POS System Implementation & Benefits for SMEs - Holmes Institute

This report analyzes the benefits of Point of Sale (POS) systems for Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs), particularly focusing on a case study of a greenhouse and nursery. The report highlights how POS systems improve business growth, productivity, and decision-making by providing accur...Read More

Running head: BENEFITS OF POS FOR SMALL AND MEDIUM SIZE ENTERPRISE
BENEFITS OF POS FOR SMALL AND MEDIUM SIZE ENTERPRISE
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1Influence of POS
Executive Summary:
According to case study it has been observed that the small industries and businesses were
mostly unaware of the usage of information technology in their field. Due to lack of resources
and expertise it was very difficult to implement the strategies of information technology. This
case has considered a small Greenhouse and nursery as a small size enterprise (SME’s).
These SME’swere facing several problems regarding their profits and productivity. I order to
overcome from those problems Point of sale system (POS) was introduced. After
implementation of this technology it allowed the owners to keep track on important data and
sale transactions. This report will discuss about how the POS has made changes in SME’s in
terms of enhancing their profit and productivity. It will further recommend several
telecommunication options for the betterment of POS system.

2Influence of POS
Table of Contents
Introduction:...............................................................................................................................3
Benefits and Drawbacks of POS system in small businesses:...................................................3
POS system to improve the business growth:............................................................................4
Advantages of Centralized database:.........................................................................................4
POS system to facilitate the Decision making:..........................................................................5
POS system for effective business activities:.........................................................................5
Manual tracker is effective or not:.........................................................................................5
Facility of Decision making to address the questions effectively:.........................................6
Steps taken for the betterment of the business:......................................................................6
Recommendation of telecommunication for POS system:........................................................6
Risk factors and Risk Managements of POS system:................................................................7
These risks can be managed by adopting some strategies:....................................................7
Conclusion:................................................................................................................................7
Recommendation:......................................................................................................................8

3Influence of POS
Introduction:
According to case study it has been observed that the small industries and businesses
were mostly unaware of the usage of information technology in their field. Due to lack of
resources and expertise it was very difficult to implement the strategies of information
technology. This case has considered a small Greenhouse and nursery as a small size
enterprise (SME) (Laudon 2016).This SME were facing several problems regarding their
profits and productivity. As per (Shimoda 2016) in order to overcome from those problems,
Point of sale system (POS) was introduced. Based on the case study this report will discuss
about the advantages and disadvantages of POS system in the field of SME’s like nursery and
greenhouse, and how POS is helping the business to improve their business growth. It will
further discuss about the facility of decision making in POS system, how the offered
telecommunication options are addressed by POS system and as well as the risk factors of
POS’s.
Benefits and Drawbacks of POS system in small businesses:
POS system has several advantages over the traditional data management system. In
the traditional nursery farming the management team used the manual registration process to
track their productivity and employee behaviour but after the invention of POS system,
the management team can now effectively communicate with their employees and track their
behaviour and activities, this strategy also helps to keep track on their productivity as well
which improves their work efficiency (Tajeddini 2013). POS system provides accurate
results rather than probable results. However, POS system has several benefits over small
businesses it has some drawbacks too. The enterprise should have reliable internet
connection as this entire process is web-based. As the POS software updates very
frequently this technology requires updated software as well as advanced hardware. POS

4Influence of POS
systems are very costly, therefore it is very difficult to implement such expensive technology
for SME’s. Thus disbursement is of the major drawbacks of the POS system.
POS system to improve the business growth:
Spins are one of the most important characteristics of POS in order to enhance their
productivity, mostly with live goods. The management needs to record the detail of their
clients, when the nursery has active customer doing regular transactions from their garden.
Keeping an accurate customer track helps to determine the productivity ratio of the nursery
and predict the customers probable needs, which will help to improve the product availability
for that particular customer. It helps to improve the relationship with the customer and makes
the transaction process simple. The POS system will provoke the entire SME nursery to be
accurate on time. This will improve the business growth and help to enhance their
relationship with the customers as well (Giordano 2013).
Advantages of Centralized database:
However, centralized database sometimes has some major drawbacks but it also has
several numbers of advantages for SME’s which are discussed further.
One of the major advantages of a centralized database is it provides efficient data
representation, as the centralized database offered a fault tolerant setting and protection from
unwanted data preservation, there will be less chance of permanent data loss. A centralized
database is highly secure data storage as it is not a distributed storage system. This database
systems demands to invest high money to some specific servers such as fault tolerance but
reduces the overall cost. Because of its centralized structure, it has high update speed and it
prevents the data replication as well. It offers 99% of recovery facility, in case of any failure
the system can quickly recover the lost items.

5Influence of POS
POS system to facilitate Decision making:
POS system helps to gather the customer information for the betterment of the nursery
to analyze the customer interest. Some of the key points of the POS system based on the
facility of decision making in order to enhance the nursery work efficiency are explored
below.
POS system for effective business activities:
The purpose of implementing point of sale systems into SME is to improve the
business operation simple. Errors made by humans are the most important reason behind the
business loss, thus the point of sale system helps the organizations owner and employee to
save time, efforts and also provides error prevention method. After implementing the point of
sale system into their organization, it can avoid 100% human errors. The point of sale system
can help the organization to rectify any problem related to that organization. Along with this
effectiveness of decision-making facility of the point of sale system, there is another major
effective strategy which offers the owner to access all the important data from the database
and make an effective decision based on those data.
Manual tracker is effective or not:
According to (Mendenhall 2016) manual database tracker is basically a concept of
pen paper registration process. This process demands a human brain to do all the operation.
As it has been already discussed that the business losses are mostly because of human faults,
thus the manual tracker is not as efficient as the automated tracker as the automated trackers
are electronics data tracking process. There are various reasons behind the failure of manual
tracker which are described below.
It is very hard to analyze all the data of the organization by manual tracking and make
a decision, as the human error is one of the major drawbacks of the manual tracker. To get the

6Influence of POS
facility of decision making the SME must have computer driven tracker which can calculate
the activities of the customer as well as the employee ( Prajogo 2016).
Facility of Decision making to address the questions effectively:
The facility of Decision making can answer several questions effectively, which are
mentioned below:
After the data analysis, the POS system can determine the probable timing of any
employee to take a break. It can also determine the possible area that the organization needs
to be focused on. The customer preferable products and locations can also be determined by
automated decision-making facility (Velasquez 2013).
Steps were taken for the betterment of the business:
After the implementation of POS system, the information can be used to drive the
organization towards a good track. After analyzing the entire data the decision-making
facility can provide a possible result for the better business scope. It provides accurate results
regarding the customer needs and helps the SME to improve their productivity for those
products. As a result of analyzing the entire data POS can provide effective results for the
betterment of the business (Kahraman 2015).
Recommendation of telecommunication for POS system:
LAN and WAN both are quite similar types of network protocol, basic difference
between these two is LAM helps to communicate within a room and WAN helps to
communicate in large area. It is very useful to implement LAN and WAM in small
businesses. It provides a centralized database which can extremely beneficial for SME’s.
They can easily do several operations related to stock control, employ behaviour monitoring.
The main advantage of WAN is its wide scale, it can communicate by connecting several

7Influence of POS
sites together between different sides of the country. Implementation of WAN offers to
connect several branches of any small business enterprises ( Vaquero 2016).
Telecommunication offers two types medium Wired and Wireless. Wired technology
offers transmission through physical wires. In case of wired technologies Ethernet cables,
copper wires are optical fiber cables are (Udayakumar 2013). Whereas, the wireless
technology offers transmission without any physical medium or cable. Mobile phone
connections are the real-life example of Wireless technology. The wireless technology uses
the air, electromagnetic wave, microwave and radio wave as their transmission medium
(Frotzscher 2014). Both the wired and wireless mediums are used to connect data network.
LAN uses the wired method and WAN uses the wireless method. Based on these two
methods the telecommunication process in SME’s will be very progressive.
Risk factors and Risk Management of POS system:
Along with all the advantages, there are few major risk factors in POS which includes
security, privacy and confidentiality. As the POS is handled by the third party the customer
detail can be leaked and can be used for some illegal activities (Mestre 2016).The privacy
factors of POS database is also a major risk factor of it. Customer and employee details are
also not kept confidentially as the entire database is handled by the third party.
These risks can be managed by adopting some strategies:
All the above risks can be managed by using the concept of cryptography. The POS
system should have introduced an encryption and decryption process by which the
information can be secured tightly. This method will prevent data leakage as this concept
depends on customer or employee response ( Grewal 2017).

8Influence of POS
Conclusion:
This report concludes that the POS system has improved the business strategies and
helps to increase the productivity of an SME nursery. It has also discussed the advantages and
disadvantages of a POS system. Furthermore, this report has explored the facility of the
Decision making and also discussed the risk management as well as its preventions. After
completion of this report, it is clearly visible that POS system has improved the SME’s
business strategies and it also consist some drawbacks too if the drawbacks can be handled
carefully POS can effectively improve any SME’s business model.
Recommendation:
However there are very few drawbacks of these POS system but the existing drawbacks can
be resolved by adopting the concept of Cryptography, Which includes encryption and
decryption process. This method will prevent data leakage as this concept depends on
customer or employee response.

9Influence of POS
Reference List
Shimoda, M., Ishino, T. and Matsuo, M., Fujitsu Ltd, 2016. POS system. U.S. Patent
4,855,908.
Laudon, K.C. and Laudon, J.P., 2016. Management information system. Pearson Education
India.
Giordano, J. and Murray, J., ExxonMobil Research and Engineering Co, 2013. System and
method for processing financial transactions. U.S. Patent 8,538,801.
Velasquez, M. and Hester, P.T., 2013. An analysis of multi-criteria decision making
methods. International Journal of Operations Research, 10(2), pp.56-66.
Kahraman, C., Onar, S.C. and Oztaysi, B., 2015. Fuzzy multicriteria decision-making: a
literature review. International Journal of Computational Intelligence Systems, 8(4),
pp.637-666.
Tajeddini, K., Elg, U. and Trueman, M., 2013. Efficiency and effectiveness of small retailers:
The role of customer and entrepreneurial orientation. Journal of Retailing and
Consumer Services, 20(5), pp.453-462.
Vaquero, L.M. and Rodero-Merino, L., 2014. Finding your way in the fog: Towards a
comprehensive definition of fog computing. ACM SIGCOMM Computer
Communication Review, 44(5), pp.27-32.
Frotzscher, A., Wetzker, U., Bauer, M., Rentschler, M., Beyer, M., Elspass, S. and Klessig,
H., 2014, June. Requirements and current solutions of wireless communication in
industrial automation. In Communications workshops (ICC), 2014 IEEE international
conference on (pp. 67-72). IEEE.

10Influence of POS
Udayakumar, R., Khanaa, V. and Kaliyamurthie, K.P., 2013. High data rate for coherent
optical wired communication using DSP. Indian Journal of Science and
Technology, 6(6), pp.4772-4776.
Mestré, P., Radu, C., Vanneste, P., Phillips, S. and Carter, R.D., Mastercard International Inc,
2016. Methods for risk management in payment-enabled mobile device. U.S. Patent
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Grewal, D., Roggeveen, A.L. and Nordfält, J., 2017. The future of retailing. Journal of
Retailing, 93(1), pp.1-6.
Prajogo, D.I., 2016. The strategic fit between innovation strategies and business environment
in delivering business performance. International Journal of Production
Economics, 171, pp.241-249.
Mendenhall, W. M., Sincich, T. L., & Boudreau, N. S. (2016). Statistics for Engineering and
the Sciences, Student Solutions Manual. Chapman and Hall/CRC.