How to Pull the Supplier Scorecard in Luminate

As suppliers are adapting to life in Luminate, a number of questions have come up. Most conversations have focused on the difference between Basic and Charter, whether or not it is in the supplier's best interest to make that investment. 

The Luminate Scorecard Basics

Both Basic and Charter include the capacity to pull the essential Supplier Scorecard, also known as the Vendor Scorecard or just the Scorecard.

The Scorecard is used to pull constant, reliable, and holistic vendor performance data across the fiscal year. The report is often viewed by category or brand as that information is desired, giving both merchants and suppliers a sense of supplier performance. 

Backing Into the 9-Digit Supplier Number Data in Luminate

In Luminate, reports cannot be filtered by 9-digit supplier number. Instead, they have to back into the same process by filtering by the 6-digit supplier number and also filtering later by department.

In other words, suppliers can find the same data that the 9-digit supplier number provided in DSS in Luminate by filtering by 6-digit supplier number and then adding a department filter. In DSS, the 9-digit supplier number was the primary way to find this information. 

Attributes and Metrics

The Scorecard is a "canned" report. It contains prepopulated metrics curated based on set KPIs. These filters help isolate findings, breaking down performance into more granular detail.

The elements that suppliers can filter by are referred to as Attributes in Walmart's language. Even filters as broad as the 6-digit vendor number are considered attributes. The 6-digit number is generally considered the first filter requirement. You cannot pull a supplier scorecard without providing at least that information.

Metrics refers to the kinds of data points that are being pulled in any given scorecard. Unlike Attributes, Metrics can't be added or taken away from a given Scorecard. Rather, these are pre-set data points that the Scorecard was designed to measure.

What is the Vendor Scorecard Used For? 

The Vendor Scorecard is important for measuring supplier performance and for guiding supplier/buyer communication on that subject. More specifically, the Scorecard can help to: 

• Identify trends

• Identify areas of opportunity for additional inquiry (research and analysis)

• Identify areas of strength/performance

How to Generate the Vendor Scorecard Report

To generate any new report in Luminate, you will need to go to Report Builder, select My Reports, then click + New Report. If no reports have been built yet in Luminate, this button should exist as the central feature of the My Reports screen.

The screen will prompt you to "Choose a dataset to start."

Click on the Reports tab from there, and a Vendor Scorecard option should populate beneath.

The description within the Vendor Scorecard option will read: "Holistic View of vendor performance across last 104 weeks. View by category/brand as per need."

After clicking on the Vendor Scorecard, a preview panel on the right side of the screen will show the list of Metrics included in the Scorecard. Some of the most important Metrics in the Scorecard are: 

• Ships at Cost

• Warehouse Weeks On Hand

• Cost On Hand

• Const On Order

• Sales

• Retail Dollar Inventory

• Cost Dollar Inventory

• Repl. Instock %

• Store Weeks On Hand

• Ships At Retail

• Ships At Cost 

• Initial Margin %

• GMROII

• Dollars

• Percent To Sales

• Repl. Order Fill Rate %

• MABD Compliance %

(For a more in-depth look at these metrics, check out this article on the Vendor Scorecard.)

Click the Run button to open the Filter panel. At least 1 filter needs to be applied.

Reminder: although you can't filter by 9-digit supplier number in Luminate (like you could in DSS), the same results can be found by filtering by the 6-digit supplier number and the category.

In the dropdown menu labeled + Add, select the filters desired. Once all of these are selected, click the same Run button. This will navigate you to the Create Report screen.

A Note About Luminate Aliases

Not all of the filters in Luminate are the same as their DSS equivalents. A DSS name referred to in Luminate is called its alias. Although some of the names are different in Luminate, the old DSS aliases are still searchable in the filters panel.

These aliases can be found in the Knowledge Base under Attributes & Business Glossary.

Home > Knowledge Base > Attributes & Business Glossary

Reading the Vendor Scorecard in Luminate

Once all of the filters have been applied and the report has run, the Scorecard is fairly similar to the DSS report, but it will be different in appearance from other reports that are built in Report Builder Basic.

The key metrics are on display on the left-hand side of the report, and the time attributes live in the columns running along the top. These columns consist of the following time ranges: 

• Last Week

• Current Month

• Last Month

• Year

• Q1

• Q2

• Q3

• Q4

Each of these ranges is further broken down into three categories: This Year (TY), Last Year (LY), and Year Over Year Difference (Diff). This breakdown is to get a granular year-over-year view for any given period. 

Where Are Fuzzy Dates In Luminate? 

A source of general confusion for suppliers starting out is Walmart's calendar. Each retailer uses particular dates for different programs (i.e. SQEP and OTIF) that can be tricky to follow (see this resource for more help with it).

When reading the Vendor Scorecard, it is important to remember that for each pull, the fuzzy dates ("last week," "current month," "last month," etc.) are relative only to the time of pulling and do not update automatically.

Furthermore, these fuzzy dates are also descriptive of periods within Walmart's calendar (i.e. "last week" = last Saturday to Friday). For example, WM Week 1 of the FYE 2025 will start on Thursday, February 1st.

(You can keep up with Walmart's Calendar here.)

Updating the report on a weekly basis will help to avoid too much confusion.

Benchmarking data is only available for as long as a supplier has been in Walmart, so fuzzy dates are technically limited by that as well. 

A Note on DSS and Luminate in 2024

In the Luminate training, Walmart indicated that Luminate's reports are technically more accurate than DSS and prefer Luminate reports moving forward. However, the training makes it clear that Luminate is not completely built out as of early 2024 and that it may take the remainder of the year to have all of their filters up and running. 

Further Reading and SupplyPike's Help

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