can be considered by the POS terminals. Also through this it can be analyzed that
wrong information can be gathered by the terminal of POS which can enhance the issue for the
customers.
Confidentiality risk: in this the important data is always the target of the hackers. The important
data can be hacked and the information can be easily transmitted to the other devices like
payment information and also the information related to transactions (Cannataci et al., 2016).
Recommendations
Also it can be recommended that company should take into consideration proper implementation
of the POS system so that it can be easy to make the decisions and also it will help the company
to grow in the competitive market.
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Conclusion
By taking into consideration all the aspects it can be concluded that by focusing on the new POS
system can help the company to make the right decisions. Also it will help to manage the overall
inventory of the company that will directly impact on the customer satisfaction. For making the
right decision, the company should consider the system of POS. Also the POS system will help
to manually track the data.
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References
Boddy, D., McCalman, J. and Buchanan, D.A., 2018. The New Management Challenge:
Information Systems for Improved Performance. Routledge.
Cannataci, J.A., Zhao, B., Torres Vives, G., Monteleone, S., Bonnici, J.M. and Moyakine, E.,
2016. Privacy, free expression and transparency: redefining their new boundaries in the digital
age. UNESCO Publishing.
Eason, K.D., 2014. Information technology and organisational change. CRC Press.
Farias, A.S.P., 2015. System for accessing a POS terminal, method for downloading and
updating applications and method for performing electronic operation using such a system. U.S.
Patent 9,131,012.
Gomzin, S. 2014. Hacking Point of Sale: Payment Application Secrets, Threats, and Solutions.
John Wiley and Sons.
Ingram, T.N., LaForge, R.W., Williams, M.R. and Schwepker Jr, C.H., 2015. Sales management:
Analysis and decision making. Routledge.
Polasik, M., Górka, J., Wilczewski, G., Kunkowski, J., Przenajkowska, K., and Tetkowska, N.
2013, June. Time efficiency of Point-of-Sale payment methods: Empirical results for cash, cards
and mobile payments. In International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems (pp. 306-
320). Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.
Profeta, A., Balling, R., and Roosen, J. 2013. The relevance of origin information at the point of
sale. Food Quality and Preference, 26(1), 1-11.
Rese, A., Schreiber, S., and Baier, D. 2014. Technology acceptance modeling of augmented
reality at the point of sale: Can surveys be replaced by an analysis of online reviews?. Journal of
Retailing and Consumer Services, 21(5), 869-876.
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APPENDICES
Figure 2: POS system by Quickbooks
(Source: Rese, Schreiber and Baier, 2014)
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