IT for Business: Implementing POS for Competitive Advantage

This report examines the implementation of a Point of Sale (POS) system at Four Seasons Greenhouse Nursery, detailing the business benefits and associated risks. The nursery, previously facing losses due to manual record-keeping, adopted a POS system in 2008, leading to improved decision-making and management. The report discusses the advantages of automated business processes, accurate inventory management, and competitive advantages gained through the new system. It also explores the benefits of a centralized database and telecommunication options like LAN and wireless technology. Furthermore, the report acknowledges the disadvantages, such as implementation and maintenance costs, security risks, and the need for employee training. The report highlights the advantages, disadvantages, and risks associated with the project, providing recommendations for improvement. The conclusion summarizes the positive impact of the POS system on the organization and the recommendations for further improvements.

Running head: IT FOR BUSINESS
IT for Business
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

1
IT FOR BUSINESS
Executive Summary
The purpose of the report is to discuss the business benefits of implementation of point of sales
system in Four Seasons Greenhouse Nursery. The business of the nursery was previously
running on loss due to manual record keeping which is prone to human errors. The
implementation of the POS system helped in better decision making and better management. The
advantages, disadvantages and the risks associated with the project are discussed in the report.
The business processes of Four Seasons were redesigned with the implementation of the new
point of sales system. The business benefits of the organization are discussed in this report.

2
IT FOR BUSINESS
Table of Contents
Introduction..........................................................................................................................3
1. Advantages and Disadvantages of the new POS system.................................................3
2. POS system in competitive advantage.............................................................................5
3. Advantages of Centralized Database...............................................................................6
4. POS in decision-making..................................................................................................7
5. Options for Telecommunication......................................................................................8
6. Associated Risks..............................................................................................................9
Conclusion...........................................................................................................................9
Recommendations................................................................................................................9
References..........................................................................................................................11
Appendix............................................................................................................................13

3
IT FOR BUSINESS
Introduction
Every small, medium or large sized business makes use of information technology for
enhancing the business operations of the organization. The use of technology in integrating the
different business processes of the organization becomes essential as it not only reduces human
error, but also reduces the human labour. Implementation of technology in an organization needs
a lot of investment both in terms of time and money. Therefore, it might sometimes become
difficult for the small and medium sized organization to implement technology in their business
processes. The report discusses the advantages of integrating technology with the business
operations in Four Seasons Greenhouse Nursery. The nursery faced a lot of problems in
managing their business as it used to maintain a manual record for recording the different
organizational need (Lallo 2012). The use of manual records resulted in human errors and
incorrect data entry. The organization implemented point of sales system or POS system in the
year 2008. The report discusses the benefits that the organization could achieve with the help of
new POS system along with its disadvantages. There are certain risks associated with the use of
POS in business which is discussed in the report as well.
1. Advantages and Disadvantages of the new POS system
Four Seasons Greenhouse Nursery implemented the POS system in order to accurately
control the different vital business processes such as maintenance of accurate inventory data and
inventory units. The switch to the new POS system was necessary for the $1M business
operation of Four Seasons Nursery because the profits of the nursery were either negligible or
loss. This occurred mainly because of the problem in the manual record keeping process that was

4
IT FOR BUSINESS
generally followed by the organization. The advantages offered by the new point of sales system
to the Four Seasons Nursery are as follows-
With the implementation of the new point of sales system, all the business processes of
the organization were automated. The POS system eliminated the need of maintaining the
records manually, which were prone to human errors and errors in data entry. This was one of
the main reasons behind the organization being not able to properly identify the products which
were more profitable (refer to appendix).
The new POS system furthermore allowed the owners to track the useful data and the
daily reports of the organization immediately at the time of sale. This therefore removes the need
for the owners to track the useful data manually (Stadtler 2015). The system was further able to
process the stored data from the sale and therefore it was able to update the inventory and sales
details in real time. This helped in better management of the inventory items.
The accurate management of the inventory data further helped in proper decision making
as well (Stair and Reynolds 2013). This is because the decisions on the number of product and
their sales were no longer based on speculations.
The implementation of the new POS system further confirmed that the owners of the
organization had no proper knowledge about their business. It was found out that some of the
products were less profitable than the owners thought. The knowledge about the detailed product
cost helps in pricing the products of the nursery more profitably.
The new system further helped the management of the organization in having a proper
control of the employee schedule that is used for reviewing and allocating the labour expenses to

5
IT FOR BUSINESS
the specific departments and functions. This additional benefit allowed the owners to delegate
more responsibilities to the staffs.
With the above discussed advantages, there are certain disadvantages associated with the
implementation of new POS system, which are as follows-
The cost of implementation is one of the significant disadvantages associated with the use
of POS system (Laudon and Laudon 2016). The investment in POS was considerably huge
considering the Four Seasons being a small sized industry. The maintenance cost is huge as well.
Since the POS system makes use of internet in maintaining and storing a particular data,
there are certain security risks associated with the use of the new point of sales system.
The employees of the organization are used to manual record keeping and therefore, it is
essential to train the employees about the use of the new POS system. This is subjected to a large
expenditure as well.
The timely and regular updates and maintenance is required for the new system which is
another significant disadvantage of the new POS system.
2. POS system in competitive advantage
The Point of sales system has helped the organization in gaining a competitive advantage
over the other similar organization. The competitive advantages that the business gained in
implementation of POS system are discussed below-
The use of the new point of sales system helped in automating all the vital processes of
the organization. This helped in better management of the different business process of the

6
IT FOR BUSINESS
organization (Diallo et al. 2014). Better knowledge about the sales and the inventory items
helped the organization in gaining a competitive advantage.
The organization could gain a competitive advantage by identifying the most profitable
products of the organization. The use of the nee POS system further helped in the identification
of the most profitable products, which was earlier not possible. Proper identification of the
profitable products helped the business in gaining a competitive advantage.
The knowledge about the inventory items and the sales units further helped the
organization in gaining a competitive advantage in the market.
These are the main reasons by which the new POS system helped in gaining a
competitive advantage in the market.
3. Advantages of Centralized Database
The Point of Sales system will be using a centralized database for storing the data and the
business information. There are a number of advantages of using a centralized database system
which are as follows (Coronel and Morris 2016)-
1. Since the data stored in the centralized database is managed centrally there is less
chances of data inconsistency.
2. The centralized database can be easily monitored and controlled and therefore it
reduces the chances of data security risks.
3. In centralized database, the speed of data processing is very high and it helps in easier
availability of the status reports.

7
IT FOR BUSINESS
4. The centralized database further helps in maintaining the data integrity.
4. POS in decision-making
The new point of sales system helped in better decision making. This is because the
decisions regarding the units of a product that are ordered are no longer based on speculations of
the details of the current inventory units (Galliers and Leidner 2014). The accurate inventory
count helps in eliminating the guesswork on how much to order as it is now based on the data of
sakes.
One of the major advantages of accurate estimation of the inventory data and sales is that
the business processes can be managed more effectively as real time data can be fetched from the
point of sales system (Pearlson, Saunders and Galletta 2016). This helps in better decision
making related to the inventory items.
Manual tracking of the information is difficult and the time consuming matter. The
manual tracking of information is further prone to delays and human errors (Wang et al. 2014).
The new POS system that is implemented in Four Seasons eliminates the need of manual data
tracking as the data and status reports are generated in real time (Hall 2012). Access to the real
time data helps the management in taking proper decisions regarding the operations of the
organization.
With the implementation of POS in the organization, the questions associated with the
inventory items and the number of items that are purchased, sold or discarded can be easily
answered (Peppard and Ward 2016). This helps in effective decision making about inventory and
sales units of the organization.

8
IT FOR BUSINESS
The information that is stored in the new POS system helps in better management of the
business processes. The knowledge about the cost of the products and the product profits helped
in easier management of the business and further helped in better decision making. The new POS
system further helped in reviewing the labour expenses and allowed the owners to delegate more
responsibilities to the staffs.
5. Options for Telecommunication
The new Point of sales system integrates all the existing business processes of the
organization. Therefore, a telecommunication option should be chosen that will be easier and
cost effective to implement. The organization has to choose from LAN, WAN and MAN as the
telecommunication option of the organization. The LAN or local area network helps in
interconnecting all the digital devices present in a particular area. The Wide area network
interconnects the digital devices present in a considerably larger geographical area. The
metropolitan area network or MAN is mainly used when an even larger geographical area is
considered. Since Four Seasons is a small sized organization, it is recommended for the
organization to choose LAN as the telecommunication option of the new POS system. This
connection will help in interconnecting all the digital devices and the associated business
processes with the help of a common network.
For the telecommunication service in Four Seasons, it is recommended for the
organization to make use of Wireless technology (Lu et al. 2015). This is because setting up of a
wired connection is a time consuming and costly task and therefore, wireless connection is the
recommended option (Barakah and Ammad-uddin 2012). The wireless connection is easy to set
up and it would be easier to maintain as well (Ghosh et al., 2014). Employees can fetch data

9
IT FOR BUSINESS
from POS quite effectively with the help of wireless telecommunication option. The organization
can make use of the wireless radio or infrared communication for data transfer from the POS to
target device.
6. Associated Risks
The new Point of sales system offers a number of advantages to the organization.
However, it brings in certain security risks as well (Al Ameen, Liu and Kwak 2012). The system
is subjected to different security risks associated with data security, privacy and confidentiality
mainly because is it based on wireless technology.
These risks can be mitigated by establishing a proper access control and authentication
control within the organization.
Conclusion
The report gives an idea of the benefits that Four Seasons could gain with the
implementation of the new POS system. The report gives an overview of the advantages and the
disadvantages of using a point of sales system in integrating the different business operations.
The security issues associated with the POS is also evaluated in the report. The business report
gives an overview of the implementation of POS in Four Seasons Greenhouse Nursery.
Recommendations
The recommendations for improvement of the business processes and use of point of
sales system are as follows-
1. The employees are needed to be properly trained about the use of POS in order to
reduce the errors in data processing.

10
IT FOR BUSINESS
2. Authorization levels can be imposed on the use of the information in order to eliminate
the security risks associated with the use of POS.

11
IT FOR BUSINESS
References
Al Ameen, M., Liu, J. and Kwak, K., 2012. Security and privacy issues in wireless sensor
networks for healthcare applications. Journal of medical systems, 36(1), pp.93-101.
Barakah, D.M. and Ammad-uddin, M., 2012, February. A survey of challenges and applications
of wireless body area network (WBAN) and role of a virtual doctor server in existing
architecture. In Intelligent Systems, Modelling and Simulation (ISMS), 2012 Third International
Conference on (pp. 214-219). IEEE.
Coronel, C. and Morris, S., 2016. Database systems: design, implementation, & management.
Cengage Learning.
Diallo, O., Rodrigues, J.J., Sene, M. and Niu, J., 2014. Real-time query processing optimization
for cloud-based wireless body area networks. Information Sciences, 284, pp.84-94.
Galliers, R.D. and Leidner, D.E. eds., 2014. Strategic information management: challenges and
strategies in managing information systems. Routledge.
Ghosh, A., Thomas, T.A., Cudak, M.C., Ratasuk, R., Moorut, P., Vook, F.W., Rappaport, T.S.,
MacCartney, G.R., Sun, S. and Nie, S., 2014. Millimeter-wave enhanced local area systems: A
high-data-rate approach for future wireless networks. IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in
Communications, 32(6), pp.1152-1163.
Hall, J.A., 2012. Accounting information systems. Cengage Learning.
Lallo, N.Y.H., 2012. Critical Succes Factors, Instructors' Characteristics and Accounting
Information System Course Content (Doctoral dissertation, Universiti Utara Malaysia).