IT for Business: Comprehensive Report on POS System Implementation

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of a new Point of Sale (POS) system's implementation within a business context. It begins with an introduction to the benefits of such systems, emphasizing their role in creating competitive advantages and increasing business profits. The report then delves into the advantages and disadvantages of POS systems, detailing how they streamline sales, improve inventory management, and facilitate data-driven decision-making, while also acknowledging potential costs and complexities. The report further explores the advantages of a centralized database, highlighting data integrity, marketing insights, ease of training, and support benefits. It also examines telecommunication options for POS systems, covering LAN, MAN, and WAN networks, as well as wired and wireless technologies. Finally, the report addresses the risks associated with POS systems, such as security, privacy, and confidentiality, offering recommendations to mitigate these risks and ensure data protection. The conclusion summarizes the key findings, and recommends employee training and secure data management for the company. The report is a valuable resource for understanding the impact and management of POS systems in modern business environments.

it for business
POS System
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Abstract
The below mentioned report evaluates the implementation of new POS system which is
commonly used in many organizations. Apart from this, the report also contains the advantages
and disadvantages of using new POS system along with the several telecommunication options.

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Contents
Introduction.................................................................................................................................................3
Advantages and disadvantages of the new POS system...............................................................................3
POS system help the business gain competitive advantages........................................................................4
Advantages of having a centralized database...............................................................................................4
POS system helps to facilitate decision making..........................................................................................5
Telecommunication options for this POS system........................................................................................6
Type of risks does the POS system bring and ways to protect the business against the risks......................7
Conclusion...................................................................................................................................................8
Recommendations.......................................................................................................................................8
References...................................................................................................................................................9

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Introduction
The new POS system is one of the most advanced option which is used by several companies
that will benefit them to create a competitive advantages and also gain huge amount of business
profits. The implementation of new POS system in any organization helps to take wise decisions
and it is most commonly used system in current scenario.
Advantages and disadvantages of the new POS system
There are several advantages and disadvantages of POS system. According to the case study
given, the new POS was entered in 2008. It helped the business to keep the record of data from
the sales contracts, reduce the manual work of sales transactions and compile the sales history. It
delivers a lot more than a cash register. The new POS system offers more vigorous functionality
which includes inputting, tracking and distribution of data in order to provide necessary
information to function and control the business activities. POS system helps to create an
accurate and reliable inventory counts which will reduce the guessing on in what quantity to
order. It supports business to function on leaner inventory units. This system also helps in
offering a detailed description of the items which were procured, rejected and sold. With the help
of new POS system, the owners had no much ideas about their business activities and they also
stated that there were few products which were less profitable as they expected to be. Therefore,
a new idea of the “real costs” was delivered by this system (Coffing and Bonfiglio, 2017).
The disadvantages of using POS system is that it reduces the owner’s establishing goals and
objectives rather than depending on the system’s data. As a result, it may be costly to purchase
the new POS system majorly for small business because it costs nearly £2000 or higher in the
UK. A part from this, the maintenance of such system is very difficult and complex. However,
there are many suppliers who offer free maintenance for a limited period of time but regular
maintenance has proved to be time consuming and disruptive in nature. It also includes training
costs and sometimes power failure can also be an issue as well (Hall, 2012).
POS system help the business gain competitive advantages

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According to the given case study, POS helps business in various methods and it also aims at
supporting the business by reducing the manual work. Information and knowledge of the product
in any business helps to quote the actual price of the product so that they can earn good profit
income. Changes in the price of the product can be done both temporarily as well as permanent.
It all depends on the demand of the specific product. When changes in the price of the product
are implemented on a temporary basis, it night gain acceptable product margins. Apart from this,
managers tend to work more effectively and they are supposed to generate more output and
results. The reliable and timely reporting of the messages and information helps the managers in
the business to work more efficiently to manage their business operations. The system has the
ability to process sales, inventory stock and buy transactions which instantly minimizes the
requirements of the data entry and also reduces the paper work as well. The saved which has
been saved to control the operations of the business can easily be used in other activities of the
business (Tukker, 2015). Consequently, the knowledge and information system generate a solid
infrastructure in order to process and report the operations of the business activities for the whole
enterprise to remain competitive in the market. For an instance, Garden Centre is one of the best
example that shows hoe technology are used to gain huge amount of profit for the business
because it is very difficult to remain competitive in the market in the recent scenario. Thus, POS
helps small as well as large organizations to leverage the data in order to be more competitive
and operate more efficiently (Zikmund, Babin, Carr and Griffin, 2013).
Advantages of having a centralized database
There are many organizations that fight with their management information systems and
membership databases. One of the major struggle is the scarcity of the centralized database
information. Usually, associations and business maintain separate databases for membership,
events, sales, and additional processes. These databases must be combined together into one
centralized database. Centralized database is defined as a single hub where a user can find his/her
name, address and all the business activities. The major advantages of having a centralized
database is mentioned below.
Data Integrity: One of the major advantage of centralized database is the data integrity.
One of the basic rules is that no repetition is required i.e. no single piece if data is

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repeated within the entire database system. When any business is managing and operating
a multiple database for a similar group of people, then they break the rule. For an
instance, a membership database with a dissimilar meeting registration database. This
tends to create the issues related to integrity (Stevens, 2013).
Valuable broad marketing information: With all the necessary information centralized, it
becomes easy to create reports and evaluate a huge range of operations. In case of
multiple databases, records must be matched and duplication may take place.
Ease of Training: Another advantage of centralized database is that the learning curve for
the users is highly minimized. If all the processes such as membership, meetings and
product are in a similar database, then user must learn single system rather than learning
multiple systems.
Support: With the help of centralized database, support is primarily focused on a single
product. But in case of multiple databases, though they are made on a similar platform,
separate support is needed for every product (Paton, 2012).
POS system helps to facilitate decision making
POS system helps to take an effective decision in order to run all the business activities in an
organization. POS helps to perform all the operations of the business more effectively because it
majorly focuses on the managers who manages and controls all the necessary information. POS
system helps to minimize the manual work and all the required information are found at a single
place. It also saves the time which is usually invested in getting involved in the manual works.
All the necessary information can easily be tracked using a central database. Central Database
holds all the important information at a single place which aims at avoiding the redundancy of
data. All the primary records of the employees related to business operations are kept at single
location so that it can easily be found and tracked (Laudon and Laudon, 2016). In addition to
this, POS system helps to keep the record of all the products that are kept in the inventory.
Similarly, the number of product sold, purchased and all the necessary information related to
inventory are generally managed by the POS system. It basically aims at providing multiple
advantages which include inputting, tracking and distribution of data. Thus, managers are able to
take better decisions based on the accurate inventory data (Armentrout et al., 2011).

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Telecommunication options for this POS system.
There are many other options of telecommunications for the POS system. The other network
permits all the computers to connect and communicate with all the other computers using any
medium of communication. Basically, there are three major types of network which are widely
used and designed. It includes LAN, MAN and WAN. They operate in different geographical
areas. Majorly, LAN operates in small location, MAN operates in larger areas as compared to
LAN and WAN is one of the largest networks of all the three. There are additional computer
networks which are also widely used. It includes networks such as PAN (Personal area network),
SAN (Storage area network), EPN (Enterprise area network) and VAN (Virtual area network)
(Perrig and Tygar, 2012).
A LAN is a combination of computers and network which are connected generally within the
similar building. According to the definition, the connections should be high speed and it is not
so expensive.
A MAN is a larger network as compared to the LAN which generally spans various buildings in
the similar city or town. The IUB network is the best example of a MAN.
A WAN generally do not have the limitations to the geographical area though it limited to
specific state or a country. It helps to connect huge number of LAN and it might be restricted to a
corporation or an organization. Usually, WAN is expensive with highest speed range and internet
is the best example of WAN (Pahlavan and Krishnamurthy, 2011).
Apart from this, there are wired as well as wireless technologies which are also widely used.
Some of the common examples of wireless technologies includes GPS units, garage door
openers, wireless computer mice, keyboards and headsets, headphones, radio receivers, satellite
television, broadcast television and cordless telephones. Similarly, there are various cables that
can be used for wired technologies (Ramamurthy, 2012). It includes cables such as
 Unshielded Twisted Pair (UTP) Cable.
 Shielded Twisted Pair (STP) Cable.
 Coaxial Cable.

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 Fibre Optic Cable.
 Cable Installation Guides.
 Wireless LANs.
Type of risks does the POS system bring and ways to protect the business against the risks
There are huge number of risk involved in the POS system. Some of the risks involves:
 Security: Security is one of the prime risk involved in the POS system. The record of all the
data for the operation of business activities and maintaining it is really a difficult and complex
task. There must eb high security to protect all the recorded data from being hacked. The
business must have cyber experts and innovative technicians who will be able to manage all the
activities very effectively.
 Privacy: Privacy is the second risk factor involved in POS system. The Privacy of all the
recorded data must be taken into highest priority because once the information is leaked, it will
create a huge loss to the business and this risk can be easily be reduced when a unique
identification code in maintained and avoidance of multiple databases (Xu, Teo, Tan and
Agarwal, 2012).
 Confidentiality: Confidentiality is also a risk factor that is widely seen in many businesses. All
the business must maintain confidential records of data which cannot be easily extracted by
anyone. Only authorized person must be given an authority to access the necessary information
(Joinson, Reips, Buchanan and Schofield, 2010).
Conclusion
Thus, from the above report it can be concluded that POS system helps the business to take the
better decisions and work effectively to gain the competitive advantages in the market.
Additionally, it also aims at reducing the manual work and increasing the knowledge of all the
business operations.

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Recommendations
Apart from this, the few suggestions must be followed by the company to gain more profits. The
company must train every employees to work using the new POS system and the company must
be liable to secure all the confidential records data in a single platform.

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References
Armentrout, G.H., Do, P.K., Hargett Jr, B.R. and Maximilien, E.M., International Business
Machines Corp, 2011. Method for more efficiently managing complex payloads in a point of sale
system. U.S. Patent 7,889,384.
Coffing, D. and Bonfiglio, L., 2017. Transaction system for business and social networking. U.S.
Patent 9,600,674.
Hall, J.A., 2012. Accounting information systems. Cengage Learning.
Joinson, A.N., Reips, U.D., Buchanan, T. and Schofield, C.B.P., 2010. Privacy, trust, and self-
disclosure online. Human–Computer Interaction, 25(1), pp.1-24.
Laudon, K.C. and Laudon, J.P., 2016. Management information system. Pearson Education
India.
Pahlavan, K. and Krishnamurthy, P., 2011. Principles of wireless networks: A unified approach.
Prentice Hall PTR.
Paton, N.W. ed., 2012. Active rules in database systems. Springer Science & Business Media.
Perrig, A. and Tygar, J.D., 2012. Secure Broadcast Communication: In Wired and Wireless
Networks. Springer Science & Business Media.
Ramamurthy, B., 2012. Design of optical WDM networks: LAN, MAN and WAN architectures
(Vol. 603). Springer Science & Business Media.
Stevens, D., 2013. Personal business service system and method. U.S. Patent 8,494,878.
Tukker, A., 2015. Product services for a resource-efficient and circular economy–a review.
Journal of cleaner production, 97, pp.76-91.
Xu, H., Teo, H.H., Tan, B.C. and Agarwal, R., 2012. Research note—effects of individual self-
protection, industry self-regulation, and government regulation on privacy concerns: a study of
location-based services. Information Systems Research, 23(4), pp.1342-1363.

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Zikmund, W.G., Babin, B.J., Carr, J.C. and Griffin, M., 2013. Business research methods.
Cengage Learning.