Business Report: Point-of-Sale System for Four Seasons Greenhouse

This report analyzes the potential implementation of a point-of-sale (POS) system for Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery, a garden center in Colorado. It begins with an executive summary highlighting the benefits, including increased market share, productivity, and a competitive edge. The report details the advantages of a POS system, such as financial accuracy, accountability, speed, efficiency, stock management, and reporting capabilities, while also acknowledging the disadvantages like implementation and maintenance costs. The report further explores how a POS system can provide a competitive advantage, facilitate decision-making, and recommends WAN technology for telecommunication. It also addresses the risks associated with POS systems, including security, confidentiality, and privacy, along with procedures to protect the business. The report concludes with recommendations for ethical POS system use, antivirus installation, and innovative decision-making to maximize benefits. The report provides a comprehensive overview of the POS system implementation, its potential benefits, and challenges for Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery.

Running head: BLOOMING WITH TECHNOLOGY
Blooming with Technology
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Author’s note

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Executive Summary
Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery is a garden centre located in Colorado. The
organisation decides to take up the point-of-sale system to furnish their business activities.
The new POS system will certainly increase their market share. Four Seasons Greenhouse
and Nursery’s productivity is expected to get increased with the help of the POS system. The
organisation can get the competitive edge with the aid of the POS system. The beneficial
aspects that they can get via POS system has been illustrated in the report. Four Seasons
Greenhouse and Nursery can get significant benefits via WAN and wireless technology, and
the report explains all those in the report in details. Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery
can face several issues while adopting the POS system. The report elaborates the risks and the
challenges. Recommendations in the report will illustrate how Four Seasons Greenhouse and
Nursery should use the POS system effectively to get maximum benefits.

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Table of Contents
1. Introduction............................................................................................................................3
2. Advantages and disadvantages of the new POS system........................................................3
3. POS system helping the business to gain competitive advantages........................................5
4. Advantages of having a centralized database.........................................................................5
5. POS system facilitating decision making...............................................................................6
6. Recommending telecommunication options for this POS system.........................................6
7. Type of risks POS system bring and procedures to protect the business against those risks 7
8. Conclusion..............................................................................................................................8
9. Recommendations..................................................................................................................8
10. Bibliography.......................................................................................................................10
11. Appendices.........................................................................................................................12

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1. Introduction
Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery decides to take up point-of-sale system (POS)
on their premises to enhance their financial and all sorts of business activities.
The report explains various beneficial aspects of point-of-sale systems in Four
Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery. The organisation can face several threats and risks as they
decide to take up the POS system. The report illustrates all the risks and the challenges.
Recommendations made in the report will help to know how business activities should be
conducted to get the best possible outcome.
2. Advantages and disadvantages of the new POS system
Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery can get several beneficial aspects while taking
up the POS system and they have been defined in the report-
i. Financial Accuracy- It is quite natural for humans to make mistakes. They can
make several mistakes while calculating the financial data for the organisations. The POS
system can assist in calculating the data (Cui et al. 2016). The data will be error-free, the
organisation can get the data in fast and effective manner. POS work on the specific
algorithms and thus tends to give accurate results.
ii. Accountability- Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery can keep records of the
products manufactured. They can also keep records of the shipment of the products they
manufacture. The POS system can assist Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery in addressing
the staff’s activity (Yang and Hwang 2015). The company can know the workers who are
having the highest sales figures and the employees who are having the lowest sales figures.
The company can take strategical steps accordingly.

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iii. Speed and efficiency- The POS system can help to accelerate the speed of the
transaction of the products (Lee, Lee and Won 2014). Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery
can serve customers well with the adaptation of POS system.
iv. Stock Management- The company stock can be well managed with the aid of the
POS system (Laudon and Laudon 2016). Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery can check
for the availability of stock by implementing the POS system.
v. Reporting- The Point-of-sale system can assist Four Seasons Greenhouse and
Nursery in developing the business reports. The business performance reports cater daily
analysis and annual profit margin (Zhong et al. 2016). Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery
can get an overall view of the business operations with the help of the POS system.
The point-of-sale system comes with certain disadvantages, and those disadvantages
have been illustrated below-
i. Costing- The implementation cost of POS system is quite expensive. The small and
mid-size companies can struggle to install and implement the POS system on their premises.
Thus, Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery, being a mid-size company can face difficulties
in installing the POS system in their premises (Yang and Hwang 2015). Four Seasons
Greenhouse and Nursery will have to pay heavy for the POS system on monthly basis and
yearly basis.
ii. Maintenance- The POS system needs maintenance on a daily basis. The POS
system will take the relatively high amount of time. Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery
will have to halt their regular business operations due to the maintenance (Zhong et al. 2016).
The business operations of the organisation can get disrupted due to the POS maintenance.

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3. POS system helping the business to gain competitive advantages
The point-of-sale system can identify the details of the business operations from the
sales transactions made. The POS can make things easy for Four Seasons Greenhouse and
Nursery. The workers of the organisation will not have to make so much effort to track the
sales all by manually. The POS system aids easy to store, access and process of data. The
inventory can be better maintained with the help of the POS system (Missaoui et al. 2014).
The products which can yield maximum revenue and profits for Four Seasons Greenhouse
and Nursery can be acknowledged by the POS system. The POS system is efficient and is
much better than a cash register. The POS system facilitates tracking, inputting and
distribution of data. POS also facilitates decision making. Four Seasons Greenhouse and
Nursery can be able to price products profitably. POS system is known to provide cost-
effective service to the organisations. The managers of organisations can offer more
responsibilities to their subordinates. Thus with the help of the POS system, Four Seasons
Greenhouse and Nursery’ managers and the employees can gain more revenues (Cui et al.
2016). The POS system can give Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery competitive edge so
that they can carry out business activities fast and efficiently.
4. Advantages of having a centralized database
The centralised database has multiple benefits to offer. The small as well as the mid-
size benefits can be benefitted with the aid of the centralised database service.
i. Data preservation contains the functionalities like the fault tolerant setup and the
redundant storage. Due to any hardware failure, the data can get lost. However, data
preservation techniques can help to store and preserve the important data (Kobersy et al.
2015). The data preservation offers data backup functionalities so that the hardware failure
cannot disrupt the business operations.

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ii. Data Preservation also offers data security. Data preservation techniques thus
mitigate the chances of security breaches.
iii. Centralised database storage provides various functionalities and cost-effective
services. The implementation of the centralised database storage is very expensive. The
overall maintenance needs relatively less amount (Lee et al. 2014). It has an added advantage;
it reduces the required space requirements.
5. POS system facilitating decision making
Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery can manage inventory data’s accuracy with the
help of advanced decision making. Earlier Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery ordered
items solely on the basis of assumptions. Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery use to
maintain the database the data all by manually. The whole procedure was ineffective and
contain full of errors. The adaptation of POS system will change the entire scenario of the
inventory data. Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery implementing the POS system can get
the fast and effective service. The organization can take critical decisions with the assistance
of the POS system (Chavali, Yang and Nehorai 2014). They can take decisions like what to
buy, how to buy, what not to buy and what to be sold. Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery
with the aid of POS system can get to know about the products which can give them utmost
benefits.
6. Recommending telecommunication options for this POS system
Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery should choose the WAN network for the POS
system. WAN is known to offer quick file access. The employees of the organisation can get
access to the file much faster due to caching. Also, they will not have to reload the document
as a whole (Nanda 2016). Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery can minimise the distance

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between the mobile workers, the branch offices and the headquarters with the help of WAN
connection. The WAN provides the much more reliable connection. WAN connection
reduces the cost of equipment. WAN also reduces the bandwidth expenses. The workers of
Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery can stay connected with each other all the time
(Chavali, Yang and Nehorai 2014). The workers can carry out cost-effective service with the
help of WAN. The employees can provide cost-effective service to the customers as well.
They can provide services to the customers who stay at distant places. WAN also provides
security to the customers as well as the business partners. Four Seasons Greenhouse and
Nursery can get the competitive edge due to the WAN connectivity.
7. Type of risks POS system bring and procedures to protect the business against those
risks
Security- The insecure network can prove to be risk and challenge for Four Seasons
Greenhouse and Nursery. The intruders seek advantage of this insecure network. The
intruders attack the system and the database and make their entire system vulnerable to use
(Kobersy et al. 2015). Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery can ensure security by simply
installing an antivirus program. The antivirus program can save the organization’s system
from unauthorized access.
Confidentiality- Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery must take the responsibility to
keep the data of the database safe and secure. They will have to notice very carefully that the
data must not get breached due to the intruders’ attack (Natek and Zwilling 2014). The
organisation must protect the data of their clients and the customers. Otherwise, their
confidentiality can get endangered. The antivirus program can mitigate the issues aroused.
Privacy- The privacy of the workers of the organisation can get compromised as a
result of the malware attack. The hackers can attack the system and can steal the sensitive

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information (Missaoui et al. 2014). The antivirus program can protect someone’s privacy.
The organisation’s employees and the customers must have username and password to access
the database and the system, they should disclose the password, in this way they can protect
their privacy.
8. Conclusion
It can be concluded from the above discourse that the POS system can provide
multiple benefits to Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery. POS system eases the decision
making procedures. Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery can be benefitted with the
implementation of POS system; they can get the competitive edge. The organisation can get
several benefits and all those benefits aspects that they can get have been illustrated in the
report. The usage of WAN wireless technology can help the organisation to carry out the
business activities. The company can face several risks and challenges while adopting the
POS system. The company can suffer from confidentiality, privacy and security issues. All
these negative aspects have been explained in the report. Recommendations made in the
report will help to know how Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery can make use of the
POS system effectively in the business.
9. Recommendations
i. Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery should ethically make use of POS system so that the
employees working in the company can fulfil the business objectives.
ii. Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery should install an antivirus program in the system as
that can safeguard the system and the database from the malicious activities of the intruders.

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iii. Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery should concentrate more on taking innovative
approach and decision making. This approach can give them multiple benefits. Four Seasons
Greenhouse and Nursery can get the competitive edge so that they can earn revenues more.

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10. Bibliography
Chavali, P., Yang, P. and Nehorai, A., 2014. A distributed algorithm of appliance scheduling
for home energy management system. IEEE Transactions on Smart Grid, 5(1), pp.282-290.
Cui, B., Jiang, J., Huang, Q., Xu, Y., Gui, Y. and Zhang, W., 2016. POS: A high-level system
to simplify real-time stream application development on storm. Data Science and
Engineering, 1(1), pp.41-50.
Kobersy, I.S., Barmuta, K.A., Muradova, S.S., Dubrova, L.I. and Shkurkin, D., 2015. The
system of the methodological principles of management of enterprise
development. Mediterranean Journal of Social Sciences, 6(3 S4), p.25.
Laudon, K.C. and Laudon, J.P., 2016. Management information system. Pearson Education
India.
Lee, H., Ahn, H., Choi, S. and Choi, W., 2014. The SAMS: Smartphone addiction
management system and verification. Journal of medical systems, 38(1), p.1.
Lee, H.J., Lee, Y. and Won, D., 2014. Protection Profile for PoS (Point of Sale) System.
In Mobile, Ubiquitous, and Intelligent Computing (pp. 495-500). Springer, Berlin,
Heidelberg.
Missaoui, R., Joumaa, H., Ploix, S. and Bacha, S., 2014. Managing energy smart homes
according to energy prices: Analysis of a building energy management system. Energy and
Buildings, 71, pp.155-167.
Nanda, V., 2016. Quality management system handbook for product development companies.
CRC Press.

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Natek, S. and Zwilling, M., 2014. Student data mining solution–knowledge management
system related to higher education institutions. Expert systems with applications, 41(14),
pp.6400-6407.
Olivares, D.E., Lara, J.D., Cañizares, C.A. and Kazerani, M., 2015. Stochastic-predictive
energy management system for isolated microgrids. IEEE Transactions on Smart Grid, 6(6),
pp.2681-2693.
Yang, D. and Hwang, I., 2015, May. Security enhancement methods for mobile POS system.
In Mobile Software Engineering and Systems (MOBILESoft), 2015 2nd ACM International
Conference on (pp. 152-153). IEEE.
Zhong, M., Cao, Q., Guo, J. and Zhou, D., 2016. Simultaneous Lever-Arm Compensation
and Disturbance Attenuation of POS for a UAV Surveying System. IEEE Transactions on
Instrumentation and Measurement, 65(12), pp.2828-2839.