Here’s what you need to know about switching from Retail Link/DSS to Luminate

The time to switch to Luminate is now. Crisp has compiled what you need to know about the groundbreaking platform, and developed a solution to seamlessly leverage Luminate data in all your current systems.

Luminate is the next-generation analytics and data-sharing system for both Walmart’s internal teams and external suppliers, offering a host of rich new data sets and features over its legacy portal, Retail Link.

The timeline for the migration from Retail Link to Luminate is now clear, as Walmart has announced the depreciation of Retail Link’s DSS. This is a big change, but it’s also a massive opportunity for suppliers to gain access to more actionable data and insights than ever before.

To help suppliers take advantage of all that Luminate has to offer, Crisp seamlessly integrates Luminate data into their existing systems – ensuring no impact to downstream reporting while getting insights more quickly and efficiently.

Here’s everything you need to know about the switch to Walmart Luminate, and how Crisp’s solution can make the transition quick and pain-free.

It’s time to make the switch

While DSS access will remain available until March, Luminate has already become Walmart’s single source of truth, serving as a comprehensive reporting hub for employees and suppliers alike.

All conversations between buyers and suppliers will require the use of Luminate to be on the same page from line reviews to joint business planning.

Later this year, suppliers will also need to subscribe to either a Walmart Luminate Basic (free) or Walmart Luminate Charter (paid) plan. While Walmart’s documentation offers a full side-by-side comparison, in short, Luminate’s paid Charter plan includes a much wider array of data, API access, and more historical data. In order to leverage’s Crisp’s integration, the Charter plan is required.

You’ll need a plan in place to run current processes with Luminate data

You likely have systems and processes in place today that depend on DSS data – and with the move to Luminate’s API-based access, you’ll need a plan to ensure that these systems continue functioning. Crisp can take care of the heavy lifting so you don’t have to rebuild every single system from scratch.

In addition to helping keep older systems running, Crisp makes your modern data initiatives incredibly easy to implement. Crisp automatically ingests and integrates Walmart Luminate data directly into the tools you use today, including Excel, BI tools, cloud-based platforms, and more. Additionally, the breadth of Luminate data is cleaned and normalized through Crisp, offering a crystal-clear look at your business data – including reports not previously available through DSS – as efficiently as possible.

Crisp’s Luminate integration ensures access to the latest data available from Walmart with consistent, reliable pipelines that eliminate maintenance costs and enable faster, smarter decision-making.

“Crisp has made it quick and easy for Hasbro to bring the Luminate data into our Power BI environment for deeper analysis,” said Sam Kazery, Insights and Analytics Manager at Hasbro. “The Crisp Platform has allowed us to focus on delivering value-driving analytics to improve the business, rather than the nitty-gritty details of building, running and maintaining data pipelines. The Crisp team is also future proofing our investment with out-of-the-box integrations for all of the other, complementing, data technologies our team is considering.”

What’s more, Crisp can get your connection to Luminate up and running in minutes. After signing your contract for Luminate’s Charter plan and having your Account Manager sign the Luminate data sharing agreement, Crisp can have your data flowing right away – including three years of historical backfill.

“Crisp has made it quick and easy for Hasbro to bring Luminate data into our Power BI environment for deeper analysis. The Crisp Platform has allowed us to focus on delivering value-driving analytics to improve the business, rather than the nitty-gritty details of building, running and maintaining data pipelines.”

There is a lot of data

Walmart is the world’s largest retailer, and with Luminate, it has provided suppliers with an unprecedented amount of information – including enhanced e-commerce, online pick up and delivery, and shopper data. Never before has a retailer offered this breadth and depth of data.

But it’s difficult for brands to ingest the full scale of this with solutions built in-house, let alone organize it and put it into action. 

That’s where Crisp comes in. Crisp is built to scale to the full volume of Luminate data, quickly and seamlessly integrating that data wherever you need it.

Luminate data feeds are changing every month

Luminate has been built for the future, serving as a foundation for new and evolving data sets as they become available. Since its launch, Luminate has added and updated several feeds per month, and Crisp has invested significant engineering resources to incorporate these new data feeds into our system and quickly make them available to customers.

What’s more, Crisp’s data model documentation helps you easily understand each new report, so you can start referencing and using them to your advantage right away.

Without Crisp, vendor portal updates and new releases can go unnoticed or break internal data pipelines, bringing systems to a puzzling halt. By the time you fix the problem, or onboard a new data feed, another update may come right behind it – leaving analysts more focused on maintaining ingestion pipelines than actual data analysis and strategic planning.

With Crisp, all actionable Luminate data is consistently and reliably fed into a single source of truth – so your team can focus on the insights you need to make smarter decisions.

Crisp can help you make the most of Luminate today

The switch from Retail Link to Luminate doesn’t have to be a daunting one. In fact, it’s an exciting opportunity to gain much more visibility into sales and operations with Walmart, with even more promising developments to come.

Crisp is here to help you every step of the way. We’ve set up a Luminate hotline email – luminate@gocrisp.com – where you can ask our team of experts any questions you have about the new platform.

To start transitioning Luminate into your workflow, contact our team today at www.gocrisp.com/luminate.