Most suppliers have heard of the Supplier Performance Scorecard, often referred to as simply the Scorecard. However, the Scorecard is complex, and suppliers sometimes have trouble understanding this document and why Walmart puts so much weight into it.
In this article, we are going to create the Scorecard and dive into the various components. We’ll discuss what each element means and why it is essential for suppliers to understand its implications fully. Lastly, we’ll talk about the importance of assessing the success of your Walmart business.
The Scorecard is a report that attempts to grade suppliers’ performance from Walmart’s perspective. It is not simply an indicator of how many products Walmart consumers purchased, though sales are one crucial component. Instead, the Scorecard looks at the individual components that work together to ultimately determine if Walmart made any positive margin when the consumer purchased these products.
Before we dive into creating the Scorecard and breaking down the individual metrics, it is vital to understand the main components of the Scorecard and what they mean.
There are dozens of metrics displayed in the Scorecard across multiple time ranges. However, though the document might seem confusing, we can group all of the metrics into three major categories: sales, profitability, and asset efficiency.
Sales Volume: Sales may seem the most important and obvious of all metrics. After all, the entire purpose of a supplier’s efforts is to sell its products to consumers. Sales volume is a good metric to consider in the overall analysis of the account, but what if the consumer purchased many products only because Walmart sold them at a deep discount? That would make sales volume high, but Walmart’s margin and profitability very low.
Profitability: The profitability metric refers to Walmart’s profitability, not the supplier’s. As we will see on the upcoming Scorecard example, the report displays many different margin metrics. The report shows the ultimate metric as the “Maintain Margin,” referring to the margin remaining after any store markdowns. In other words, did Walmart make any money when the consumer purchased the product?
Asset efficiency: Asset efficiency is how efficiently Walmart handles the supplier’s products, which are ultimately the retailer’s assets. Some of the Scorecard metrics that constitute asset efficiency are unit and retail turns, store weeks of supply, instock percentage, and average inventory at cost.
While all of the above categories are important on an individual basis, the combined impact of all three results in the Gross Margin Return on Inventory Investment (GMROII) metric. We will dive further into this and other metrics a bit further on in this lesson. However, let’s first build the report in Decision Support.
The Scorecard is a simple report to create. The user only needs to provide a filter to define the scope of the data returned by DSS. The report template is in the Scorecards and Summaries folder in DSS. Click on the template named “Supplier Performance Scorecard” to build this report query.
Once you have selected your desired item filter, click on the Submit tab and click Run Now to submit the report for processing by Decision Support System.
Let’s take some time and explore the various components, and how they fit into the three categories we detailed earlier.
The Scorecard presents a year-over-year comparison of all performance metrics in various time ranges, as seen below.
Supplier Performance Scorecard – Time Ranges
This section details the various Warehouse metrics, as applicable. Note that suppliers whose items are flow-through, also known as assembly, distribution, will not see data in this section. Walmart warehouses never own assembly items; the retailer merely transfers them from supplier trucks to Walmart trucks destined for the various aligned stores.
Walmart associates all of the metrics in the Store section with the various stores. The following are the most critical metrics in determining Walmart’s return on its inventory investment, or GMROII:
These metrics are also important to consider:
None of the metrics on the Scorecard exist in isolation, as they are all interdependent. Merely looking at consumer sales does not provide a picture of profitability or asset efficiency. In other words, sales metrics simply tell the supplier how much Walmart customers purchased. They don’t speak to whether it was a profitable sale or how long it took to realize that sale.
Some items will have high sales volume but low margins. Some items will sell quickly but in low volumes. Some items will sell low volumes but at high margins. It is only by looking at all of these metrics together that suppliers can truly understand the importance of each metric in defining the success or failure of their Walmart business.
You have better things to do than pour over thousands of lines of performance data, forecasting documents, and scorecards.
Why not leave these tasks to experts with over 30 years of experience calling on Walmart?
Trend Results offers comprehensive supplier training classes covering all aspects of your Walmart business.
From DSS to Scintilla, our team of instructors has decades of experience working with Walmart technologies. Join us in our live webinars or request a custom 1-on-1 training with your team!