How Walmart is evolving its data analytics platform to reflect an AI-driven focus

Now, the company has big plans to expand its data platform — and large CPG brands are testing it out, excited about how they can use its findings.

Walmart Luminate has allowed suppliers and brands to look at information such as sales figures, inventory levels, data on shopping patterns and results from customer perception surveys. This year, the platform introduced a tool called Insights Activation, which integrates with Walmart’s retail media network, Walmart Connect, to identify media strategies based on Walmart Luminate data.

Mark Hardy, svp of Walmart Data Ventures, told Modern Retail that Insights Activation is the first step toward what Walmart wants to do with Walmart Luminate moving forward; that is, to provide not only data points but also recommendations to suppliers and merchants, particularly with the help of AI. As part of this vision for the platform’s future, Walmart will change the name of Walmart Luminate next year to Scintilla, which the company announced in October.

“When you hear about creating value from Walmart’s data, people immediately jump over to monetization, and they say, ‘So you’re selling data?’ The answer is not really,” Hardy said. “What we are doing is we’re looking at how do we take Walmart’s data and create value from it, through products, through being able to drive business.”

“Up to now, all the data we have gave you a gauge of ‘How did I do?’” Hardy said. “I could look at my sales, I could look at my customer, but after I’ve taken an action. Where we want to go is being able to connect the dots for all that data so that it provides recommendations of ‘What should I do?’”

Having a common set of data between the retailer, suppliers and ad network can especially be an efficiency for marketers, said Andrew Lipsman, an independent analyst at Media, Ads + Commerce.

“I think I look at Luminate or Scintilla broadly as a marketing tool, and that’s everything from understanding marketing insights, things like category market share to different audiences or customer profiles who consume different products or categories,” Lipsman said. “And then that information can be leveraged to activate marketing or advertising strategies.”

Unlike Luminate, Scintilla will not be preceded by the “Walmart” name — the platform began to expand outside of the U.S. to Canada and Mexico this year, and the company needed a brand that would be relevant in markets where the company has different store names.

The new name also ties into the goal of being able to provide recommendations using AI, Hardy said.

“[Scintilla] also means ‘a small amount,’ which captured the whole idea that from the smallest insights, big ideas can be ignited,” Hardy said. “So we thought that was a perfect alignment in terms of our value proposition and our legacy, along with the future of where we are going to go.”

Another example of this is a feature that will use AI to understand what’s on the shelf and tie that information to supply chain data, giving the company and suppliers a better idea of whether it has to get more inventory to the store.

“When we look at this, we don’t see it as a destination, but rather as a continuous journey,” Hardy said. “So we continue to add as we find opportunities to get a better visibility in that journey of the product or the journey of the customer. We’re constantly innovating and bringing new products to market that will add that perspective.”

Walmart Luminate’s customers include the companies behind some of the biggest brands found in the aisles.

“Everybody’s experiencing the same thing today and trying to find growth, and we need to use every tool that we can to help us identify the potential opportunities for growth and remain the leader,” said Jeffrey Hendrix, vp of customer for Bimbo Bakeries (which includes brands including Sara Lee, Thomas’ Bagels and Ball Park buns). “Otherwise, we’re going to fall asleep at the wheel.”

Hendrix said the platform gives the company both new insights and confirms what it may already think. For example, Bimbo used survey data from Luminate to discover that new customers were more driven to flavored bagels rather than plain bagels; that, in turn, helped Bimbo think further about how it could tweak its breakfast offering.

“These are the corners that need sweeping to help suppliers like us figure out where we can go find the growth,” Hendrix said.

Lipsman said Walmart and Kroger, which has a similar data platform called 84.51, are in a unique position of having such large sales channels to monetize their data as a product for advertisers. “I don’t know that that’s going to be the case for every retailer,” he said. “It’s probably going to mostly be the domain of the biggest players in grocery and maybe category leaders in some other retail segments.”

Kris McDermott, director of omnichannel marketing for Kimberly-Clark said a lot of CPG companies jumped onto Walmart Luminate at first because the retailer’s first-party data was unmatched.

McDermott said she thinks it will set a new bar for what kind of omnichannel intelligence brands expect from retailers. “There really isn’t anything quite like this,” McDermott said. “Obviously, Amazon has an enormous amount of site data they give you, but the omnichannel world is so much more complex, and trying to combine that with in-store availability and assortment information is really complicated; so that’s very clearly the bet that Walmart is making.”