Walmart Luminate is ushering in a new era of retail insights for consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies. Fundamentally, according to Walmart, Luminate will “further democratize a unified view of retail insights, making it easier for suppliers of all sizes and merchants to grow their businesses.”
With full visibility into in-store and online performance data, CPG companies can leverage a single source of truth to enhance supplier-retailer collaboration and improve customer-centric decision-making.
In this guide we will discuss:
- An Understanding of Walmart Luminate
- What is Walmart Luminate?
- Luminate Basic
- Luminate Charter
- Channel Performance
- Shopper Behavior
- Customer Perception
- Retail Link-DSS vs. Luminate Basic and Charter
- Importance of Luminate for CPGs
- What Data You Need and How to Get It
- Why Clean, Harmonized Data Is Essential
- The Need for Automating Walmart Data Collection
- The Benefits of Using Retail Velocity's VELOCITY® Platform with Luminate
UNDERSTANDING WALMART LUMINATE
What is Walmart Luminate?
Walmart Luminate is Walmart’s proprietary comprehensive data analytics product suite within Walmart Data Ventures. It replaces the older Decision Support System (DSS) within Walmart’s Retail Link, which has its limitations and can be time-consuming and cumbersome for users.
This transition to Luminate marks a significant shift in how Walmart and suppliers will manage and utilize data. Walmart believes this changeover to a more responsive, flexible, and better-equipped platform will help suppliers connect with their buyers and account managers more effectively in today's complex retail environment. This improved alliance will streamline joint business planning, leading to more effective results for Walmart and suppliers.
Luminate, billed as a next-generation data platform, will contain more comprehensive datasets, feature more user-friendly interfaces, and offer a suite of advanced reporting tools. Additionally, it will provide greater data transparency and new metrics so brands can gain a deeper understanding of category health and consumer trends.
Luminate Basic and Luminate Charter
Walmart Luminate offers two subscription options: Luminate Basic, a required free version that provides access to select features and data in Walmart Luminate, and Luminate Charter, an optional paid package that allows full access to the entire Walmart Luminate product suite.
Walmart Luminate Basic
Walmart Luminate Basic subscribers will have access to standard operational metrics with pre-packaged and ad hoc downloadable reports to unlock business-critical insights needed to run and grow their Walmart business. This includes a subset of Channel Performance features and insights spanning store sales; e-commerce sales; store, distribution center, and fulfillment center inventory; and demand forecasting.
Although Walmart Luminate Basic does not include all the features of the paid Charter version, many of those features will still be accessible to suppliers in Retail Link (e.g., OTIF scorecard and SQEP dashboard). Also, Basic will not allow report sharing, data feeds, and data consumption via APIs.
Walmart Luminate Charter
The Walmart Luminate Charter package is comprised of three products (or offerings or modules): Channel Performance, Shopper Behavior, and Customer Perception.
- Channel Performance is a reporting tool like Retail Link in that it contains similar functionality and information; however, it offers much more. Channel Performance provides insights into supplier performance across channels: i.e., omnichannel sales, inventory, and store demand forecasting data. This module allows suppliers to gain a comprehensive view of sales, whether in-store, online, delivery, pick up ship to home or store, and ship from store. It also provides on-time-in-full (OTIF) performance visibility, unique operational metrics such as nil picks and online pickup and delivery, and dynamic restatements.
- Shopper Behavior enables suppliers to monitor shopper behavior to better understand how shoppers interact with their category and brand shoppers. Shopper Behavior allows brands to analyze the changing customer shopping habits and adjust more quickly with better data to correspond to consumer demand. This module, in general, tells you the “what” behind the buy. With Shopper Behavior, suppliers get access to detailed reports about brand loyalty, product or competitor switching, trialists, benchmarking, basket pairing, product assortment, product substitutions, and more. The module also provides insight into competitors’ channel performance.
- Customer Perception unlocks the “why” behind the purchase by capturing on-demand customer feedback through access to a community of verified Walmart shoppers. Suppliers can utilize this module to conduct in-depth interviews, user testing, and concept testing to plan for and drive future growth.
Retail Link-DSS vs. Luminate Basic and Charter
API Key and Additional Benefits
Unlike Retail Link, Charter includes an API key to feed the data to an external platform or software solution such as VELOCITY for data cleansing and harmonization and deeper analysis. This allows brands to have more control over their data and improves its usability.
Exclusive benefits for Charter subscribers include access to a dedicated account team and engineering support for API ingestion. Additionally, subscribers will have access to new and unique datasets, such as insights into digital product transactability (e.g., information on items added to an online shopping cart and purchased through grocery pick-up and delivery).
Overall, with Walmart Luminate tools and insights, CPGs can better understand the Walmart customer and optimize omnichannel operations with increased speed and greater clarity.
THE IMPORTANCE OF LUMINATE FOR CPGS
For CPG companies, Walmart Luminate's enhanced data and reporting capabilities and greater ease of access to the data are game changers. With more available data, more timely data, and unified data—suppliers have increased visibility into their performance to make more informed decisions, optimize their supply chains, and improve their overall retail strategies with Walmart merchants. The ability to combine inventory and sales data within a single report, for instance, offers a more comprehensive view of retail performance, enabling better forecasting and inventory management.
Because Luminate provides more sophisticated tools for segmenting Walmart retail data (for example, companies can now separate brick-and-mortar sales from online sales within the same platform), CPG companies can develop more targeted strategies (e.g., sales, marketing, trade promotion, new product launches) and gain nuanced understandings of different sales channels. Furthermore, Luminate’s advanced date handling improves the accuracy and relevance of reports, ensuring that brands are working with the most current and actionable data and insights available.
WHAT DATA DO YOU NEED AND HOW do YOU GET IT?
While Luminate provides an abundance of data, it's important for CPG companies to focus on the most relevant information that helps drive profitable growth. Key fields and attributes related to daily retail data, such as sales performance, inventory levels, and supply chain metrics, are essential. These daily data points help businesses more accurately track their products' performance, effectively manage stock levels and avoid out-of-stocks, optimize trade promotions, and ensure timely store replenishment.
Reports in Luminate can be built in Basic and Charter subscriptions; however, Basic reports can only be fetched manually (with the data dictionary aiding in understanding DSS field names). Luminate Charter offers more selection options, such as the previously mentioned separating physical store POS data from dotcom sales. Additionally, API access—especially when aided by an automated data ingestion solution like VELOCITY—provides faster data extraction and facilitates seamless data integration with existing systems or third-party solutions and workflows to drive deeper analytics, further improve strategy development, and improve retail execution. With this approach, you gain more control of your data, and you get more data to better inform your planning and execution decisions.
WHY having CLEAN, NORMALIZED, AND HARMONIZED DATA IS ESSENTIAL
Even with Walmart Luminate's advanced features and richer datasets, the quality of your data remains paramount. Clean, normalized, and harmonized data ensures accurate reporting, analytics, and insights not only for individual Walmart stores and across Walmart stores but also for cross-retailer comparisons—that is, if you want to gain a comprehensive view of your overall business performance.
"Although Walmart Luminate will provide more data than the company previously did and provide more detailed data, it doesn’t necessarily mean that data will always be clean and accurate."
Data cleansing, at its core, involves identifying and correcting errors in the data, such as duplicates, inaccuracies, and inconsistencies. Data normalization structures the data in a standardized format, while data harmonization ensures that data from different sources is comparable and compatible. No matter the data source (Walmart or other retailers) or how trustworthy you believe the source to be, these processes are essential for ensuring and maintaining optimal data integrity and ensuring that reports and analyses are based on the most precise and reliable information.
Although Walmart Luminate will provide more data than the company previously did and provide more detailed data, it doesn’t necessarily mean that data will always be clean and accurate. And it’s important to remember that clean data is not only about accuracy; clean data also enhances the usability of the data. When data is standardized and error-free, it becomes easier to integrate with other systems and applications, analyze, and derive insights. This leads to more confident and effective decision-making and strategic planning, ultimately driving better business outcomes for all parties involved.
THE NEED FOR AUTOMATING WALMART DATA COLLECTION AND MANAGEMENT
Walmart Luminate represents a big step forward in strengthening retail-supplier communication and collaboration and driving mutual growth through greater customer-centric insights. With this significant step, though, comes a substantial investment that suppliers anticipate yielding a high return. Therefore, it’s crucial for suppliers to have the quickest and easiest access to the highest-quality data and optimize its usage for making strategic decisions that maximize their investment.
Simplify Data Extraction and Collection
Handling large amounts of retail data manually can be overwhelming for CPG companies and is prone to costly errors. Implementing an automated data collection, cleansing, and harmonization solution such as the VELOCITY® retail data platform simplifies the extraction and management of data, ensuring seamless ingestion, integration, and updates of daily SKU-store-level data.
Spend Less Time Wrangling Data and More Time Growing Your Business
One of the main advantages of data automation and VELOCITY is that it significantly improves data accuracy. It also brings joy to IT personnel, data analysts, and business analysts as it reduces tedious manual work and frees up their time to focus on more valuable tasks. This includes uncovering insights that can drive sales, revenue, and profitability.
"Automated data pipelines enable near real-time data processing and integration, ensuring that decision-makers have access to the most up-to-date information when they walk in at the start of the workday."
By automating data ingestion and cleansing of Luminate data through VELOCITY, CPGs can significantly reduce the risk of human error and ensure more consistent data quality so teams across the enterprise can work from one accurate and reliable source of data and actionable insights.
Moreover, automated data pipelines enable near real-time data processing and integration, ensuring that decision-makers have access to the most up-to-date information when they walk in at the start of the workday. This is particularly important in the retail industry, where market conditions and consumer behaviors and demand can change rapidly and without notice. With automated data processes that put timely, trustworthy data in the palm of CPGs’ hands, brands can respond more quickly and appropriately to those changes and maintain a competitive edge.
BENEFITS OF USING VELOCITY WITH WALMART LUMINATE
Collecting and integrating Walmart Luminate with the VELOCITY platform offers numerous benefits to CPG companies:
- Streamlined Report Generation: VELOCITY can support data ingestion from both Basic and Charter subscriptions. The platform simplifies the report generation process, allowing users to build and fetch reports efficiently. This includes leveraging the Luminate data dictionary for precise data retrieval and using advanced selection options available in Charter.
- Superior Data Handling: VELOCITY enhances data management capabilities, improving date handling and allowing the combination of inventory and sales data within a single report. This provides a holistic view of retail performance, facilitating better collaborative decision-making and strategic planning.
- Advanced API Integration: VELOCITY anticipates ease of integrating Luminate’s API, facilitating seamless data flow and enhanced analytics capabilities. This integration enables businesses to automate data retrieval, ensuring that they always have access to the most current and relevant data.
- Enhanced Data Accuracy: By automating data cleansing, harmonization, and normalization processes, VELOCITY ensures that the data used for analysis and reporting is accurate and reliable. This leads to more meaningful insights and better business outcomes.
- Real-Time Data Access though VELOCITY’s dashboard: VELOCITY’s automated data pipelines provide real-time access to retail data, allowing businesses to make timely and informed decisions. This is particularly valuable in the fast-paced retail environment, where timely insights can drive competitive advantage.
- Scalability and Flexibility: VELOCITY is designed to handle massive volumes of retail data, making it suitable for companies of all sizes. The platform’s flexible architecture allows it to scale with the business, ensuring that data management capabilities grow in line with the company’s needs.
- Cross-Retailer Analysis and Comparisons: With more than 650 available retail data adaptors, VELOCITY can acquire and consolidate daily item-store-level retail data from any retailer, retailer data portal, or retail data source. This enables brands to conduct comprehensive cross-retailer analyses to gain a holistic view of their business and compare retailer and product performance by geography, store type, channel, and more. Sales, marketing, and demand planning teams need to work together to manage future production, trade promotions, and sales more effectively; thus, being able to quickly and easily collect and manage data and derive actionable insights across channels and retailers is critical to success.
Conclusion
In the dynamic retail landscape, effectively managing and analyzing data is crucial for success and staying ahead of the competition. Walmart Luminate, combined with Retail Velocity's VELOCITY software, provides a robust solution for optimizing retail operations. By focusing on gathering and leveraging the most relevant data and ensuring it is clean and harmonized, CPG companies can make more informed decisions that drive profitable growth and ensure retailer relationships with Walmart remain strong and mutually beneficial.
VELOCITY not only simplifies the data management process but also enhances the quality and usability of the data, leading to more effective strategic planning and retail execution. By integrating Walmart Luminate with VELOCITY, businesses can unlock the full potential of their retail data, gaining deeper insights and driving better business outcomes.
Explore how VELOCITY can transform your retail data management with Walmart (and all retailers!). Contact us today to learn more about integrating Walmart Luminate with our industry-leading software.
