Written by Tripp Cashion, Vice President of Sales, Walmart Consumables – Harvest Group
Suppliers Will Need to Access Walmart DSS Data Through Walmart Luminate in Q1 2024
In October, Walmart announced that Decision Support access in Retail Link will be decommissioned in March 2024 as Walmart encourages suppliers to access Decision Support data through Luminate. Data accessed outside of Decision Support (Ex. OTIF) will still be accessed through Retail Link applications.
What does the Walmart Luminate transition mean for suppliers?
As of March 2024, all suppliers will need to use Luminate Basic or invest in Charter to access their Decision Support data. Walmart began slowly rolling out access to Luminate Basic in October 2023.
This change will present significant strategic budget decisions as brands evaluate their reporting needs and priorities. At Harvest Group, we have been planning for this and are prepared to guide our clients through this transition. We have been building the technology needed to maintain and expand analytical excellence throughout the transition. We recently held a webinar for our clients unpacking the transition and the implications for our brands.
Three insights about Luminate to keep top of mind as you begin the journey toward readiness:
1. Merchants are using Luminate data to make decisions – especially Shopper Behavior data.
Suppliers with access to Luminate Charter will be looking at the same data as their merchants, have the earliest read on white space for innovation, what items are working online, ways to defend their portfolio, the voice of the Walmart customer, and much more, all while being equipped to speak the same language as their merchants. They will also have the deepest insights to drive advertising decisions with Walmart Connect, potentially leading to more clicks and higher ROAS.
2. You need deep analytical resources to work Luminate with excellence.
Luminate data is significantly more complex and in-depth than data previously provided to suppliers in Decision Support. It is likely that brands will need to rethink current data resources to thoroughly process and draw insights from Luminate. The Harvest Group Walmart team has been working in Luminate data since its inception and has found added complexity coming from enhanced reporting measures, such as modular and replenishment metrics within Channel Performance. In Shopper Behavior, we’re seeing data like we’ve never seen from Walmart before, including substitutability, shopper metrics, cross-category baskets, item ranking, and item-channel-store level competitive performance.
With access to this level of detailed data comes the need to resource against it, ensuring suppliers have experts who can leverage all the functionality and make the most robust and thoughtful recommendations to their merchants.
3. The transition to Luminate starts now!
Suppliers that wait until the rollout to address Luminate will be behind their peers. It is imperative to begin working against this data now and to find a partner that is familiar with Luminate – ready to both guide you through the transition AND work the data on the other side.
Harvest Group Can Help With Your Team’s Luminate Transition
We know the transition to Luminate is going to be game-changing for your company and your Walmart business – both from a budget standpoint and a shopper insight standpoint. We are committed to helping brands use this data in the most efficient and impactful way possible. If you’d like to have a conversation about Luminate or any of our integrated commerce capabilities, fill out our Contact Us form here.
