Advantages of Point of Sale System

Discuss about the Point of Sale for International Journal of Hospitality Management.

Point of sale is also known as point of service as it deals with sales, customer’s issues and dealing with new orders. In this report detailed decision is done about point of sale along with the risks associated with point of sale. IT has various type of security issues associated with it that have been analysed in this report.  Additionally, the types of telecommunication in network and its terminologies have been discussed.

Point of sale is a new technology that is been adopted by every industry as it not used for dealing the sales of products but it take care of all the return policies and new products that are launched in the market (B2C, 2018). It has made the business work automatically by removing the manual work of tracking the sales status. It simplifies the business operations by making it automatic. 

There are various advantages of point of sale system, discussing some of them.

• It reduces the human errors as most of the work is done automatically and has reduced manual work and the chances of small errors.
• It also increases the efficiency of the system by reducing the duplication of data as it makes the work automatic.
• Deployment of system is also easy by using point of sale.
• It helps in managing the system by automatically regenerating the reports and has substitute the manual report making process (Lifewire, 2018).
• It helps in monitoring the system on regular basis by keeping track on all the sales record and the daily transaction. It shows an alert message at the emergency situation so that plans could be regenerated to make sure business works continuously.
• It is a flexible approach as it helps in building a strong Customer relation management (SolutionDots, 2014). That helps in keeping track of single as well as multiple customers and tracking all the past transactions.
• It provides a more detailed receipt to customer that helps in building trust among customers.
• It reduces the labour cost; as the accounting process and maintenance process is all done automatically that do not require manual staff.
• It uses a sophisticated way to provide acute results (Berezina, et. al, 2016).
• The system is designed in an effective manner that keeps customers remain in the business for longer time.
• The repair and maintenance cost of point of sale system is very nominal. 

The point of sale system has some of the drawbacks.

• Working on point of sale system makes the business rely completely on the software and the software need to be updated so that no bugs hit the system. Setting up this required additional initial setup fees.
• Point of sale system has high security issues if the system is not updated. If it is not correctly updated it may lead to security fissures.
• The web based system is truly dependent on internet connection. If the internet connection is not reliable it makes the access to customers impossible.
• It is difficult to resolve the hardware issues. 

It is true that working with point of sale system will help business gain the competitive advantage. Competitive advantage helps the business to gain higher sale margin with better profit. It attracts more audience to offer unique advantage to the company. It helps the business as it provides better customers experience’s which help the business to compete with other businesses serving the same products and services (Alexander and Schantz, 2017). Competitive advantage helps in getting deeper knowledge about the business by understanding why the business is lagging in the market. This design innovative marketing strategies to improve the sale in the market. It also delivers report on regular basis so that proper analysis could be done to make the decisions faster and improve the business strategies (Good, et. al,  2018). This has provided ease to customers as they do not need ot wait for longer time to get their services.

 In today’s era, where everyone wishes to get their products and services instantly and expect for quick response, point of system is used to resolve the concern. It is the fast growing technology that provides better customer experience (Mohammed and Saleh, 2017).  It supports online payment options and provides a two way communication facility from anywhere and at any time. PoS help business to get competitive advantage as it segregate the business from other competitors by making it more effective. It helps the business to stand out other businesses by offering better opportunities and speed. Point of sale helps in expanding the business by offering lower upfront cost (Huang, et. al, 2014).

Drawbacks of Point of Sale System

As stated in case study, Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery uses POS system that has eliminated the means of tracking sales manually. It focuses on tracking the sales data automatically and instantly at the time of the sale. This has helped four seasons greenhouse and nursing has it reduced labour expenses and gained popularity in economical world with extreme efficiency.

Centralized database system is a collection of all the similar databases at a single location. It is very useful as it enhances the speed of processing and improves the performance of the system.

Various advantages offered by centralized database system are:

• Security- Centralized database system makes sure that integrity and confidentiality of data packets are met. It assures that data assets of all the businesses are accessible only by authorized users (Blake ,Collier, McGregor and Koser, 2015). It avoids the conflicts caused due to data replication.
• Sharing of information- it helps in sharing the data at multiple location effectively as data is stored at single location rather than being scattered at multiple sites.
• Recovery- Centralized database maintains backup of sensitive data which do not cause loss to the business even at time of failure.
• Maintaining integrity- The information is stored at single location, so that whenever modification needs to be done changes need to be done at single location.
• Reduced cost- : Centralized database reduces the overall cost as maintenance is done of single server that is less costly than providing maintenance of multiple servers. Also, it decreases the overall space requirement for data storage (Blake ,Collier, McGregor and Koser, 2015).
• Consistent- Centralized database system is more reliable.
• It allows data to be accessed from anywhere ta anytime.
• It is easy to access the data instantly. 

It is possible to track the information manually but this is very time consuming process and requires a lot of efforts. Keep the track of data manually is a complex process and decreases the efficiency as information is not updated and more staff is needed in the company to handle the tasks.

The automatic generation of reports is useful as it helps in visualizing the situation in a better way (White & Mobility , 2015). The plans are designed after understand the issues. Point of sale system gives alert in the system whenever services or products go out of stock. Thus it helps in maintaining the demand and undertaking decisions for betterment of an organisation.

Point of sale technology has turned out to be very beneficial for business as it has reduced the paper work. Additionally it has saved the useless efforts and time by making better customer relation (Bemmel and Mian, 2014). All the information can be managed in a better way as it is done automatically rather than making the reports by manual work. It all also provides more accurate result without any errors.

Point of sale system requires a telecommunication network for exchanging the information between different parties. A proper link is needed to transmit the message, signals and information (McNamee, et. al,  2015). Some telecommunication networks that can be used with POS system are:

• Local Area Network- it is used to link computers within the same organisation that are located in same area. The transferring seeped of data packets in 10Mbps. It is reachable to 1000 of users at a time. The management of LAN is done by single entity as they manage and control all the operation.
• Wide Area Network- it is used to connect LAN’s over a channel. The speed at which data transfer is dependent on implementation cost of routers which is dependent on the distance. It is owned and controlled by distributed ownership.
• Metropolitan Area Network- it operates at very high speed and is used to connect all the LAN’s in nearby area. They are owned and controlled by government authorities.

The telecommunication technologies include either wired technology or wireless technology. In wired technology communication between devices are done using cables and wires wherein the wireless technology communication is done through radio waves rather than cables. Advantage of wireless network over wired network is mobility and freedom to move and work. It suffers in terms of speed and security of data. Additionally, wired networks are difficult to install and it also increases thefts (Tseng,  Lee and Tseng, 2015). However the cost of transmission is high in wireless system but it covers wider area for communication. Wireless systems are reasonably maintenance-free as they can be easily maintained. 

Competitive Advantage Through Point of Sale System

There are various risks associated with the system that is privacy, confidentiality and security. Point of sale system is important to be secured as it stores all the sensitive data of the business like information of cards, emails as well as private data. Point of system can run on any operating system like Windows, Linux as well as UNIX which increases the chances of flaws (Mateu, et. al,  2015). There are various risks associated with the network like it gives access to third party users by leaking the confidentiality and getting the data hacked by the attacker. Risk management is a procedure that allows user to take vital decisions to avoid possible threats to hit the system.

Privacy of data is required to keep sure that data remains confidential. Proper access should be decided about who can read, write and modify the data (Norp, et. al , 2015). Security of information is important to keep the information confidential, available and integrated and ensuring that data is available to only authenticated user (Weiss, Cosart, Hanssen and Yao,  2016). 

For better development in the society advanced and updated tool must be use so that business could grow rapidly. In the IT world, there are several vulnerable threats which can cause serious loss of information as unauthorized user tries to gather information which can be misused and leads to business disruption. 

Conclusion

It can be concluded that information technology has transferred the ways in which business operates. The use of point of sale system has added effectiveness in working of the business. It has allowed firms to increase their efficiency and effectiveness by enhancing the growth. The case study has helped in analysing how point of sale has helped the business to work.  

References 

Alexander, C.R. and Schantz, J.M., Hartford Fire Insurance Co (2017). Graphical user interface for tracking data access and data changes in a centralized database. U.S. Patent Application 14/829,155.

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Berezina, K., Semrad, K.J., Stepchenkova, S. and Cobanoglu, C. (2016). The managerial flash sales dash: Is there advantage or disadvantage at the finish line?. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 54, pp.12-24.

Blake III, N.P., Collier, C.L., McGregor, G.M. and Koser, V.R., NCR Corp (2015). Centralized user preference management for electronic decision making devices. U.S. Patent 9,021,363.

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McNamee, A., Dunne, C.R., Hogan, J., Lehane, B. and D’souza, A., Openet Telecom Ltd, (2015) Systems for enabling subscriber monitoring of telecommunications network usage and service plans. U.S. Patent 8,929,859.

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