Walmart Updates Every Supplier Should Know
Transcript
Walmart Updates Every Supplier Should KnowÂ
Â
[00:00:00] Peter Spaulding: We're trying to look at basically at a macro level over the last year or so, what have been the biggest updates at Walmart. And, how can you use those to, have supplier success, the usual thing that we do. this is us, Allie and Peter. We're usually, one of us is usually on, one of these webinars these days.Â
Â
sorry for getting sick of us. we're sticking around. but yeah, we're, we do researching and writing on the SupplierWiki team. we're always just trying to keep our ear to the ground of, the, Supplier situation, not just at Walmart, but in a bunch of other major retailers as well. yeah, so that's us.Â
Â
we are part of the SupplierWiki team, as I mentioned, and what we're really trying to do is to just Keep y'all up to date, keep you informed with free educational resources of a variety of different genres is what I call them. But basically, at whatever kind of level of depth, we want to be able to have something available for you guys, especially on the more pressing issues, I would say, or hot button issues, and also on the perennial issues, whether it's deductions or compliance, something like that.Â
Â
we want to be able to support suppliers in whatever kind of capacity in terms of educational content. So as I always like to say, if you have anything that you would like for us to cover, you can put it in the Q& A or in the chat. What's something that you feel like is under researched in your team or just in the Walmart or supplier world generally?Â
Â
What's the thing that you would like us to cover? Are there specific questions you have or specific things that you'd like to get answered? And then we can build our content out around that. But yeah, that's us. Today, as I mentioned before, we're going to be doing high level changes. So we're going to just basically do a review.Â
Â
if you've missed any of these, it would be pretty surprising because these are basically connected to essential supplier, performance and, just requirements. but it's still good to, to cover them to make sure that we're all on the same page. One thing I'd mentioned, I just call out during that section is If there's anything that you think should be included there, let us know.Â
Â
I think we've hit all the most important things over the last about calendar year or so. But then we're going to do a little bit more granular look at compliance updates, deductions and fees, and then apps and platforms. So those are the three that we wanted to break it down into and then we'll finish with the Q& A.Â
Â
frequently asked questions for these webinars. Will you be getting a copy of the slide deck? Yes. In three to four business days, you will get a copy of the slide deck and a link to the recording of the webinar. We record all of these. And we try to make them as accessible as possible to, the people who sign up for them.Â
Â
you will be receiving that in the inbox of the email that signed up for the webinar. So that's something that we,to call out to. Sometimes maybe a group of people will be watching on one person's email. If that's the case, that's going to go to the email that actually signed up for it.Â
Â
So look out for that in the next couple days. And then, we have two basic ways of communicating, in the webinar. One is through the chat, which is the public channel. you can also make the chat not public. If you just want to talk to the hosts and panelists, you can select that. in the dropdown there.Â
Â
but that's a great place to share best practices or tips or any kind of insights that you have, that you want to share with other people. And then the Q& A tab is for more formal questions, either about our presentation or about some kind of process at Walmart or anything really. So any kind of Q& A that you have, the reason why those are separated out is it helps me as, as we're, as Allie's going to be going through the content.Â
Â
to be able to tailor certain questions to certain parts of the webinar. If I want to interrupt her flow to ask a question that I think can be answered on a specific slide, I'll go ahead and do that. If I want to save a question for the end, then I'll go ahead and do that too. those are the two main kind ofÂ
Â
And, we're going to talk about SupplyPike a little bit, too. Today, we're covering a lot of stuff that isn't directly related to the problem or the problems that SupplyPike addresses in the software. But if you are curious about revenue loss, if you have any questions major kind of revenue loss issues that you want more visibility into or that you would like to automate.Â
Â
SupplyPike is the best in the business at that. if you're curious about that, you can let us know too. you can just go to SupplyPike. com and see, what that's all about. But basically, yeah, SupplyPike is designed to help suppliers get paid and get better, to win back automatically those invalid deductions and fines that come from errors on the receiving end, but to also give more visibility and insight into the problems on the supplier side that create valid deductions and valid chargebacks.Â
Â
That's basically what that does. It's a very hands free,automated process that, it's a product that we're all really proud of. and so these are some of the brands that we're working with. and as you'll see, there's quite a bit of variety in terms of size of supplier, and in terms of, the categories.Â
Â
So it's a pretty, it's a pretty universal product that can reach quite a wide variety of suppliers. So that's something that we really like on the SupplierWiki side because, working with our partners, we get to hear from a wide variety of people. maybe there's some problems that are more pertinent in this category as opposed to this one, or with this, size of a company, it's just an enterprise issue or it's just a SMB issue.Â
Â
So Anyways, that's SupplyPike. If you're curious about that, you can go to supplypike. com, or you can just message us or put something in the Q& A or, or the chat and we can get you set up with talking to someone about that. I think that's it for me. Take it away, Allie.Â
Â
[00:05:51] Allie Truong: Awesome. Thank you, Peter. And thank you everybody for joining.Â
Â
let's get into the review of the high level changes that have happened at Walmart in the calendar year 2024. All right. This is essentially the roadmap that we're going to follow today of what we're covering. So I'll do large, the high level callouts here, and then as we're going through this, we can always, we'll have a couple slides on each of those to unpack what's actually happened, with some of these changes, and if there's more questions on a particular section, we can spend more time there.Â
Â
So here we go. Here's some of the major highlights. So the first thing, that we wanted to call out was the OTIF program that is, that has a new goal update. So they've actually lowered the percentage that suppliers have to be compliant to. So we'll unpack that. The SQEP program has had a couple of changes, but the main thing to call out is we've been talking about phase four as something that will launch since SQEP began in 2021 2022, and that's Still pending, so still waiting for those changes.Â
Â
Another major shift on the collect side is the collect pickup program.this one kind of went under the radar so we can spend more time there if we need to, but essentially that program is no longer called the collect pickup program. It's changed a little bit and it's now called the Fuel Management Program, so we'll get into those changes.Â
Â
Another thing to call out is that settlement disputing has gone away. It is not a tool that Walmart is using for the most part, and they've pointed suppliers to Mass Dispute Creation, a feature within APDP, which is the AP Deductions Dispute Portal. We'll get into what, how suppliers are using that and some of the roadblocks that suppliers have faced.Â
Â
We'll also talk about the elephant in the room. DSS is going away. it's a couple of the functionalities are already gone, but we'll talk about how suppliers are using Luminate and then of course supplier one and how that is functioning today and what the future of that looks like. Alright, so some of the main changes we're gonna focus on today, and we're tying these in a ribbon.Â
Â
with the trends that we're seeing is a push towards omnichannel and updated platforms. That's going to be, a theme that you'll see through today's conversation, namely when we're talking about Luminate. So Luminate is the replacement of DSS. And then SupplierOne has replaced item 360, as the item management and setup tool.Â
Â
And we'll see how we're doing. watching SupplierOne unfold and what it may continue to update or change in the future. We're also seeing Walmart easing up on compliance programs or providing a little bit more clarity, so that's some good news there. There is an increase in travel costs. With collect pickup programs, switching to the fuel management program, and then new platforms.Â
Â
So that's going to be a learning curve for suppliers to adapt. pointing back to Luminate and supplier one. and then thinking about how Walmart is. tackling having data and having access, not just at the store level like DSS had before, but on that broader scale, having data that is specific to e com, to pickup, to the other channels, that have emerged in the last couple of years as well.Â
Â
All right, let's start with getting into compliance updates. Okay. So we're giving you a timeline to zoom out a little bit, to think about how these programs have, Began, changed, evolved in the last couple of years. we know that we have some newer suppliers who have been here during COVID or have just started recently, but to zoom out, Walmart hasn't always had the compliance programs that they rely on today.Â
Â
If you look back to 2017, this is actually when OTIF launched, and we've seen features launch outside of that. So having the OTIF dashboard or scorecard is what it's called in RetailLink. being able to dispute those is even a new feature that's come out in the past couple of years, and doing so in high radius versus doing it with your buyer.Â
Â
So there's been a lot of changes and you can see, A couple years after OTIF launched, the SQEP program or Supplier Quality Excellence program launched to supplement some of the other supply chain defects and making sure that suppliers are accountable to be compliant to the standards set.Â
Â
Walmart has. And we've seen that roll out in several different phases. So you may hear us talk about phase one, phase two, phase three. If that language makes no sense to you and you haven't heard of the SQEP program, or you don't know how that affects your business, Peter can go ahead and send some resources in the chat.Â
Â
We've got that all outlined in articles, in eBooks that you can download. and we have a couple of webinars on that as well. We've seen that continue to launch, and that has three main phases. The fourth one being something that Walmart has mentioned in the past called scheduling and transportation, but has not officially released.Â
Â
And then in 2024, the main thing that we're talking about today is that OTIF goal update. So let's get into what that looks like now. So this happened February 1st, 2004, and Walmart relaxed their OTIF goal. Goals. So there were certain goal amounts with the highest being at 98% and they've actually lowered that depending on if it's on time or in full.Â
Â
So we'll get into what those look like. Another piece of that with that rolled out, which kind of went under the radar because relaxing that goal percentage is the headline of this is. OTIF used to be charged monthly, but now it's released quarterly, which I believe is in line with how SQEP is charged too, so those both moved to quarterly charges.Â
Â
Alright, so here are the old OTIF goals. As you can see, across the board, it was 98 percent for prepaid on time, for collect ready, and for in full. pretty stringent, high. It really only left 2 percent of wiggle room for suppliers to be non compliant, so to have any issues with delivering to DCs on time, having POs route confirmed on time, making sure that POs were ready for carrier pickup, and that orders were filled to the exact quantity and that they were the right order.Â
Â
ProductOrdered. so that has actually been lowered and what that looks like is for prepaid on time it's actually at 90 percent for and for collect ready it has stayed at 98 percent so calling that out as well and that's for on time goals. And then for, in full goals, it's actually 95, so it's gone down about 3 percent there.Â
Â
And I want to call out, too, that if, let's just use in full, for instance, if 95 percent of your POs are Filled to the exact quantity order. You won't receive an otif fine. However, if you are outside of that, if you're outside of that 95%, you're going to get a 3% cost of goods sold. charge for that particular po.Â
Â
So it really does add up. the we've talked to are excited for this, relaxation of the goal, however, acknowledging that. This goal is still at a 95%. It's still in the higher range. So thinking about how they leverage the opportunity to have a little bit of a relaxed goal, but still meeting the high standards that Walmart has, it's not lowered to 60 percent or 70%.Â
Â
It's still in the 90 range. Calling that out as well. And then wanted to call out the OTIF tools that suppliers use, if you're unfamiliar. So before, sometime between when OTIF launched and today, the OTIF program was used to be in Walmart documentation, not disputable. Then they've changed the language in that documentation that said you could dispute with your buyer.Â
Â
And now the preferred way that Walmart has documented supplier's dispute is through HighRadius. And that is separate from RetailLink. And you actually go into a third party portal that is similar to how you would log into RetailLink and go and view any of those chargebacks. And you can dispute those in there.Â
Â
I won't go too deep into how you do that or what's the best way to dispute in High Radius. but we have documentation on that, we have webinars on that, so Peter can also send those in the chat. I'll make him work some more, on the back end. And then the other thing I wanted to mention in terms of OTIF tools is within RetailLink, there is an OTIF scorecard.Â
Â
And that actually gives suppliers visibility into their OTIF data. You can see if you are tracking to that 98 percent or 95 percent or 90 percent depending on what metric you're looking at. So you can see what you're compliant in. One call out to make is even if you're disputing a quarterly charge that comes through in high radius, it's not going to be reversed on your scorecard.Â
Â
So you'll want to be Keeping that in mind if you are disputing them on that quarterly basis and going back and viewing, for two factors. no change that you reverse on HighRadius before its invoice will be reflected in the OTIF scorecard. if you're using that for reporting, you want to take that into account if you're You know, tabulating what is actually, that you've won back.Â
Â
That won't be within those metrics. The other piece of the OTIF scorecard is that it is rolling 13 week data. So if you are disputing on a quarterly basis, that might not always capture everything that you're looking for within that OTIF scorecard. So it's really important to have an external or have downloaded some of that data or have something that else to rely on to get some of the proof documentation because of that quarterly basis.Â
Â
of, data that the ODIV scorecard is holding. Okay, so here are some of the takeaways that suppliers have talked about. asking if 98 percent is unrealistic, and if lowering those goals even further would make more sense. Again, this is something that Walmart is the largest retailer in North America.Â
Â
They are having, they have high standards, and lowering this is actually just is good news, taking what you can get with those high standards, and that suppliers are still going to see a number of OTIF fines. Those goals are still high, but it really is a willingness on Walmart's part to meet suppliers where they're at, and also to zoom out and think about compliance programs at other retailers.Â
Â
So think about Target, for instance. They've released their 2024 compliance updates. we actually have a resource on that Peter can send, but comparing these compliance programs across retailers and thinking about strategically How you partner within those guidelines or constraints with your retailer teams, with your merchant teams, to be the best supplier and understand where they're coming from.Â
Â
And working through those invalid fines or charge decks that you may be seeing, disputing those, building a good case for those. but also thinking about the valid ones, the ones that you're getting visibility to on your OTIF scorecard, and ensuring that you're being a great partner, taking responsibility for any issues that are happening, whether it's with on time, collect ready, or in full, ensuring that you're understanding what your part is in that and being a great supplier partner.Â
Â
All right, let's get into deductions and fees. First one I want to talk about is fuel management program. So if you remember talking about the collect pickup program, that is what that this is merged into. Essentially in the beginning, Walmart announced collect suppliers who are using Walmart freight. So the, essentially collect, if you're shipping collect, who's representing Walmart in the U.S. is going to be charged additional fees due to major shifts in the transportation industry. And you'll remember this is around the time in 2022 when fuel prices were extremely high. There was a lot of turbulence as well. so this is a response to that. back in 2022, Walmart announced via email around July 1st that this Collect Pickup program was happening, and it was going to be effective August 1st, so a month out for all Collect suppliers.Â
Â
And we do have documentation on that if you want to get into the details of what that program was outlined. But essentially from there, suppliers were then charged fees based on August shipments in September, and that has been the status quo up until February 2024. So essentially, in February 2024, CollectPickup program was replaced by FuelManagement, and it is essentially just a fuel charge.Â
Â
So we'll get into the details there. With CollectPickup, you can actually go in and view what those were. There was essentially the freight charge, which is based on a number of factors, and they were using brake fuel. Breakthrough fuel, a third party to calculate that based on miles and how much product you actually had on the,on the truck, as well as a, the fuel cost and then a surcharge for just using Collect, using the Collect Freight program.Â
Â
So with the fuel management program, this is just the fuel charge. it's going to be offset. Taking into account with future business and then thinking about what suppliers are doing now with Collect and Prepaid is thinking about the different benefits and drawbacks that Collect versus Prepaid had.Â
Â
So the fuel management program for what we've seen is the new status quo from Collect Pickup Program, essentially what. Suppliers can take away is thinking about what is the true cost of collect versus prepaid? One may be better for your business. Both are, have great options, both have benefits, both have drawbacks, and really thinking about it at each retailer and your particular needs.Â
Â
So if other retailers don't have programs like, The fuel management program, that's an element to consider when choosing collect versus prepaid based on some of the other options that you have. But just taking that into consideration, that's going to be a built in cost when you're shipping collect with Walmart moving forward.Â
Â
So we don't see this program going anywhere, even though it has shifted from the collect pickup program to fuel management program. All right, now we're going to get into talking about the AP deduction space. So there's been a lot of changes since the beginning of 2023 with settlement disputing in particular.Â
Â
So that has gone away. That used to be an option for suppliers essentially What suppliers could do was, and typically it was a larger supplier. So think of, some of those legacy suppliers that are category leaders, had the option to bulk their different AP, charges their AP deductions and submit them and say, hey, we think about 60 percent of these are valid and 40 percent are invalid.Â
Â
And that was an agreement that they could do with the, Walmart teams that handle AP deductions. And that's now gone away. So settlement disputing is not something that Walmart, is regularly using. They're moving away from that. And they have essentially in their communication. Pointed to a feature that they've built out in APDP as a solution for shortages, shortage disputing in particular.Â
Â
And they're referring to it as Mass Dispute Creation, or MDC. And that's in APDP. So if you're unfamiliar with APDP, that's in RetailLink. It's in It's the dispute portal that you would use to dispute most of the AP deduction codes at Walmart. There's about 70 of those. But there are some drawbacks to using mass dispute creation.Â
Â
So you can bulk, I believe they've changed it since they've rolled it out. I think it's up to about 500 claims that you can do in one mass dispute creation. The problem with this is that proof documentation can't be added. So essentially, you're just selecting. The particular claims that you'd like to dispute, you can't attach proof documentation, and then you submit them for review and wait for results to come back and see what sticks, essentially.Â
Â
What we've seen with suppliers is Essentially, it's still a manual process and because you can't attach any proof documentation to any claims in Mass Dispute Creation, there's less opportunity for those disputes to come back as approved because there's just nothing to point to.let's look at the timeline.Â
Â
For September 2021, this is when APDP was launched. For October 22, this is when Settlement Dispute was approved.settlement disputing was, ended. So there was about six months of transition and we have seen for some suppliers that has extended depending on the backlog of disputes that Walmart was trying to move through.Â
Â
So you may have heard other suppliers in the community and their businesses talk about, we had, settlement disputing passed this time. We've heard that too. It really just depended on. Walmart trying to clear out some of their backlog. I haven't heard in the last couple of months, any suppliers, getting a opportunity to do a settlement again.Â
Â
I believe that it's moved to most of those, one time settlements have moved away. but essentially last year in May, all suppliers moved to that individual manual disputing and then for any of the bulk disputing that suppliers wanted to do, they could do that in. the mass dispute creation feature in APDP.Â
Â
And again, wanting to call out, mass dispute creation is not a like for like replacement for settlement disputing. It's much more like individual disputing, and I believe some of the data that we have seen is about 19 percent of disputes are actually won back from the mass dispute creation tool, which isn't the best odds, but again, depends on your business.Â
Â
If you have a huge backlog, it's worth looking into to see if that's something you want to do. Thank you. But thinking about going back and with a fine tooth comb and seeing some of those disputes that you could dispute at an individual level and attach proof documentation, if you have that, to increase your recovery rate.Â
Â
Alright, now let's get into apps and platforms. There's a lot of changes on this side, so excited to get into this. The first one we'll start with is Supplier1. So this is a secondary platform. It does have overlap with RetailLink, but essentially just to cover the differences that we have between the two platforms is RetailLink is Walmart's current supplier platform and SupplierOne does have similar functionality.Â
Â
My suggestion, if you have dual monitors, pull up RetailLink, pull up SupplierOne, and see the differences and similarities that are in between these two platforms. But you log into SupplierOne the same way that you would log into RetailLink. So it should be the same password and username that you're using, same email.Â
Â
RetailLink is going to be much more robust. It's got a lot more information in it. SupplierOne really feels like a Quick dashboard that has a couple different areas of, tools or expertise, but it's not as extensive as what RetailLink has. The one thing we're going to focus on today is the main change that has been tied to SupplierOne since it's been launched, is that RetailLink will no longer have item 360.Â
Â
So if you do any item setup or item maintenance or, content work, When I'm talking about content, I'm talking about your digital images or, any of the descriptions that are on your, walmart. com or on the Walmart app. That is going to be in SupplierOne now, so that's going to be your item management tool, for the most part.Â
Â
There are some other features and we'll get into those as we go through the slides. So like I said, This is how you get to SupplierOne. It's SupplierOne, one word, walmart. com and it's the regular MFA login for RetailLink. pretty easy. I'm glad they've made that part easy. And then, in terms of who has access, there were some suppliers who have had early adopter access to help the Walmart teams test and understand how suppliers are moving through the application.Â
Â
But most, if not all, suppliers should have access to that. So if you haven't had access, or you are unfamiliar, talk to your site admin and see what makes sense for your business and for your role.question for the chat, if anyone wants to engage with it, is talking about Item 360. So if you enjoyed using Item 360, if you had particular issues or errors with it, What you'll notice, I'll spoil the surprise if you haven't been into SupplierOne.Â
Â
Item360 has very similar functionality to the item management platform in SupplierOne. The only differences are really just an updated or refreshed version. user experience. It just feels a little less clunky to move through. So we've heard generally positive reactions, but again, it is a new application, a new platform, so there may be bugs.Â
Â
And if you have any that you've seen, point it out in the chat. We'd love to talk through it and see if other suppliers have a solution. So What's the point of this? We already have retail. That's the question I'm hearing from a lot of suppliers. We already have RetailLink. Why are we replacing, a RetailLink app like Item360?Â
Â
essentially, Walmart has said that these apps, and this The functionality of SupplierOne is really just to help have a uniformed platform. It's in the name of where suppliers can go for a one stop shop for certain actionable functions that they'll be doing. So if you go through this platform, and I'll show some of the different areas of the competencies within SupplierOne.Â
Â
You'll notice that there are some mirroring of platforms that you would see in RetailLink. So Walmart has said their official position on this is that these apps within SupplierOne aren't replacing RetailLink. However, The one that is being replaced is item 360. So you shouldn't be able to put any content into item 360.Â
Â
That's not a platform you should, your team should be using anymore unless there's your, you have a particular case and you've worked it out with the Walmart team. Most suppliers should be working within the SupplierOne item management platform. Alright, and like I said, the initiative behind SupplierOne is to streamline and have some more siloed features, from RetailLink, and have, the priorities of what suppliers need to take action on right at their fingertips.Â
Â
Okay, so I mentioned some of the mirroring that is in SupplierOne, and this is the high level view of what SupplierOne is. available. We've noticed as the months go on, and the suppliers we're talking to, the platform is continuing to change. my recommendation was, is to, if you're not in this every day, put a, reminder on your calendar to just go look at this and see if there's Any updated features, and you can also see some of the documentation that Walmart has where they list all the different changes of this platform, which I'll show in a couple slides.Â
Â
But the one that is the most built out, is the most comprehensive, is Items Inventory. It is a replacement for Item 360 functionality, and that's what suppliers should be using for any item maintenance or setup. There is an Order Management tab within SupplierOne. It has duplicate functions of Nova, but it is not a comprehensive platform like Nova is.Â
Â
So with Nova, you can do PO creation, cancellations, edit POs, create manual POs, like I said. you don't really have that access in Order Management yet. But you can pull some simple queries and see a high level of your POs. One point that I have talked to some suppliers about with this is it is helpful when you're looking at DSS and there may not be some PO data to go look in Nova and look in this order management tool.Â
Â
So you can start to piece together some of the information that you might need for some of the reports that are no longer in DSS, which we'll talk about here in a couple slides. The other features in SupplierOne really are more dashboard or visibility. There's not a ton of action you can do. So there's the claims and return scorecard, so that's got some returns reporting, and then payments and charges.Â
Â
And this is going to be more just DSV orders as of now, and some deduction data and info. Again, not extremely extensive at this point compared to the Items and Inventory tab. All right, so I've already mentioned this, so I'll breeze past it, but essentially SupplierOne is something that your team should be using.Â
Â
It looks like it's going to be a touchpoint, a great place to take action as a supplier. There's even more functionalities than the ones I've mentioned. so just checking in on this and seeing if it has helpful tools for your team. And it's free!I, and I'll recap this here as well. At this time is the language that Walmart has said for future integrations.Â
Â
So applications like APDP or Nova have been spoken to from Walmart's perspective that they're unlikely to transition all of those applications over to SupplierOne. So we'll continue monitoring this, and if there's news, be sure to check SupplierWiki. We'll aggregate and summarize the information on SupplierOne and the changes, if we hear anything or see anything.Â
Â
And like I said, here are, this is essentially how Walmart is. I'm just outlining this. You can see this if you go into SupplierOne. You can also find this in some of their help documentation. I would highly recommend going and looking at the help docs for SupplierOne. Alright, let's transition over to talking about a different platform.Â
Â
The replacement for DSS. Luminate. So this has been a huge conversation in the supplier, Walmart's supplier world. Walmart announced that DSS was going to be discontinued, it was going to be sunset, and that DSS was going to be replaced with Luminate, and that suppliers had two options. So suppliers could use the Luminate Basic.Â
Â
It's essentially the free version. And it is the replacement for DSS. Or you can elevate some of the access to reporting and information with Luminate Charter, which is the paid version. again, another question for the chat if you want to engage. But if your team has started using Luminate, share with us what you think, share with the chat.Â
Â
We want to hear how people are using it. liking it, what they have found helpful, something that they have struggled with. As we collect these, this feedback, we want to build out more resources to help suppliers with, adapting to Luminate.this has been a point of contention for a lot of suppliers, the DSS timeline.Â
Â
the original sunset date that Walmart mentioned was March 4th, 1st, 2024. However, it seemed that a lot of suppliers were frustrated with this, not having enough time to onboard onto Luminate. so Walmart just walked that back in some of the, announcements that they've made. Essentially now what we're seeing in Q2 and now rolling into Q3 is reports are just slowly being discontinued on DSS until there's not any more access to these reports.Â
Â
So you can even go into RetailLink and see in the Announcements channel, the most recent announcement that they've made about Luminate is that there are more DSS reports that are going to no longer be available to external DSS users in the U. S. So Peter can send that link in the chat. You can review some of those reports that are going to be no longer available.Â
Â
I've got it pulled up on my other monitor, that's why I'm looking away from the screen, but some of those are purchase quantity, markdown, event reporting, Ecom supply plan, and what's in this announcement that Walmart has put out is essentially what reports are going to be gone, which ones you can use in Luminate, and why they're going away, and where you can find some of that additional information.Â
Â
So I'd highly recommend going and checking that out, especially if you're pulling reports in the next couple weeks, so you can adapt to where the Walmart team has pointed suppliers to finding that, that data.yeah. In terms of when this, when DSS will no longer exist, I haven't seen a particular date. I know they've shifted that back.Â
Â
So it seems like they're slow rolling this. Complete sun setting. So the recommendation we've made to suppliers is to understand where you need to get this data moving forward, where's the source of truth that Walmart wants to point suppliers to, learning how to adapt that, and don't compare your DSS, your old DSS report to your new Luminate report and expect them to be apples to apples.Â
Â
So Walmart has had made several mentions in their help articles, in their announcements, in their trainings that they have on the Luminate site. There are different webinars that they have that these reports will look different because there is essentially new data that they're pulling from. So an example to communicate this is before there was in the vendor scorecard one number that kind of rolled up e com sales versus in store sales and sales from different channels, whether it's Pickup or Delivery, etc.Â
Â
That's going to be broken out. It's going to be pulled differently in Luminate. So not comparing those or at least understanding why those numbers are different is the key instead of hitting your head against the computer and saying, I don't know why my old DSS report isn't lining up exactly to the Similar Luminate report, so I wanted to call that out.Â
Â
Alright, so we're already talking about this, but essentially, with DSS transitioning to Luminate, one of the main frustrations we have heard from suppliers is the flexibility of report pulling that is not translation, translated into Luminate basic. I'm stumbling over my words. so essentially, With this adjustment, again, not comparing reports, but understanding what you need to pull from Luminate, getting used to that platform and how it is very different from the experience of DSS, as well as if there's not data available in Luminate.Â
Â
Luminate, where you can pull that. some of the ones I've already mentioned are, SupplierOne, Nova, and pulling from any other resources that you may have. Maybe it's a scorecard, just adjusting to that and learning how to use the new platforms that Walmart's rolling out instead of, relying or continuing to use the older platforms to the point where, you haven't practiced, using or learning how to use.Â
Â
Luminate Basic or Luminate Charter, whichever one your company is using. what's really exciting is what is to be gained in using Luminate. So essentially, I already mentioned this, but there's much more data that's parsed out between Omnichannel and com than what was available in DSS. There's also a lot of voice of customer, data and shopper insights that is in Luminate Charter that's worth looking into.Â
Â
We have a lot of resources on Luminate Charter versus Basic, so you can go check those out if you haven't looked at that, or you can go look at the Luminate website to understand what is available within Charter versus Basic. Okay, I have reached the end of my slides, so we can get into some questions if we have any.Â
Â
[00:40:18] Peter Spaulding: We do not have any questions,I think we can move on with our, other slides for, you guys got a healthy dose of SupplierWiki resources in the chat today,take it all with a pinch of salt. but yeah, this is some of the stuff that we have in other retailers that we've, we've expanded to there,If you have any friends on other teams and other retailers that you'd like to share the content with that could be, helpful to them.Â
Â
But yeah, here's our email. So if you can't think of any questions right now, but you think you might have some in the future about these updates or about the new one that was, that, came out today about the 7. 15 updates in DSS, you could take our emails down now, or you could just email marketing at supplypike.Â
Â
com too, and we'll be able to see it that way. as well. But yeah, I think that's it for us. Thank you all for joining us. Thank you, Allie, for running through that content and we'll see you next time.Â
Â
Hosts
- Read More
Allie Welsh-Truong
SupplierWiki Content Manager
Allie Welsh-Truong is an NWA native with a background in the CPG industry. As Content Manager, she develops and executes SupplierWiki's content strategy.
- Read More
Peter Spaulding
Sr. SupplierWiki Writer
Peter is a Content Coordinator at SupplyPike. His background in academia helps to detail his research in retail supply chains.
Presentation
Walmart Updates Every Supplier Should Know
Download the Walmart Updates Every Supplier Should Know slide deck to stay informed on all the happenings at Walmart.
Related Resources
Sponsored by SupplyPike for Walmart
About SupplyPike for Walmart
SupplyPike for Walmart simplifies and expedites the disputing process for suppliers' deductions by streamlining operations, providing critical insights, and automating tedious tasks to help Walmart suppliers recover every dollar efficiently. Get Paid and Get Betterâ„¢ with SupplyPike.
About
SupplyPike helps you fight deductions, increase in-stocks, and meet OTIF goals in the built-for-you platform, powered by machine learning.