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HOLMES INSTITUTE FACULTY OF HIGHER EDUCATION Individual Assignment HOLMES INSTITUTE FACULTY OF HIGHER EDUCATION Impact of IT on Business XXXXXXXXXXwords worth 25% HC1041 IT for Business Trimester 1...

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HOLMES INSTITUTE



FACULTY OF HIGHER EDUCATION



Individual Assignment

HOLMES INSTITUTE
FACULTY OF HIGHER EDUCATION
Impact of IT on Business

XXXXXXXXXXwords worth 25%

HC1041 IT for Business
Trimester 1 2018





Date Due: Friday Week 10 by 5:00 PM
Marks: Weighting 25%


Student Name (Block letters) XXXXXXXXXXStudent Number:

___________________________ XXXXXXXXXX_____________


HOLMES INSTITUTE

FACULTY OF
HIGHER EDUCATION
HC1041 IT for Business - Trimester 1 2018

1
Individual Assignment Requirements

Read the case study and answer the following questions:

1) What are the advantages and disadvantages of the new POS system?
2) How will this POS system help the business gain competitive advantages?
3) What are the advantages of having a centralised database?
4) How could this POS system facilitate decision making?
Address the following points:
ï‚· Why do point-of-sale systems process business activities more effectively?
ï‚· Can the information be tracked manually in an effective manner? Why or why not?
ï‚· What types of questions could be answered effectively?
ï‚· How could the information be used to better manage the business?
5) Recommend telecommunication options for this POS system
Address the following points:
 Types of networks – LAN, WAN or MAN?
ï‚· Types of media? --Wired or wireless technologies? Which types of cables should
e used for wired technologies? Which types of wireless technologies?
6) What type of risks does the POS system
ing and how to protect the business
against the risks?
Address the following points:
ï‚· Security
ï‚· Privacy
ï‚· Confidentiality

Your report will be assessed on the quality of your research and quality of report.
Discussion must be relevant to the case study business. Your report is to be in the style
of a business report.
HC1041 IT for Business - Trimester 1 2018

2
Case study -- Blooming with Technology
The use of information technology is needed by every industry size and type of business.
Small businesses can realize the positive effects through adopting technology. However,
small businesses often do not have the resources and expertise of large corporations to
implement information technology strategies. However, the benefits of technology for
small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are just as crucial to business operations and
strategy.
Consider Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery, located in Colorado. This small nursery
was like many other small businesses and garden centers. They used manual registers to
track and maintain its inventory as well as determine which products were realizing the
most profit. The profits from the nursery were either "negligible" or a loss. They did not
have access to useful operational data to effectively manage their business. For
example, they did not track or review the margins of individual products. However, they
elieved that they needed to do something different for their $1M business operation.
Enter a new point-of-sale system (POS) in 2008. The system allowed the owners to track
useful business data from the sales transactions immediately at the time of the sale;
eliminating the need for tracking sales manually. The system processes and stores data
from the sale while updating the inventory as well as compiling a sales history. This
eliminates reliance on manual entry of sales transactions and reduction of inventory
units for the items sold. POS systems provide much more than a cash register. These
systems provide more robust functionality in inputting, tracking, and distributing data to
provide useful information to operate and manage the business.
Accurate inventory data maintained by the POS helped with decision making. Decisions
on how many units of a product to order were no longer based on speculation about
cu
ent inventory units. Now, accurate inventory counts eliminate the guesswork on
how much to order, helping the business to operate on leaner inventory units. The
system's reporting can provide the detail transactions for an inventory item, such as how
many were purchased, discarded, and sold.
The implementation of a POS system also confirmed that the owners did not know as
much about their business as they thought they did. As they reviewed reports from the
new system, they saw that some products were less profitable than they thought. The
more detailed cost reporting by item helped them to understand which products
contributed the most profit to the operation. Their new perspective of the "real costs"
provided the opportunity to shift production to the higher-profit items, thereby gaining
more profit. Prior to implementing the POS system, they simply did not have the time to
approach this level of decision making.
Knowledge of their detailed product costs helps them to price products more profitably.
Price changes can be implemented temporarily (for a promotion) or permanently and
still remain within acceptable product margins. The accurate and timely reporting of this
information assists them to be more effective managers of their business operations.
The ability of the system to process sales, inventory, and purchasing transactions
immediately reduces the need for data entry of paper information. The time savings can
e used for managing the business rather than mundane clerical functions.
The new system has expanded Four Seasons' management control over employee
schedules to review and allocate labour expenses to specific departments and functions.
An additional benefit allows the owners to delegate more responsibility to the staff and
establish accountability. Instead of the owners establishing goals, they provide the
HC1041 IT for Business - Trimester 1 2018

3
system's data and ask staff to submit their sales goals for the next reporting period.
Ultimately, the information technology system creates a solid infrastructure to process
and report the businesses operations for the entire enterprise.
The garden centre is an excellent example of how technology can realize benefits for a
usiness. The ability for organizations to remain competitive and agile is crucial. These
systems allow organizations large and small to leverage business data to gain a
competitive advantage and operational efficiency.
Source: Jones, R. (2011, May). Garden Center 2.0. Today's Garden Center, 8, 14-16.
Assessment Criteria (Individual Assignment 25%) Weighting

1. Introduction:
Clear statement of purpose, clarity of methods and assumptions;
systematic approach to project.

2. Use of resources:
Application of relevant course concepts, tools and frameworks use of
evidences, engagement with the literature.

3. Content:
ï‚· Balanced coverage of each of the important points,
ï‚· Richness of analysis;
ï‚· Flow of ideas;
ï‚· Validity of objectives,
ï‚· Use of own insight and originality;
ï‚· Feasibility of recommendations and implementation
consideration

4. Organization and Presentation:
Clarity of structure, quality of presentation, style and readability.
Title page, Table of contents, List of a
eviations and/or glossary,
Executive summary/abstract, Introduction, Body, Conclusion
Recommendations, Bibliography, Appendices

5. Citation practice:
Appropriate citation of sources and evidences used.

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Answered Same Day May 22, 2020 HC1041

Solution

Tanya answered on May 23 2020
153 Votes
Assignment
Table Of Contents
    Topic
    Page No
    Introduction
    3
    Advantages and disadvantages of the new POS system
    3
    How will POS system help the business gain competitive advantages
    4
    Advantages of having a centralised database
    4
    How could POS system facilitate decision making
    5
    Recommend telecommunication options for POS system
    5
    What type of risks does the POS system
ing
    6
    References
    7
Introduction
The report shows how the POS systems (Point of Sale Systems) help small businesses in having a more clear idea about their business.
The POS system allowed the expertise staff or the owners to track down the useful business data and analytics from the sales transactions immediately at the time of the sale. Doing so eliminates the need for tracking down the sales manually.
The report also signifies the advantages, disadvantages of this new system.
It also signifies that how the POS system helps the businesses gain a competitive advantage.
The telecommunication options for POS system For the Four Seasons Greenhouse and Nursery is recommended.
After the implementation of the POS system in the case study, and after the review of the reports from the POS system, the owners reported that they did not know this much about their business at work as much as they thought they did.
Thus, we can conclude that the use of information technology in today’s world is needed by each and every industry- i
espective of their size and type of business.
What are the advantages and disadvantages of the new POS system?
There are various advantages of POS system. Some of them include:
· Improvement in efficiency of the system
· Stock management of the system improves in efficiency
· The reports are now accurate and detailed
· Employee tracking becomes feasible
· The stock price becomes consistent
· POS system gives the retailers, back their precious time as well as money
· The POS system cuts down on the admin time and also on the user e
o
Just like the two sides of the coin, the POS system also has some disadvantages of its own.
Some of the disadvantages are also listed below:
· A continuous, fast speed and reliable internet or Intranet connection is required in this system and an ISP (Internet Service Provider) is also required to maintain the POS system .
· The people in the business will have to pay for the new licenses and the software costs when there is an expansion in the business.
· The li
ary updates, the software updates which are very frequent, can be very expensive and also very time taking.
· Many POS systems that are web based charge a monthly subscription fee which reduces the profit earned by the company in the long run.
· The software based POS systems can be more complicated than web based systems and can difficult to use rather than the easily and freely available web based system.
· Not just the software, but the hardware which are associated with the software’s should compulsorily create a connectivity between the internet/intranet and the hardware system.
· There are many people who complain about online payments that expose the credit , Debit card details of customers, stakeholders etc. This issue puts the security at a high risk.
How will the POS system help the business gain competitive advantages?
The way in each all the shops...
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