How to Do Item Setup in Supplier One – 9/5/2024 

[00:00:00] Danielle: Welcome, everybody. We are so glad that you are able to join us for this webinar. Today, we are going to discuss how to do item setup in Supplier One. before we begin, we always like to introduce ourselves. My name is Danielle Gloy. I'll be working behind the scenes, monitoring the chats, and then leading the content and sharing his is Peter Spaulding, so we work on the SupplierWiki team. 
 

Essentially, our job is to research and write about topics that are helpful and insightful for suppliers like you, which if you're not familiar with SupplierWiki, or if this is your first time joining one of our webinars, we create free educational resources for suppliers in the form of webinars like this one. 
 

we do ebooks, articles, and we also cover important retailer updates and news through our Vendorville newsletter. At the end of the day, we are here to support you and provide you with resources that are ultimately going to set you up for success. if you want to stay in the loop, you can always sign up for our newsletter on our website. 
 

I'll also go ahead and drop the link in the chat later. moving on to the agenda, we have a lot to cover in the next hour. Thank you, everyone. We are going to start off the content portion by doing an overview on what Supplier One is and what the platform's main features are. After that, we'll move into a more action oriented section where we will go over how to do item setup for DSV and DSD, and we'll see some examples of that.

And then we will wrap up the webinar with some Q& A time at the end. So lots of good content to cover today. Some FAQs that we typically get during webinars that we can hopefully answer up front is, will I be getting a copy of the slide deck? Yes, absolutely. you can expect to see the PDF version of the slide deck as well as the recording of this webinar appear in your email inbox in about three to four business days. 
 

and if you ever want to find another webinar that you maybe weren't able to attend, You can always go to our website where you'll find the recordings there, as well as the PDF versions of the slide decks. And then the second question that we typically get is, what is the best way to ask a question? 
 

at the bottom of the screen, you will see a Q& A tab, and this is where we ask you to please submit any questions related to the content. As I'll be able to monitor them and then tee them up for Peter for the Q& A time at the end. I may even interject sometime during the webinar if there is a question pertinent to the content that Peter is going through, but for the most part, I will be saving them for the end. 
 

Okay, so last little thing before we get into the content, SupplyPike is a platform designed to help suppliers get paid and get better. So we do this with a software that identifies, recovers, and prevents deductions and compliance issues. So anything that could be impacting your bottom line, we have built these tools to help target and resolve those revenue loss issues. 
 

We are proud to work with many great suppliers. You can see some of their logos up there on the slide. and if you aren't working with us yet, we'd love to see your brand's logo up here soon. And with that, I'll hand it over to Peter to kick off today's content.

[00:03:21] Peter: Thank you, Danielle. That's wonderful. a little call out I wanted to make, on my end with Zoom, the Q& A tab has been moved into the More section. 
 

So I don't know if that's an update that maybe you have or don't, or if I'm behind on my updates, but if you're looking for the Q& A tab and you can't find it, you might need to click on the More section there first. yeah, why are we talking about Supplier One, so much? This is a newer kind of development of Walmart's and we really like to try to stay on top of these things because these are the things that tend to cause the most anxiety and, tend to create the most chaos in the, world, of Walmart suppliers. 
 

Supplier One hasn't been too much of that, I compare it with Luminate all the time because Luminate, not because they have anything to do with each other, they don't, but because they were two really big, innovations that Walmart started at roughly the same time, at about the end of the calendar year, 2023. 
 

That's why we're talking about it a lot. We're talking about it a lot this month because Item 360 has recently just gone away and there have been a lot of announcements and retail link and different, different sort of places where, the Item 360 link, if you click on it, will now just reroute you to Supplier One. 
 

So whenever Supplier One first dropped, there were a number of functionalities, I think that we'll get into them, mirrored from certain retail link apps. But the language was always that we're not going to get rid of these RetailLink apps. Supplier One is not a replacement for RetailLink. What we're seeing now is that Item 360 is gone, and that its functionality has been mirrored into Supplier One. 
 

Again, a comparison with Luminate, there was DSS. That was how people were doing reporting forever. And now there's Luminate. That transition was a lot more difficult for suppliers than the transition from Item 360 to Supplier One is because it really is a mirroring of the functionality. 
 

There's tiny little updates, small little changes. Most of them are really just like a. Like what would be like a product software update for that app. so there isn't as much kind of panic or, or noise in the supplier channels around, Supplier One for that reason, mostly. It is basically a one for one replacement of all these different functionalities. 
 

So we'll get into that a little bit, but I just wanted to explain a little bit of the context behind why we're doing this. What's the purpose of talking about Supplier One? It's an important thing now. It's now an essential for suppliers. Everyone has to do item setup. Everyone's going to have to be doing item setup in Supplier One. 
 

so we might as well, we might as well flesh it out a little bit. So I want to start out with our first question, just like with our fun question. You can let us know in the chat, what your, feelings are about this. have you had an experience in Supplier One yet? Are you here just to learn about something that It isn't really a regular part of your day. 
 

Maybe you're not doing item setup all the time, but you're trying to just fill out your educational kind of, range. but let us know if you have, and then what has that user experience been like for you? Is it something, do you find the transition from Item 360 to Supplier One to be seamless? Or, excuse me, have there been bumps in the road for you or for your team? 
 

that would be, really good, I think, for getting the conversation going around this transition. but again, I already mentioned this a little bit. The idea of Supplier One really is to take these functionalities from RetailLink and streamline, streamline them into the same sort of platform, the same location, so that suppliers can be aware of the things that Walmart wants them to prioritize. 
 

So this is what the dashboard in Supplier One is. That's a place maybe that you've never been. If you're only here to talk about item setup and you've just been shunted into Supplier One, then you may not be as familiar with the Supplier One dashboard. But that is an asset that you can use as well. 
 

It is a little bit of a distillation where Walmart is saying, okay, here's your kind of supplier health in terms of item setup, in terms of POs and whatnot. Here's the things that we want you to prioritize. So Supplier1 can be thought of really as this universal system of prioritization for supplier action. 
 

How can we get, how can we get all of this stuff distilled into one place, to locate the things that are the biggest sort of red flags. Now, that's the ideal kind of, of, of the dashboard in Supplier One. The reality could be totally different, right? What is the supplier's priority? it's important to think of the supplier and Walmart as having similar priorities, right? 
 

Ideally, we're all just trying to get the stuff to the customer. But, In this process as it becomes, more complex, exponentially every year, right? the priorities of the suppliers and the buyers, or the CPG company and Walmart, these diverge obviously, a little bit from time to time. 
 

Walmart won't necessarily be as motivated. let me say it this way. The system of fines and punishments that Walmart has created around compliance and deductions and all of that, it is designed to basically put the supplier's priorities and Walmart's priorities in the same place, but at the same time, again, it's complicated. 
 

Sometimes suppliers will be losing a lot of money because they are not compliant, and that's not necessarily something that Walmart needs you to change right away, right? Walmart doesn't have to be, doesn't have to kowtow to the, desires of every supplier. Of course, it changes based on the supply, the size of the supplier. 
 

but yes, this, the point of Supplier One and really the conversation that I would like for us to have today, and let me know how you feel about this, is what are the differences between those priorities, right? If you look at the Supplier One dashboard, and you can pull it up on a different screen if you can right now anyways, it could be helpful for, for following along. 
 

But if you look at that dashboard, what are the things that strike you as things that you should be prioritizing as well? What are the things that, the CPG company, aside from just the Walmart business, would want to prioritize? It's helpful, it's a kind of an exercise, an intellectual exercise, but I think that it will be helpful for contextualizing this whole conversation, around Supplier One. 
 

it was Q2 that Walmart announced that Supplier One would be replacing Item 360. But for the most part, that hasn't, that process hasn't been completed until pretty recently, I think. Recently, Item 360 for most of the suppliers that we've been talking to has just rerouted into Supplier One. it's another thing that I'm curious about. 
 

Do you still have access to Item 360? Is it something that you, as a US supplier are allowed to still use? Or are you all getting rerouted into Supplier One? Another callout, that I would really like to make here is just what is the relationship between RetailLink and Supplier One? 
 

Because this was an early concern when Supplier One was announced. Is Supplier One a long term replacement for RetailLink? That's really the question that a lot of concerned suppliers had because there's so much going on in RetailLink. Especially with, you The, with DSS going away, Walmart sunsetting DSS and replacing it with an external platform in Luminate. 
 

Luminate, you use your RetailLink login to get into Luminate, but it is not hosted in RetailLink. is there something about RetailLink that Walmart wants to move away from? Because what we're seeing is that a lot of these changes are pulling suppliers out of RetailLink a little bit, which is something that probably not all suppliers are going to be too upset with. 
 

given how difficult RetailLink has been in the past. but, learning a new software, learning a new platform, all of this comes with a pretty steep learning curve. that can be pretty difficult. But as of now, RetailLink is still essential. There's still certain things that you can only do in RetailLink. 
 

there's certain things that now you can only do in Supplier One. There's certain things that you can only do in Luminate. So now, we have to, suppliers have to be using all three of these platforms. but RetailLink, which used to house everything, no longer does. RetailLink is still Walmart's current supplier platform. 
 

That's the language that we're using to describe this. This is the place where you go, for everything except for Luminate. And I, want to call that out because reporting DSS doesn't exist anymore. And for most suppliers that we've been talking to, or all of them, It's just not there anymore. 
 

So there are essential things that you do have to do outside of RetailLink. but RetailLink, the Item 360 app. As of a couple days ago, whenever I checked, does still link out to Supplier One. so you can still access Supplier One through RetailLink, even though it's not listed as an app. You just go to Item 360 to do your item setup, item maintenance, or whatever, and it will reroute you to Supplier One. 
 

unless you, for whatever reason, still have access to 360. RetailLink, again, this is more kind of the old language, but we used to think of as the one stop shop platform. for all things essential to supplier performance. And you can see that we've added the word most in there because of recent changes. 
 

The question is, in all of our minds, will RetailLink, or will something else, will there still be a platform that is a one stop shop for all things related to supplier success? Or is that, landscape changing as the software or as the platform becomes underdeveloped from a, software perspective. 
 

So Supplier One we want to think of as a secondary platform with some overlap of the big, I would say, platform. Retail Link Functionalities. Some of the most important things that are going on inside of Retail Link. So it is a concentration of several tools in Retail Link in one place. and some of those are item setup, returns management, and you, have like deductions visibility, but I don't think you can dispute deductions. 
 

If you still want to dispute deductions, to the best of my recent knowledge, you still have to do that in APDP in Retail Link. So again, there's a little bit of mirroring, there's a little bit of functionality, A lot of the essential functions in RetailLink have been mirrored in Supplier One. The sound of the name Supplier One to me seems like it does feel like a long term RetailLink replacement, but all of that is conjecture, and it's conjecture that Walmart has really resisted. 
 

a lot of hesitation from Walmart to, to, to Confront that head on. And that doesn't necessarily mean that they're trying to be equivocal or that they're trying to hide things either. I think that's, there's a kind of paranoiac in me that that would tend to go in that direction. but I don't think we have any reason to believe that there will be, if there is a transition, that it will be a really difficult one, like the one from DSS to Luminate was. 
 

So that will be, that's my kind of personal take, but again, everyone has their own sort of theories and opinions. So far, I think the transition has been pretty smooth. of course, let us know if it's been different for you. Has the, Supplier One transition from Item 360 to Supplier One been difficult? 
 

everything that I'm hearing is that, It's basically the same thing. There's basically this, mirrored functionality. so yeah, when we get into some of Supplier One's main features, I've made brief reference to this already. but I'll explain it in a little bit more detail here too. And again, we're only going to be really talking about, excuse me, item setup and maintenance in this webinar, but there are other features in there too.  
 

This is a graphic that Becca and our team made and I really appreciated it. It's getting into the nitty gritty of what these differences are between Item 360 and Supplier One from just a purely user perspective. Item 360, there you have the left nav that used to be there. 
 

There's a lot of similarity in the language that's being used in both of these. It's basically mirrored functionality. and a lot of the language is exactly the same. Catalog, Setup, Maintenance. These haven't changed at all, right? ActivityManager is now called SubmissionManager, and that lives there too. 
 

It's been bumped down, to the fourth item on the left nav instead of the first. that's that. What you also see in this Supplier OneLeftNav is the other, functionalities in Supplier One that have been, basically mirrored from previous RetailLink apps. So those are order management, the claims and return scorecard, and then payments and charges. 
 

And a lot of this is still in development. So we see some of the names of these. change a little bit from month to month. Supplier One is being built out really slowly over time, just like with Luminate, they're doing new updates all the time, so it's important to read about those and to stay informed about what those changes are if you're in Supplier One a lot, or if it's something that is important to you. 
 

But yeah, those are the big ones. So payments and charges is basically a, mirrored functionality of APDP, except I think, and let me know if this is, if this has changed recently, at least originally, you could not do disputes in Supplier One. So all disputes are still going through APDP, if you want to dispute those deductions, but visibility into payments, of DSV orders only as of. 
 

the last time we checked. And then deduction. So you have visibility into deductions data and info. You can use that deductions data and info to make disputes in APDP, but again, to the best of my knowledge, my latest knowledge, you can't actually do disputing, in the payments and charges section. So that's that one. 
 

Then there's the, claims and returns, scorecard. This is where basically you're looking at all of your returns. This is a helpful thing for noticing, flagging any items that have been set up incorrectly or things that maybe customers just aren't responding well to, things that have been broken en masse, like maybe in a particular shipment or something like that. 
 

But yeah, that's your claims and returns scorecard. And then you have the order management, which is basically the, mirrored functionality of Nova. So that's where you do all your PO stuff. You can learn about PO updates. You can make PO updates. All of that goes on there. And we've got, we've covered a lot of that before in the past. 
 

I don't want to I don't want to inundate you guys with too many links, but if you're curious about that, or if that's something that you're struggling with, someone that you or someone else on your team is struggling with, we got a lot on Nova, and that functionality is It's, to the best of our knowledge, mirrored exactly in Supplier One. 
 

So that can all be explored in your own time there as well. But another question that we have for you guys, or really just maybe something to think about to reorient your mindset for this, is what areas in Supplier One would you like us to cover in detail next? are you curious about the order management? 
 

transition from NOVA to, to Supplier One, or you're curious about the Payments and Charges section, whatever that is, let us know. We'd love to, we'd love to be able to work with you, to meet you, where you're at in the Supplier One experience. So far, Items and Inventory should be the only thing in Supplier One that you have to do in Supplier One. 
 

I know I'm sounding like a broken record, but that is, as of now, is the language that Walmart likes to use. The only thing that is, that Supplier One is absolutely essential for. we've been talking about this a lot. Items and Inventory is the Item 360 functionality. That's where you can view, set up, manage, and track items and inventory. 
 

You do all of your item stuff there in those four different sections. I also want to call out that home button that you see at the top right here. That's the dashboard. And there's a lot of item, or at least item adjacent information and data there as well. You can basically see your item health. and that can, help you with that prioritizing. 
 

Okay, what's, what are the things that I really need to work on right away? or that Walmart things I need to, really work on right away. but that's that. And today we'll be just living in the Items and Inventory tab. We won't be really looking at the dashboard too much. this is the duplicate of, 360's functionality. 
 

And it's broken down into these four sections that we'll explore a little bit in more detail here. So the catalog, it has two product views. Basically, this is just two different ways of seeing the items that you've got. You can look at them by GTINs or UPCs. So this is information about really content quality and insights. 
 

You can look at the dot com published status and unpublished reasons, whatever those might be. And then customer reviews as well. And then you can look at item configurations and hierarchies by the Walmart item number. So this is basically, are you looking at it from a supplier perspective or from a Walmart perspective? 
 

If you're, just on the Walmart team and that's all that you're really focusing on, you'll be maybe a little bit more on the win side of things, the Walmart item numbers. but you also, may only have certain data, for looking into the GTINs. That could be helpful as well. 
 

but in the Walmart item numbers section, you can look at information specific to department and fine line, right? This is, again, this is the Walmart side of things. You're looking at a more detailed, detailed view from the retailer perspective or from more of the retailer perspective. You look at supplier item, supply item by status, replenishability. 
 

you can look at buying regions and assortments and shippers. 
 

So again, just to reiterate, the catalog is broken down by SupplierView, SupplierLanguage, SupplierData, or Numbers, the SupplierLexicon of items, or Walmart's Lexicon of items, and then you can use both of those things as basically Insight driving tools. The setup tab is exactly what it sounds like. 
 

That's where you do all of your pre setup submissions. So you can do item quotes, shipper quotes, GDSN publications, and proposed items. That's the kind of earliest phase of that. And then you can also create actual item proposals. That's where you create your items themselves. You can create shippers or multi box items as well. 
 

So one thing that this is, again, this is just to the latest of our knowledge, so let us know if, this has been updated or if, you've had a different experience, but Supplier One does not yet support assortments, import shippers or, for GM, pharmacy and fees, right? Walmart recommends using your current processes for these. 
 

So with that, The language that we're seeing there from Walmart seems like there's this, every time, this language is used of, we don't yet do this, to me, there's a possibility that means that it's on the horizon. I wouldn't necessarily bank on it for this particular, for these particular developments, just to call out. 
 

These are things that normally are dealt with separately anyways. So the maintenance tab is, that's where you're going to go if you have an issue with something that you've already set up, something that you've already processed. that's where you do the, basically the site experience details and product content. 
 

what is your, if your, dashboard is telling you about these scores that are dropping for certain items or in certain, regions. This is where you're going to go to try to fix all that. So item configuration and supply chain and then DSV inventory. And then of course, in our modern age imagery and rich media for the, dot com side of things, all of that will be done in maintenance as well. 
 

Excuse me. And then in our submissions manager, this is where you're basically going to keep track of everything. So similar to the dashboard, it'll give you a sense of how Things are going on a more universal scale. But you can also break it down by individual items, UPCs, or WINS as well. but yes, this is going to contain all of the individual tickets for the different submission types that you've done, whether that's on more of the setup side or more of the maintenance side. 
 

And they have pretty universal statuses attached to them as well. The essential ones being, SupplierActionRequired and WalmartActionRequired. You don't want that supplier action required to, to pile up too heavily. but I guess you also don't want Walmart action required piling up too heavily either, but it's, that might be a little bit more outside of your control. 
 

So you can also take a further action here on submissions if needed, or follow up action sometimes can happen here as well without the creation of a new ticket. caveat there with the sometimes, right? Big emphasis on the sometimes. Okay. I'm going to speed up here a little bit, but we do want to do a, close up on different kinds of item setup for, specifically DSD and DSV. 
 

These are, you should be, familiar with these. Hopefully, unless you're, getting started, this is, pretty basic stuff. But, we also want to know what other kind of item setup would you like to see? Is there something else that you're struggling with? aside from these two. 
 

But we do want to do a deep dive on these because of how important they are, and how common they are. DSV is, items shipped directly to consumers. This supports all item types except physical products intended for e delivery. that's, just a different kind of category, so a different bucket, outside of the DSV sort of process. 
 

And then, DSD these are items delivered directly to Walmart stores, FCs, or DCs. so this is going to be, by and large, for most suppliers, the biggest chunk, of your items will be through this process. So the supp Cough, excuse me. Cough, This supports all item types except for any items that are delivered electronically as well. 
 

Excuse me. Okay, starting this process, for DSVs, it will happen in this setup hub, so that's where you're going to start. 
 

if you're going directly into Supplier One itself, if you've just got that, favorited, it'll take you right to the dashboard. If you're going in to Supplier One from the Item 360 app in RetailLink, then it will take you directly to Items and Inventory. And that, I think, will be, it'll take you right to the catalog page. 
 

just a little caveat. Start with items and inventory, do that drop down on the left nav, and then go to setup hub, if you're wanting to set up a single DSV item. from there, you go to the items section and add an item. Now, All of these screenshots are our most up to date, thing from the suppliers that we've been working with. 
 

this isn't necessarily going to be in the top right quadrant for everyone. but items definitely will be there. and then you click on that, add an item, tile. And here you have the most important kind of, high level information. is this sold in store? So you're gonna do no for DSV, right? 
 

That's, your DSD, so this is the first kind of threshing floor between DSV and DSD. and you can add a second supplier by clicking the plus sign down there at the bottom. The single supplier ID and or contact number fields will be pre populated if that is applicable. If it's not, then that can all be done manually as well. 
 

but the key thing for DSV is just answering how will these items be shipped with ship to customer. That's going to be the key first kind of threshing point. do not click the checkbox for GDSN synced item info. the system will pull all of these configurations automatically as well. so if you are setting items, setting up items synced with GDSN, and you only want to include the new publications in the item setup spreadsheet, then you would do that. 
 

But, That is not our recommendation for the DSV. whenever you're selecting the product type, this is where all of the manual work really comes in. we've listed out some, high level types of product IDs. the EANs, the GTINs, ISBNs, and UPCs. Really, it's going to be mostly GTINs. unless, of course, you know differently. 
 

if you're selling books. Then that's the, the ISBN. But, I don't think the ISBNs are used for anything other than books. but I totally be, off with that. I'm curious about that now. I'm going to Google that later. but the universal product code is commonly used in, North America. within retail products, but yeah, the big one is the, global trade item number. 
 

This is your unique, item signifier, right? And it's the, main, category, categorizing feature of these items. And then of course, If you're selling a lot in Europe or if you're a European country, you may be on the EAN product ID type system. Again, not as common. So after you get all of that done, and again, this is the bulk of the, this is the bulk of the manual work. 
 

these categories are not changed often to the best of my knowledge. they should be pretty simple, but it will be very important for avoiding fines later on to make sure that none of the, that none of what's going on here is technically incorrect because yeah, that can have, lasting consequences farther down the supply chain. 
 

So this is where all the manual work gets done. Wherever all the manual work gets done, that's where all the fees and fines can come from. that's just because. People are people and they make mistakes. I don't mean any offense to any of you who do item setup, of course. but little miscommunications that, that, that manifest on the last slide in that manual process, that's where a lot of the rubber meets the road. 
 

from there, You can do the, you can just hit the continue button to complete setup in Supplier 1, after that's done. So for filing attributes, for, for, filling in attributes, this is where you'll have more of the kind of Walmart specific information, your SKU, the nine digit supplier ID. 
 

So this could be one for your whole company. This could be one for your, particular category, product name or brand name. so yeah, that nine digit supplier ID should be, something that you have on hand that you're, familiar with. but basically what that is, that saying, You are this supplier in this category. 
 

So if you're a supplier who's in multiple categories, then you'll have different nine digit supplier IDs for the different categories. Now that's really important for item setup because everything can get crossed if it's the wrong nine digit supplier ID number for that particular category. but the brand name, the product name, and the SKU. 
 

SKU will be, really important also for just identifying this number on Walmart's website. so there's, a lot of attributes as well that, that will help, create as much data for the Walmart side of things to be able to understand exactly what this is. So we talked about the SKU number, we talked about the supplier name and ID number, but a contact number. 
 

The product dimensions, weight, packaging details, and shipping methods, all of these are also intimately connected to different parts of the supply chain. They're intimately connected to, really, your bottom line, because if the dimensions are off a little bit, it can create problems. Enormous amount of, kinks in the supply chain. 
 

It can back things up. It can, which will, of course, create fines and it will, take away from the bottom line, right? the way to, think about this is that, if item setup is perfect, And it has to be then you're going to get the money that you think you're going to get. If it's anything short of 100 percent accurate, then that's going to result in a loss. 
 

And again, if you've been working with Walmart for a long time, it's not, Walmart isn't, they're not twisting their mustaches. They're not trying to be evil. They're just a massive corporation. And along with that comes a lot of needs from an efficiency standpoint. if efficiencies stop working in a certain place, it can have. 
 

widespread consequences for them and for their customers. So that's why there's this really high standard. but again, I really wanted to call out these ones in particular, the shipping methods, the packaging details, the weight, product dimensions, contract number, all of this is really important for making sure that, you actually get, the amount of money that you and Walmart have agreed on beforehand. 
 

Different attributes that are required for the item to be visible on walmart. com. So this is your e com, your. com sort of side of things. This is different. it's similar to the brick and mortar setup in that it's about making your products visible to customers without getting in trouble with Walmart. 
 

So those two kinds of. Categories for thinking about it still apply to the dot com space as well, but I would say that there's a heavier emphasis on making your products visible to customers. Because in the dot com space, it's not a store. There aren't physical places where these customers are just randomly walking through. 
 

The website is designed to give that with extra advertisements and other kind of product placement possibilities. But whenever you're a customer and you're walking into a store, you're gonna walk past a lot of things that you don't need anyways. So there's always a little bit more room for that visibility. 
 

So whenever you're doing item setup for com, it's easy I would recommend thinking of it in terms of visibility. How can we make our product visible, our product, optimal for the search engine, and all that. So for these examples, again, the differences here in the attributes will give you a little bit of a sense of what I mean by that.  
 
Visibility kind of distinction. Of course, you want your product to be visible in the source as well, but it's harder to make a product visible in the dot com space. So the examples, obviously your product name, but the detailed description, the images, The pricing information and availability status. 
 

These are different. This is a different sort of thing. The detailed description will help for that search engine optimization. It will help for marketing. It's done by marketing most of the time. All of that is, is about creating visibility. and the images is, such a big part of that as well, as rich media, which is essentially the same thing. 
 

so for more of the searching and browsing for dot com as well, you can also, add those keywords, tags, product categories, and additional descriptive details to try to maximize that as much as possible. Again, it's about visibility with dot com. And then to create a variant experience on Walmart.com, attributes for different sizes, colors, and styles will help create visibility for each of your different items with, I guess I would describe it as different items with a lot of similarities. 
 

So you've got the blue backpack and the green backpack or whatever it is, right? that needs to be there in the item setup process as well in order for it to be visible or else it can disappear as well. 
 

And again, I want to use the comparison between the brick and mortar and dot com as a way of emphasizing the importance of this. If you're going to look for a backpack, you're going to see the blue and the green right next to each other, and you're going to have this experience of being able to pick which color you like more, from just standing there and looking at them. 
 

Thank you. With com, they're not going to be searching blue backpack unless my, if I'm, shopping for my daughter, then I might be searching blue backpack because she loves blue. It's her favorite color, right? maybe there's a caveat there, but if I'm just, if I'm just, ignorant dad is just going online and doing some shopping, I'm just going to be, I'm just going to be typing in kids backpack. 
 

I'm not going to be specifying the color. But if me and my daughter are in the store and we're looking at the backpacks, I'm going to say, which one do you want? And she's going to say blue because she can see them all. If she can't see the blue one, if that's not visible, if that's not in the variant experience details for your dot com item, then it's just a missed customer experience. 
 

So the suppliers that do have that, that much detail at that level, for the GTIN or for the SKU level, then, It'll perform better. It'll be more optimal, for, the search engine, for the dot com search engine. And then there are optional attributes as well. And this is, I'm just beating the dead horse as well. 
 

but these, are underrated, I would say. These are really important, different things that you can take into consideration for shoppers that are more hands on more, invested in the purchase, right? So again, it depends on the item, depends on what you're selling. my example of the green backpack doesn't apply as well to warranty information, but if I'm buying a television, then that's something that I probably will read on the, walmart.com website before committing to buy. 
 

But all of those, additional specifications, warranty information, care instructions, and complimentary products. That's very important. I'm buying a, I'm buying a toddler sized bed. Sorry, this is just my like walmart. com cart that I'm just using as examples. Let's say I'm buying a toddler sized bed. 
 

I need to know what's actually included with it because sometimes the images that are used that are attached to it are not going to be exactly indicative of what's going on, right? There's going to be a, trampoline in the background, but that's not included in the product itself. Knowing what is added in there as well. 
 

Is the hardware included for the setup process or whatever, right? All of that you can include there too as an optional attribute. And again, this is just like with so many things in Walmart, you're, competing with others in your category. and the more you can pour into this phase of the process, right? 
 

before I was talking about accuracy, right? The more accurate your item setup can be, the less likely you are to lose money from Walmart. but the more, effusive you can be with your item descriptions, the more likely you are to actually connect with customers, which will in turn help your relationship with Walmart. 
 

Because that's how they're going to be thinking about everything, right? That'll help your relationship with your buyer. It'll help you, in line review season and all that. So I wanted to call that out. Warranty information doesn't apply to everything, but it does apply to some. It's optional. It's going to be very helpful for those big purchases like electronics, etc. 
 

So submitting the item itself, you'll toggle to the highlight required missing info at the top of the page, and the system will automatically highlight the fields that are required and currently not being filled out.

So again, if you have, If you have optional stuff that you want to get in there to go above and beyond to try to act, try to, get your product in front of more customers, it's not going to be highlighted there. That's just the essential stuff. So here we have some examples of the highlights, the way that Walmart highlights the missing fields, to make them noticeable and to, again, what's the whole point of Supplier One? 
 

It's to create these. basically, priority triage systems. the product height, pretty important information for everything. So that's going to need to be in there. It looks like there was some pretty shoddy, setup work that was done here. And then, data errors are, pretty similar. and of course we want to know what. 
 

what some common errors are for you, if this has been something that you've experienced. But these could include missing required information in correct data formats, or inconsistencies in the provided details. Maybe something that doesn't show up right away, because it's not perceived as a data error immediately. 
 

those are the things that will result usually in fines and issues later on down the road, but these are the ones that Walmart can catch basically right away, during the item setup process. yeah, this is the, this is the kind of the easier part of the auditing process for your item setup because it's the stuff that The computer, the system itself, will be able to automatically flag and detect. 
 

Better to catch it then than later on, right? or to not catch it later on. the final touch is, you can, you, can provide the description for your item, set up request and click submit. In this example, We've used product line updates and brand enhancements. Maybe, you've recently added in a warranty on a certain product. 
 

we've got to add that into our item setup as well to help with search engine optimization or just the customer experience for com. So we're going to go ahead and do that too. And then, of course, you submit when you're done. Alright, we've got only a couple minutes left before the top of the hour, so I'm going to try to go through this pretty quickly. 
 

The Submissions Manager is broken down into Maintenance, Setup, and Ship node. Maintenance, that's where you're going to be doing small changes that need to be made, or Cost Maintenance Submissions if you're going to change the cost. That's what that means there. Setup is going to be your setup maintenance, shipper setup or multi box item set submissions. 
 

And then ship node is the DSV inventory and lag time submissions. So those are the, the big three, the main three. if you need to take a supplier action on a submission, you will receive an email from the Walmart supplier one email with a link to it. So that's a helpful sort of shortcut, but that will be connected to, probably just the email that you use to log in. 
 

So if everyone's using the same email to access a retail link on your team, then you're going to have access to that. You're going to have access to that. to, to see those notifications. This is what it looks like. Again, we've got that Walmart action required. We've got supplier action required and status. 
 

You can filter by that. You could filter by submission date, submission type, depending on what you're looking for, but that's the dashboard. 
 

you can see in this example that the, the vast majority of these are for maintenance. And that's what I would assume is just normal. Depending on if you're in a period of transition between shippers, for example, you might see more of those, Shipnode tickets as well. But for the most part, for bigger suppliers especially, It's maintenance that's going to be the, the overwhelming kind of category. 
 

you can filter these out to show my activity only. I've already mentioned this. This will help, you reprioritize just what you're doing. Some people might want to go in there to follow up on Walmart action required and other tickets like that. But, for the most part, that's what you're going to be using. 
 

You can, the, limit for the submission IDs is 200. it seems like not something that people would really, run across a lot, that limit. but yes, it's still important to know that's out there. So you can locate those specific submissions, through that submission ID in the search bar. 
 

Okay, you can also use those quick filters that we talked about, based off of status. SupplierAction, WalmartAction are completed. And again, it just depends on who the user is, who the, supplier one user is, what they need to be looking for, etc. You may need, everyone will be, or most end users will be primarily doing supplier action needed, but maybe you need to look into some closed tickets for research purposes or something like that as well. 
 

So that's the, purpose of that. If there is only one error in your submission, clicking on submission ID will take you directly to the item or ship node level. So that's a little kind of tip. And that's what it looks like there for the updates. that are, that Walmart is requesting. 
 

Then you can click view to see the specific details about each error. And that's what it looks like there. 
 

searching by all filters, will allow you to, to filter in other ways based off of the activity description or submission type submitted by, supplier name or supplier ID, approver, or submission dates, start date and end date. That one, will be. Inevitably important, the start date and end date, the submission dates for those tickets. 
 

So there's that. And then we're going to look at some tips and strategies. So I mentioned the dashboard already. as a, the word that I always like to use is triage, but really it's just, it's about priorities. whose priorities 
 

This is Walmart trying to direct the supplier's priorities to certain issues. Here we have a pretty healthy dashboard, an overall score of 80. 46 out of 100. Not the best, but could be a lot worse, right? Mostly you want to, you want to just not have that, poor section, become too big, right? Cause that's where all of the really serious revenue loss will happen. 
 

but yeah, this is on the home tab and it will give you that critical insight to your overall content quality, that your items, or, which items need attention. So this is more for. Not necessarily your run of the mill Supplier One end users, but maybe a, someone higher up in the organization or someone who's leading one of the Walmart teams. 
 

This will be helpful for reporting, and all of that. You've also got a little bit of the top tasks. You can look at, these are the DSV orders that shipped today. you have two DSV orders, cancellation requests. but again, this won't just be for item information. This is for the whole of the, the body of what supplier one is actually touching on. 
 

again, we want to call it the filters. that's what it's all about. It's the only way to actually make any sense of this. These will, be helpful for doing more of that triage, doing that prioritization, with an, with being informed on Walmart's prior. 
 

What are yours, right? What are yours going to be that are different? so this is our, the language we're using here is to slice and dice the data. We got some really great numbers here. I love this. The SupplierActionRequired is 19. It's lower than the WalmartActionRequired, which is a win. I don't care. 
 

And then completed is that nice, big number. So this is a very experienced Supplier One user. Again, we've got a ton more tickets for maintenance than for setup and ship node, which is pretty regular as well. But yeah, that SupplierActionRequired is a nice, reasonable number. and won't take quite as much time. 
 

we don't know anything about the chatbot. I don't know anything about the chatbot, I would say. I don't know how effective it is. I will say that if it's anything like the Fixit chatbot in, in that app, then you're probably not going to get a ton of questions, right? if it is manual, if there is a real live person on the other end of that chatbot, then, of that chat, function. 
 

then you basically will have very limited responses. If it is a chat bot then, that will be an unlimited number of responses, probably, but, probably also more limited in its helpfulness. So that's another thing that I would put as a question on the bottom of this slide is just, have you used the chat bot? 
 

Have you used that feature at all? Is it always a bot or does it sound like a real person? Because sometimes what will happen is the bot will answer the first couple questions and if there's more issues then it will reroute to a real person. Has that ever happened? Is the chatbot helpful? That's really important. 
 

The Fixit chat is a real person, I think, but you only get one question. basically, whoever is on the other end of that chat feature is going to say, for each of these tickets, I'm only going to answer one question. the question has to be worded absolutely perfectly in Fixit. Whereas, I would assume the chatbot Or the chat feature in Supplier One is just a bot, and the perfection of the question isn't as important as the volume. 
 

You can put a bunch in there, but we could be wrong about that. and then the Manage Tickets section, you can submit and review those help tickets. The search articles, I would say that Supplier One, of all of the Walmart platforms and apps that I've looked at, The Supplier One articles are pretty good. 
 

I think they're pretty good. They're very helpful, very detailed. and there's a lot of documentation on each of those features as we call out. So if you're struggling, of course, ask us questions. We'll have our, we'll have our emails up here at the end, but I would highly recommend. Checking out those articles when you have time, whenever you're not absolutely pressed for, those supplier action tickets or something like that. 
 

The, help articles in Supplier One are pretty good. A lot better than Luminate. I, hate to insult the Luminate person. There are some good ones in Luminate. I will say the, I think it's the, I can't remember, Channel Performance, I think is the name of the app for if you have Luminate Charter. Those articles on that particular app are pretty good, but for the most part, the Luminate articles, I'm not a big fan of. 
 

I would have done it differently, but I think we have a question.  
 

[00:56:06] Danielle: Thank you for going through all that content, Peter. the first question we got is from Nancy and I think it is related to the question on, what content we should cover. Nancy said, please cover image upload in Supplier One. Will there be drag and drop capabilities? 
 

I've had trouble uploading images recently.  
 

[00:56:24] Peter: Yeah, that's a great call out and it's, One of, if not the most important, parts of the dot com process. You need that image to be very true to the item, and then also, interesting and alluring to customers. So that's something that we could really spend a lot of time on, for sure, in the future. 
 

Thanks for that request, Nancy. And we will, get back to you. We'll put it in the backlog for sure.

[00:56:51] Danielle: Yes. Thank you, Nancy. it looks like we didn't have any further questions come through. I'll just give it a little bit more time. and in the meantime, call out some of our resources. If you're looking for more hands on material. 
 

We have multiple different ebooks that cover a variety of topics from different retailers. Up on the screen are some of our Walmart related resources. Speaking of Luminate, we recently just put together a Luminate resource that is up live on our website, so you can go and check that out. Okay, I don't see any more questions coming through. 
 

If you think of a question later on, or would like to share any insight, please feel free to reach out to us on our email, or you can find us at supplypike.com. We would love to continue that conversation with you. But that is all that we have for you today. Thank you again for joining. Hopefully we will see you on our next webinar.