1. I NewsLink ®
STRATEGIES FOR WEB-BASED RETAILING
Sept. 9, 2009
®
IRNewsLink Sponsored Product Spotlight
New payments reporting and analytics platform provides
actionable data that meets individual users’ needs
Managing payment processing data has become a fundamental
aspect of Internet retailing. The experience today is largely consistent
across the industry: enter criteria to generate a flat report, export the
data and then repeat the process until all areas of your business are
covered. From there, you are on your own to aggregate the data and,
more importantly, find meaning in the numbers to help drive the deci-
sions that are key to your business.
Litle & Co, which provides a payments processing platform that
powers card-not-present transactions for goods and services sold
directly to consumers, is changing this paradigm with the upcoming
release of its new Reporting and Analytics platform. Jeff Courcelle
The platform provides a dynamic, flexible reporting experience cou- Design Director
pled with a customizable executive dashboard that not only allows Litle & Co.
users to explore their data in ways that are meaningful to them, but
also provides reporting and analytics data in formats that help drive actionable business decisions.
Bringing data together
“Processing payments generates a vast amount of data and existing interfaces are not easy or
intuitive enough to help businesses extract meaningful information,” says Jeff Courcelle, Design
Director at Litle & Co. “As a result, users spend an extraordinary amount of time navigating flat
reports to find useful information.”
“The new reporting and analytics platform lets users explore data in ways that are meaningful to
them,” Courcelle says. “We’re not dictating the flow of information. Instead, we’re presenting a
lot of different ways to use that information to improve your business. You can explore multiple
groups at once, view data across one line of business for multiple date ranges, or even aggregate
data by settlement currencies. All of this is in one dynamic report instead of many different reports,
and the new platform allows you to export all that data in one click.”
In the realm of payments processing, the payments data needs of retailers differ. What’s more, the
information needs of departments and executives are not the same.
The newly redesigned platform allows every user at an Internet retailing organization—whether
CEO, CFO, an e-commerce chief or a marketing manager—to customize their own dashboard,
pulling together just the data they want in a way that allows for information to be parsed as they
need so they can efficiently make comparisons and draw conclusions.
And they can dynamically change the way they view the data they’ve selected; for example, alter-
ing the date range with one click of the mouse, as opposed to having to run another report. This
allows the user to significantly reduce the amount of manual labor required to extract meaningful
Reprinted with permission. Copyright 2009.

2. information from their payment data for the benefit of multiple departments.
Tim Engle, senior vice president of Jewelry Television, says, “Litle & Co.’s reporting has been in-
strumental and we use it extensively, not only for our normal finance operations, but more of what I
would call micro-reporting to track every single marketing campaign we’re running. Litle’s reporting
allowed us to catch an issue with how one of our campaigns was being accounted for on the back-
end, saving us a lot of money in the form of fees. Without this level of reporting, we could get lost in
it. And in a business where we’re doing 13,000 orders a day, you don’t want to get lost.”
A New View into Payments Data
Following are the key features of the new platform:
l A flexible reporting framework that allows users to visualize data in multiple ways.
For example, viewing a month’s worth of financial data with the ability to pivot the
data by group, date or currency in a single click.
l An analytics dashboard that provides a centralized view of payments key
performance indicators.
l Enhanced exporting that allows users to export multiple data views into a single
report.
l Intuitive design through extensive usability testing that enables users to find
information in only a few clicks.
To make using the system as intuitive as possible, the company performed extensive eye-tracking
studies to help predict where users look first.
“When your eyes hit the page they automatically fall onto the most important piece of information

3. based on the request you made,” Courcelle explains. “This enables users to find and digest the right
data necessary to make real-time business decisions. It also ensures that the data is easy to read
and understand, a must for financial reporting.”
Regular enhancements
To ensure retailers continue to get the most meaningful sets of information they need and in ways
that are fast and visually fulfilling, Litle & Co. will be making enhancements to the Reporting & Ana-
lytics platform every 30 days based on customer feedback and payments processing trends.
“The needs of retailers are ever-changing, they are dynamic. Enhancing the system every 30 days
allows us to react to the market almost instantaneously,” Courcelle says. “We’re going to constantly
improve the platform. Some changes might not be as tangible to users, like performance increases;
but others will be very tangible, like a new report or new functionality in the platform they didn’t have
before. This really allows us to be extremely agile in how we can adapt the platform to keep meeting
the needs of our clients.”
Overall, Courcelle says there are two key objectives for the Reporting & Analytics platform: helping
users obtain information that is actionable and presenting that information in ways users desire.
“The information the reports provide is actionable, it allows end users to make intelligent business
decisions based on the data. It’s not just raw accounting data anymore,” he says.
The ability to dynamically explore data, customize dashboards and provide actionable data to sev-
eral key areas of a retailer’s business make this platform a unique offering in an otherwise standard
space, Courcelle says. Coupled with an organic growth strategy for the application, the Litle & Co.
reporting and analytics platform is positioned to provide remarkable value to retailers
Reprinted with permission. Copyright 2009.
Reprinted with permission of Vertical Web Media LLC, 300 South Wacker Drive, Suite 602, Chicago IL 60606, 312-362-9529