Walmart adds marketplace data, deeper AI features to Scintilla insights platform

As part of first-party data and analytics division Walmart Data Ventures’ Inspire conference this week, the company announced several new Scintilla features coming next year, including access to marketplace data, customizable dashboards, custom alerts, a deeper version of its Marty agent for Scintilla, and a closer link between the Scintilla data platform and both the Scintilla In-Store supplier app and Walmart’s replenishment systems.

“We’re having one consistent approach of working and collaborating with our suppliers, and eventually marketplace sellers, as well, giving them the full visibility so that we can actually push the right business or push the right experience to our customers wherever they are,” Mark Hardy, head of Walmart Data Ventures, told Modern Retail.

First-party Walmart suppliers who also sell on Walmart’s marketplace will be able to see their marketplace data via Scintilla beginning next year. Hardy said by including marketplace data, Scintilla users will be able to see the full breadth of their Walmart.com business.

Amit Dodeja, CMO of e-commerce accelerator Spreetail, said his team had been encouraging Walmart to open up more access to marketplace data as more proprietary data makes it easier for brands to understand what’s working or not working in terms of advertising, pricing, etc. “It’s a wise move for Walmart to head in that direction,” Dodeja said. “It only strengthens the confidence that a third-party seller has on their platform.”

Scintilla is not yet available to those who solely sell on the Walmart marketplace, and there are no plans to make the platform available to them at this time, according to a Walmart spokesperson.

The new dashboards will connect data sets together so users can see in the same place whether sales are growing or declining alongside how customer behaviors are changing and how the supply chain is behaving, such as if consumers are leaving the brand or if inventory isn’t in the right place. Hardy said this “allows us now to provide visibility across all data sets, making individual data sets only relevant to subject-matter experts.”

The expanded AI functionality will allow Scintilla’s Marty AI assistant to look across all data sets and alert users to help them understand what is happening in their business performance. Currently, AI within Scintilla is limited to use cases such as explaining what a metric means or the features and capabilities of Scintilla, or highlighting changes in a report, or summarizing findings, Hardy said.

“What we’re doing now is taking AI and moving from summarizing findings or highlighting key points to, now, [making] recommendations,” Hardy said, adding that it may tell users why customers are lapsing and what they can do in areas such as supply chain or advertising to fix that. “It’ll allow you now to … bring all those data points together and help you get to the conclusion of what you should do next.”

While not offering it to marketplace-only sellers quite yet, Walmart has been expanding access to Scintilla: Just last month, the company said it plans to expand the platform to Sam’s Club suppliers in the U.S. next year. In February, Walmart launched Scintilla In-Store, a a new iteration
 of Volt, a platform acquired by Walmart in 2022, which gives supplier field representatives visibility to store-level data.

Walmart CFO John David Rainey said on the company’s second-quarter earnings call last month that Walmart Data Ventures “continues to drive meaningful growth,” though the company doesn’t disclose the division’s revenue in its public financial statements. “Users value the platform’s enhanced decision intelligence capabilities, which uncovered shared growth opportunities across Walmart’s formats and markets.”

Correction: This story has been updated to clarify that sellers will only be able to see the full breadth of their Walmart.com customers via Scintilla next year, and they cannot see what all customers are purchasing at Walmart.