Security and simplifying the buying process are two key areas that online retailers should be focusing on to improve their future business success, says Mike Green, vice president of Retail at Sun. In an interview with Jennifer LeClaire of E-Commerce Times, Green discussed what he views as the biggest challenges facing these up-and-coming businesses.

"The last thing in the world any e-tailer or any consumer wants is to have a security problem. Sun Microsystems has a military grade security system that has never been hacked. Without something like that, it's going to be extremely difficult to keep consumer confidence up and make sure that they continue to buy online," Green offered.

Simplifying the buying process and keeping customers' interest on a retailer's Web site could be part of the success behind what Green calls the large, well-established "brick-and-mortar" corporations that are moving toward "e-tailing."

"Online retailers need to focus on simplifying the buying process while at the same time providing what I call 'a very entertaining environment.' An entertaining environment could be a very serious environment, but it may be entertaining from the standpoint that it keeps the consumer stuck to that particular e-tailer," he advises.

Another aspect that should be considered is lead-time optimization, meaning that the right product is available at the right time.

"Lead-time optimization is particularly critical to e-tailers because typically they don't have the ability to get mark downs in front of consumers as efficiently as a brick-and-mortar retailer does," Green explained. "I see problems in the area of lead-time optimization but not necessarily mistakes, except for not implementing a solution that does a good job of lead-time optimization."

According to Green, mark-downs would not be necessary for online retailers if lead-time optimization is perfected. "You know the customer has a limited pocketbook when they come in. Lead-time optimization is critical to e-tailers. In a perfect world, if you do a perfect job at lead-time optimization, then you would not have any markdowns. That's the objective," he said.

Additionally, supply chain management is an area that Green believes can be easily resolved with the latest Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technologies, however this type of solution has not been implemented to its fullest extent.

"The opportunity I see in supply chain management is to improve the time between when the item is put on a container to the time it gets out of the port. Once it gets to the port it can be lost for two weeks," he said. "The problem is that people have not implemented it from a process standpoint. In other words, they typically start the management of the inventory from the time that they take title to it after it gets off the port. Technologies like RFID will help in the future."

Other future visions for retail involve combining traditional walk-in stores with online retailing features. Green offers his vision of an ideal shopping experience.

"Just imagine walking into a brick-and-mortar store, finding an item that you would like to purchase, but then discovering that the item is not available in your size or color. The next step, in the store of the future, would be that you walk over to a kiosk to scan the tag on the item. The kiosk allows you to order it immediately, thus there is an online completion to the brick-and-mortar cycle," he envisions. "This process will also work the other way around, so if you are shopping online, you could link to a brick-and-mortar environment in order to find the item in your ZIP code. The final step would be to pick up your purchase in the brick-and-mortar store."

To read more about Sun and the Retail industry, visit:

http://www.sun.com/solutions/landing/industry/retail_trade.xml [...read more...]

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