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    POS - Point of Sale Business Plan

    Uploaded by

    Edglad
    This document proposes a plan to reduce unnecessary paper receipts from point-of-sale (POS) transactions. It estimates that allowing customers to opt-out of paper receipts could save Canadian businesses $372 million annually in thermal paper costs while preserving 4 million trees. The plan aims to shift receipts to digital formats by storing payment details on customer payment cards and emailing digital receipts when paper versions aren't requested. Stakeholders like customers, retailers, and banks may accept the plan due to cost savings and environmental benefits. Risks involve losing customers accustomed to physical receipts and resistance from banks. Mitigation strategies include education on environmental impacts and leveraging digital receipts for marketing.

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    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd

    POS - Point of Sale Business Plan

    Uploaded by

    Edglad
    873 views4 pages
    This document proposes a plan to reduce unnecessary paper receipts from point-of-sale (POS) transactions. It estimates that allowing customers to opt-out of paper receipts could save Canadian businesses $372 million annually in thermal paper costs while preserving 4 million trees. The plan aims to shift receipts to digital formats by storing payment details on customer payment cards and emailing digital receipts when paper versions aren't requested. Stakeholders like customers, retailers, and banks may accept the plan due to cost savings and environmental benefits. Risks involve losing customers accustomed to physical receipts and resistance from banks. Mitigation strategies include education on environmental impacts and leveraging digital receipts for marketing.

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    POS_Point of Sale Business Plan

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    This document proposes a plan to reduce unnecessary paper receipts from point-of-sale (POS) transactions. It estimates that allowing customers to opt-out of paper receipts could save Canadian businesses $372 million annually in thermal paper costs while preserving 4 million trees. The plan aims to shift receipts to digital formats by storing payment details on customer payment cards and emailing digital receipts when paper versions aren't requested. Stakeholders like customers, retailers, and banks may accept the plan due to cost savings and environmental benefits. Risks involve losing customers accustomed to physical receipts and resistance from banks. Mitigation strategies include education on environmental impacts and leveraging digital receipts for marketing.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    873 views4 pages

    POS - Point of Sale Business Plan

    Uploaded by

    Edglad
    This document proposes a plan to reduce unnecessary paper receipts from point-of-sale (POS) transactions. It estimates that allowing customers to opt-out of paper receipts could save Canadian businesses $372 million annually in thermal paper costs while preserving 4 million trees. The plan aims to shift receipts to digital formats by storing payment details on customer payment cards and emailing digital receipts when paper versions aren't requested. Stakeholders like customers, retailers, and banks may accept the plan due to cost savings and environmental benefits. Risks involve losing customers accustomed to physical receipts and resistance from banks. Mitigation strategies include education on environmental impacts and leveraging digital receipts for marketing.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    of 4

    EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

    POS (Point-Of-Sale) machines and cashless transactions are an integral part of today’s shopping
    experience. POS machines allow customers to swipe their cards, input the amount to be paid and pay
    electronically for a transaction within seconds after the transaction is sent for authorization.
    Alternatively, the account number can be typed in and following approval the customer receives and
    signs a receipt. In short, POS machines allow businesses to save costs and make transactions more
    efficient.

    Statistics Canada lists about 2.4 million business locations in Canada with more than 900,000 business
    locations in Ontario alone. Considering the nature of today’s business world, it is reasonable to assume
    that most of these businesses use POS machines for some day to day business transactions. Most
    POS machines generate paper receipts for the customer as well as the merchant. These receipts are
    generated in addition to the customized bills that may or may not be offered by businesses to their
    customers. This results in a large number of paper receipts being printed every day, most of which are
    not requested by customers.

    Our business plan attempts to solve this inefficiency by placing the onus on the customer to request or
    deny a paper receipt for a POS transaction. For those customers who do not request a paper receipt,
    the receipt can be sent electronically to the email address embedded in the customer’s money card
    (credit/debit). This would allow businesses all over the world to save on expensive thermal paper and
    reduce the amount of paper consumed for unnecessary paper receipts. By making some basic
    assumptions and using statistics available on number of businesses and paper usage, we estimate a
    potential cost savings of upto $372 million per annum, besides saving 4 million trees and energy
    required to produce 342,000 tons of paper, in Canada alone. By extrapolating these numbers to
    businesses around the world which use the POS system, we estimate cost savings in the range of
    billions of dollars and a significant positive impact to forest conservation around the world.
    STAKEHOLDER POWER/INTEREST ANALYSIS:

    Stakeholder Involvement in the value chain Acceptance of the proposal


    Customer High influence in directing business Withdrawal amongst certain sections
    operations. (elderly/uneducated).
    High interest in the way business is Acceptance by the majority “green”
    run customer base
    Retail Chain owner High influence in directing business Acceptance courtesy the tremendous
    operations. cost savings in billing paper
    High interest in the way business is
    run
    Financial Institutions Monitor the financial transactions Satisfies their green initiatives
    (Credit Card company) through various POSs
    Technical POS services Provide the required software The business plan brings revenues
    provider development services through service charges

    COST BENEFIT ANALYSIS


    For the purpose of this analysis we are considering businesses in Canada with POS terminals which
    use thermal paper for printing card receipts. According to Industry Canada statistics, there are 2.4
    million business locations in Canada at the moment. From these we assume that about 70% have at
    least one POS terminal. Thus the total number of POS systems in Canada is 1.7 million approximately.

    One carton of thermal paper costs 32.95 CAD and contains 100 rolls. For the sake of simplicity, we
    assume that one roll can print 200 receipts and in a day a business uses 2 rolls of thermal paper.
    Hence in a year the number of rolls required by a business would be 730 which would approximately
    cost $219 CAD. As mentioned above, the number of businesses in Canada for the sake of this
    calculation is 1.7 million. Hence the total number of rolls required per year in Canada would be 1.2
    billion. Thus, the total savings from reducing paper roll consumption would be $ 372 million CAD.

    One ton of uncoated virgin paper requires 24 trees and a roll of thermal paper weighs 250 grams
    approximately. Hence the weight of 1.2 billion rolls would translate to 342,000 tons of paper which
    would require 8 million trees. Since most paper is recycled nowadays, we shall assume here that 50%
    of paper used for making thermal rolls comes from recycled paper. Therefore, we can save 4 million
    trees by avoiding thermal paper usage in POS terminals.
    Benefits:
    1.Cost savings of $372 million Canadian which is 0.03% of the GDP for the financial year 2011
    2.Protection of 4 million trees
    3.Savings of energy required to produce 342,000 tons of paper

    IMPLEMENTATION SEQUENCE

    Customer Initialization Setting email accounts Software development Feedback


    system

    RISKS
    1. Loss of customer base: Unavailability of a physical invoice/credit purchase receipt might
    discourage customers.
    2. Acceptance: The proposed plan expects businesses to communicate the change in invoicing to
    the customer and liaise with the banks for e-billing.
    3. New technologies: There is a risk from emerging technologies in banking that may render our
    proposal redundant.
    4. Banks: The financial institutions can, for the reasons of “disclosure to the customer” force
    businesses to continue giving receipts of credit purchases to the customer.

    MITIGATION PLANS
    The risks that have been highlighted express concerns over the implementability of this idea and hence
    need proper mitigation plans directed towards all identified stakeholders. The biggest challenge is to
    communicate the advantages to stakeholders, since the proposed change may be opposed initially. To
    counter opposition, the following methods should be implemented to mitigate disapproval or pressure
    from other technologies.

    1. Customers need to be made more aware about the merits of saving paper by stating hard facts.
    Numbers are more convincing but can create a bigger impact if an individual’s positive contribution
    towards saving paper is conveyed appropriately.

    2. Newer technologies such as Near Field Communication (NFC) in mobile devices might deter
    stakeholders such as financial institutions and retailers from buying this idea. Since this idea
    requires no extra infrastructure and can be made compatible with existing POS systems unlike
    NFC, the cost benefits are higher and there is no risk in implementation.

    3. Financial institutions such as banks might disapprove since they might believe that this idea may
    not contribute to their businesses other than adding to their green initiatives. However, these
    transactions give the institutions the opportunity to utilize the medium of e-mail to market their
    products and services much more successfully. Further they enable banks to move from a model of
    responsive CSR to strategic CSR, thus creating shared value for not only the environment but also
    their businesses and the customers in turn.

    REFERENCES

    1. How are point-of-sale systems going mobile? (2011). Retrieved from www.howstuffworks.com: http://
    www.howstuffworks.com/point-of-sale-mobile.htm

    2. Retail Boss POS. (2011). Retrieved from http://www.retailbosspos.com/

    3.Thermal Per Canada. (2011). Retrieved from http://www.thermalpapercanada.com: http://


    www.thermalpapercanada.com/product_p/t3000.htm

    4.Industry Canada. (2011, July). Key small business statistics. Retrieved from http://www.ic.gc.ca:
    http://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/sbrp-rppe.nsf/vwapj/KSBS-PSRPE_July-Juillet2011_eng.pdf/$FILE/KSBS-
    PSRPE_July-Juillet2011_eng.pdf

    5.Trees Into Paper. (2011). How much paper can be made from a tree? Retrieved from http://
    conservatree.org: http://conservatree.org/learn/EnviroIssues/TreeStats.shtml

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