IT for Business: Detailed Analysis of Point of Sale Systems

This report provides a detailed analysis of Point of Sale (POS) systems and their applications in the context of IT for business. It begins with an introduction to POS and its growing importance, followed by a discussion of its advantages and disadvantages, including improved sales monitoring, inventory management, and data storage capabilities, but also the need for software updates and security concerns. The report then explores how POS systems contribute to gaining a competitive advantage and the benefits of using a centralized database. It emphasizes the role of POS in facilitating data-driven decision-making, processing business activities more effectively, and the importance of accurate data over manual tracking methods. The report also covers the types of questions that can be answered using POS data, its role in business management, and the telecommunication media used. Finally, it addresses the risks associated with POS systems, particularly security, privacy, and confidentiality, and provides strategies to mitigate these risks. The report concludes with a summary of the key findings and insights into the overall impact of POS on business operations and growth.

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Table of Contents
Introduction...........................................................................................................................................2
Advantages and disadvantages of point of sale.....................................................................................2
POS helps in gaining competitive advantage.........................................................................................3
Benefits of using centralised database..................................................................................................3
POS system facilities decision making power....................................................................................4
POS systems process business activities more effectively.....................................................................4
Tracking information through manual methods................................................................................5
Type of questions that could be answered........................................................................................5
Point of sale helps in managing the business....................................................................................5
Telecommunication media for point of sale system..............................................................................6
Telecommunication networks...........................................................................................................6
Type of telecommunication media....................................................................................................6
Risk associated in point of sale system..................................................................................................6
Conclusion.............................................................................................................................................8
References.............................................................................................................................................9

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Introduction
Point of sale is the emerging trend in the market. The use of this technology has
increased in every field. Point of sale is turned to be very beneficial for business that works at
different places. There are various benefits and drawbacks associated with this technology. In
this report point of sale system has been analysed from different aspects. Along of that need
of centralized database system and the risk associated with POS have been discussed briefly.
Advantages and disadvantages of point of sale
Point of sale system has various advantages and disadvantages associated with it.
Advantage
The major advantages of these systems are:
 It helps the owners to monitor their sales record at the same time when the product is
sold in the market.
 Point of sale also helps in compiling all the sales history to design better plans.
 It is beneficial as it helps in updating inventory of sale at instant time
 It stores huge amount of data by consuming small section of memory.
 It is useful as it supports remote functionality for storing, distributing ad tracking all
the important data (Szell, Lambiotte and Thurner, 2010).
 It is helpful in making decision related to management of sales and removes the
confusion in making decisions.
 It helps the business to operate effectively as it makes all the functions to operate
automatically.
 The detail analysis of a business could be done using point of sale system that helps in
understanding the market in a précised manner (Szell, Lambiotte and Thurner, 2010).
 It saves the overall cost and time needed to manage the data packets.
 It adds up transparency in the network.

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Disadvantages
 If point of sale system is used as software it need to be updated periodically as overall
performance of business is dependent on it. It requires lot of efforts and cost to keep
the software up to date.
 There are high risks of security threats as it stores sensitive data of organisations. If
the system is accessed by some unauthorized user it may lead to violation of
confidentiality (Tseng, Lee and Tseng, 2015).
POS helps in gaining competitive advantage
It is true that point of sale is gaining advantage in the competitive world. They are
helpful in business to make decisions in an effective way. The data provided by these systems
are very précised that helps in analysing the business from all perspective and help to design
plans so that better growth could be achieved. The detailed information provided helps the
business to gain advantage in the market (Lucchi, et. al, 2014). Additionally, point of sale
helps in analysing the reason behind the profit to the business so that products and services
are provided in the same manner. It also helps the business by providing alerts about shortage
of some products that so plan could be modifies accordingly. It is beneficial in term of
inventory management as it helps in boosting up the profit of the company by controlling all
the possible sources. It is also beneficial for a business as it controls the financial data that is
necessary for the business to compete with other competitors (Berezina, et. al, 2016).
Benefits of using centralised database
Centralized database system is a group of all related databases at a single location. It
is very useful as it improves the performance of the system and enhances the speed of
processing. Centralised database offer many advantages to small firms as well as bigger firms
(Jindal, Zhu, Chintagunta and Dhar, 2018). Some of the advantages of centralised database
are:
 The storing all the information at one place it reduces the efforts of updating the
database at time of changes and it also reduces the redundancy of data packets.

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 Centralised database system is more secure as data is not stored at scattered location
which reduces the chances of attack.
 Centralised database is beneficial as it offers ease to access the data at any time
(Jindal, Zhu, Chintagunta and Dhar, 2018). As the data is stored at one place the
information is made available to the end user at the same time the information is
generated. This helps in making faster decisions.
 It also becomes flexible for administrator to manage the database and portability of
data packets.
 It is nominal in terms of cost as all the data is stored at single location thus less
number of resources are required for protecting the data packets.
 It is easy to update and make changes in the data.
POS system facilities decision making power
Point of sale system makes the large amount of data available to end users instantly.
The availability of data packets immediately helps in making better decisions. Additionally, it
is beneficial as point of sale helps in making data driven decisions that promotes the business
to gain competitive advantage. In a business point of sale system properly monitors and
tracks all the transactions thus it provide accurate data related to profit and revenue margins.
This data could be very useful for a business to design the plans and attain better growth.
Analysing the business in detail manner helps in making decisions regarding the discount
plans (Rese, Schreiber and Baier, 2014). Offers and discounts plans are designed according to
the analysis of data. The data gained by point of sale system could also be used to improving
the customer experience by enhancing the back office operations. Thus it can be clearly
stated that point of sale system assists in taking more knowledgeable and evaluated decisions.
This helps in making customized decisions by looking at the marketing needs. It also assists
the process of evaluating the data as it is a crucial part for making highly competitive
decisions. This helps in aiming towards the loop holes that is present in the sales. By using
the analysis loopholes could be removed by promoting better services (Lifewire, 2018). The
detail knowledge help in deciding which products need to be promoted and what need to be
done to achieve higher benefits.
POS systems process business activities more effectively
Point of sale system has helped the businesses to work effectively as it has eliminated
all the manual work by making it automatic. Data manipulation and modification is done

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using point of sale system that helps in generating immediate result (Dontigney, 2018). This
helps the business to visual the actual scenario so that plans could be designed in a better
way. It helps in making the business activities automatic rather than doing manual work.
These activities could be done by using manual strategies but it isn't powerful from the
perspective of time administration. It gives the detailed knowledge about the demand of
customer (Gomzin, 2014).
Tracking information through manual methods
Information could be tracked using manual methods but that is time consuming
process which is not considered to be efficient for modern business. By tracking the
information using manual method there are chances of data getting misinterpreted which may
lead to wrong decisions. Manual methods require lot of human efforts and still result in
confusing results which are not appropriate (Norp, Kips and Van Loon, 2015). Thus to make
sure that there is no confusion and appropriate actions are taken for making decisions manual
methods should not be used. In the modern days decisions are made based on the real time
data which cannot be implemented by the use of manual tracking.
Type of questions that could be answered
There are varieties of questions that need to be answered with the use of data that is
availed through point of sale system. It helps the business by understanding all the marketing
and sales operations so that they analyse the business in a better way (Shang, Huang and
Chaloupka, 2015). Apart from this there are various queries related to the customers so that
valuable information is gathered for the company at the time of decision making. Point of
sale helps the business in knowing the market demands, customer’s response and variety of
things.
Point of sale helps in managing the business
Point of sale helps in managing the business in a better way as it collects the
information that is important. The information gathered using this system helps in focusing
on the essential areas which would be profitable for the business. Point of sale system helps
in making decisions that would be better for the organisation and the analysis of data could be
used for making changes in the system (Shang, Huang and Chaloupka, 2015). It makes use of
data driven approach that helps the business in managing the activities is a better way.

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Telecommunication media for point of sale system
There are various telecommunications options available for a business. It is important
to select the best telecommunication option to cover all the requirement of an organisation.
The option of telecommunication network depends on the type of network and media they
must use (Jones, et. al, 2012). Telecommunication network can be segregated in terms of type
of network or in terms of type of media.
Telecommunication networks
There are various networks that could be chosen it depends on the type of business. If
it is small firm then LAN networks could be used as they offer higher speed of connectivity.
It also makes cost friendly as it makes use of minimum resources which is considered as a
beneficial for smaller companies (Armentrout, Hargett and Maximilien, 2011). The business
is expanded in various countries than WAN need to be used for efficient communication. So,
that employees are able to communicate and discuss anything from anywhere at any time.
Type of telecommunication media
The media of connection can be wired or wireless. Wired communication has high
speed and they are more secure as compared to wireless technology. In case of point of sale
system Ethernet cables are used (B2C, 2018). Wired media is difficult to implement as
connections need to be implemented.
Risk associated in point of sale system
There are various risk associated in using point of sale system. It is important to
protect the business from these risks; this could be den by using various strategies. The most
common type of risk that occurs in the system is due to security, privacy and confidentiality
loss of data. Discussing these risks in detail:
 Security- Most of the sensitive information of an organisation is stored on point of
sale system. It is important to secure the data to build trust among employees. If the
information is not secure on the system it would lead to serious problems. If the data
is accessed by some third party user it would lead to loss of trust among stakeholders
and this would act as a hurdle in growth of a company (B2C, 2018). Thus various
ways need to be used to secure the data like by providing proper access control,
encryption of data and software for proper authentication need to be used.

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 Privacy- Point of sale system stores collection of sensitive data. It is necessary for a
business to manage the privacy as all the organisations are dependent on the data
stores on the system (McCarthy, 2018). If some unauthorised users access the data it
degrades the performance of the business.
 Confidentiality- Using point of sale system there are chances of data leakage that
would led to violation of confidentiality (Alexander, et. al, 2017). Important
information of cards is stored on the system which could not be leaked to any users
otherwise it would be a critical situation. The confidentiality of system could be
maintained by using firewalls.

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Conclusion
It can be concluded from the report that that point of sale system offers various
advantages and disadvantages. It is beneficial for every business as it helps in making better
decisions, improves the efficiency of work by eliminating the manual work. The use of
centralised database has also been discussed as how it is flexible for customers to access the
information. Point of sale system also makes use of various telecommunication network and
media that depend on the business. It offers various benefits but still there are security,
confidentiality and privacy risk associated with this type of system.

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