Vendor Core - User Manual

Introduction

Reason Automation’s Vendor Core Dashboard is designed to give reporting insight to Vendor Central clients across the domains of advertising, traffic, sales, net PPM, and operations (inventory and purchase orders). Read on to learn more about the VC Core Dashboard, and some of its features. Latest version: 2.3

Newest Features

The latest version of VC Core dashboard includes multiple new features to improve user experience and increase insight.

Improved Navigation

A new, more compact navigation scheme allows you to switch easily between reports in a subject matter group.

Localized Currency

VC Core 2.3 detects the currency code for monetary values and provides the appropriate currency symbol across sales, inventory, and purchase order data.

Streamlined and Expanded Executive Reporting

To make preparation and sharing of Exec reports even easier, reporting elements on these pages are now fixed to, and optimized for, a particular distributor view. Dedicated Sourcing and Manufacturing reporting sections mean these reports are always ready to go as soon as you select your reporting date. We’ve also added a Year-level reporting summary with YTD values.

New ASIN-level analysis

Right-click on any ASIN from any report inside Vendor Core Dashboard, and drill through to an ASIN Detail page that provides at-a-glance diagnostic information about that ASIN.

Custom Categorization

Amazon category data is often inconsistent, and rarely maps well to a Vendor’s category definitions. The latest VC Core Dashboard leverages Reason’s Product Catalog Upload feature, allowing you to group your products by custom categories and other customizable attributes to suit your needs.

• View reports grouped to your own custom category and subcategory
• Add up to 10 custom tags for further custom filtering. For instance, flag seasonal products, track promotions, or add custom product attributes.
• Upload your own custom product titles that will replace Amazon titles in all reports whenever available

Category and subcategory slicers appear on most reports to the right of charts and visuals as shown below. Additional filters (customizable tags) can be controlled via the Filters panel.

Choose Between ASIN or SKU

Chances are you’re more familiar with your SKU or manufacturer part number than with ASIN. The new VC Core lets you flip most ASIN-level reports to a SKU-based display, and back, at the click of a button (SKU is sourced from custom catalog upload. Currently supports only 1:1 SKU-ASIN mappings).

Brand Store Reporting

View your Brand Store live pages data at the weekly or monthly level (requires connection to your ad account and the brand_store_overview_live_pages report).

Dashboard Requirements

The following tables (reports) are required in the target database to use this product:

product_catalog retail_analytics_sales retail_analytics_traffic retail_analytics_inventory retail_analytics_net_ppm

The following tables (reports) are optional but recommended:

orders_confirmed_pos ads_sponsored_products_advertised_product ads_sponsored_display_advertised_product ads_sponsored_brands_campaign brand_store_overview_live_pages

Glossary

A list of measure names, abbreviations etc. used in this dashboard. For common Amazon metrics definitions, see Vendor Central.

bps/basis point - used to represent absolute change in percentages, contribution to total/change. 100 bps = 1 percentage point. A metric that is 6% this month and was 5% last month has seen a 100 bps increase.

‘Month’ - appended to a measure, means Amazon monthly aggregated data was used, either because Amazon does not provide daily data or it would not be appropriate to aggregate (usually refers to inventory data)

‘Week’ - appended to a measure, means Amazon weekly aggregated data was used, either because Amazon does not provide daily data or it would not be appropriate to aggregate (usually refers to inventory data)

'LM' - appended to a measure, means for last (previous) month.

'LY' - appended to a measure, means for last year.

'MoM’ or ‘YoY' - appended to a measure, means Month over Month or Year over Year. The relative difference of measure in selected vs. previous period. E.g. $10K last year, $11K this year = +10% relative YoY difference.

'MoM Abs’ or ‘YoY Abs'- appended to a measure, means Absolute MoM or YoY difference. E.g. $10K last year, $11K this year = +$1,000 absolute YoY difference.

Gross Margin - (shipped revenue - COGS)

SB - Sponsored Brand (Ads)

SD - Sponsored Display (Ads)

SP - Sponsored Product (Ads)

Traffic Paid % - ad clicks as a percentage of total GVs

ACOS - Advertising Cost of Spend, calculated as ad spend/attributed sales and expressed as a percentage

TACOS - Total Advertising Cost of Spend, calculated as ad spend/all sales and expressed as a percentage

ROAS - Return on Ad Spend, calculated as attributed sales/ad spend and expressed as currency, e.g. a $6.00 ROAS means $6 in attributed sales for every $1.00 in ad spend. ROAS is the inverse of ACOS.

User Interface & Navigation

Primary navigation options are shown on tabs along the bottom of the dashboard. Current options:

• Exec (Executive Summaries)
• Traffic
• Sales
• ASIN Browser (All ASINs shown in a table, sortable by change KPIs)
• Net PPM
• Inventory
• PO (Purchase Order data)
• Ads
• Ads by Type
• About

Most reports are provided in monthly and weekly versions (built via aggregation of data at the daily grain when possible). Navigate between time periods using the buttons below report titles in the top left corner of reports.

Additional controls at the top of each report allow selection of reporting period and other report elements. For non-Exec reports, you can usually select current reporting month or week, lookback period (number of historical months or weeks shown in certain charts and tables), Amazon Program and Distributor View (Manufacturing or Sourcing). You can also filter the page to a particular ASIN.

On the right side of non-Exec reports, additional controls allow you to select Category and Subcategory, and whether you would like to see reports by ASIN or SKU (Category, Subcategory and SKU data needs to be provided via product catalog upload).

Exec reports are slightly different - Partner UUID moves to the top, and Category/Subcategory filtering is controlled via the filter panel.

Data History

The VC Core Dashboard imports up to two years of historical data for most reports, provided your data goes back that far (check the About tab for more information on earliest and latest data dates by table). The exception to this rule is Sales and Traffic data, which go back up to two years from the first date of the current year in order to provide full YoY comps for the current and previous year.

Data Presentation

Showing Period over Period Change - Relative and Absolute Values

Changes between periods in simple measures represented by a number - e.g. traffic of 50,000 GV - are appropriately expressed as relative changes (a percentage amount). However, we avoid using relative change for compound metrics such as Conversion. To see why, consider the example below, where conversion has improved by 1 percentage point in both tests. If we assume traffic to be constant across both tests and both periods, these two conversion increases yield the same outcome - an increase in ordered units equal to (0.01 * GV). However, the relative change measures might lead us to assume that the outcome in Test 1 is preferable, when in fact it is only larger because the base is smaller.

ASP (average selling price) is not a compound metric, but similarly benefits from representation of change as absolute. In the example below, two products see an increase of $10 in ASP. Again, a larger relative change is seen with the first product due to the smaller base. This is more useful than in the Conversion example, since extreme ASP movements are of interest. However, the effect on revenue in both product examples below is the same, providing units are also the same, since revenue = units * ASP. A better focal point would be to prioritize ASINs by absolute increase or decrease in revenue, and then evaluate the impact of ASP and unit changes to that output.

For the above reasons, the following metrics in our VC dashboard are expressed in terms of absolute change:

ASP (Average Selling Price)- changes between periods expressed in currency, e.g. +$2.50 MoM.

ACOS, Conversion, CTR, Net PPM%, ROAS - absolute change in bps

Graphical Display of Relative and Absolute Change

To reinforce the above concept in charts and graphs, relative changes are shown in a linear form as with GV YoY below. Graphs of compound metrics will often show the previous period (e.g. last year’s) value as a stepped line for comparison to the current period, as this provides a more readable understanding of change between periods than showing the change amount itself.

Reporting Tabs

Exec (Executive Summary)

These reports provide high level summaries of key metrics at the weekly, monthly and yearly level. To minimize confusion and streamline reporting, Distributor View is hard-coded by table/visual and does not need to be selected in a slicer. Traffic metrics are availably only Manufacturing view, while other Sales and Operations metrics are shown in both views. A summary bar at the top shows period-over-period change for top KPIs.

The yearly Exec report shows YTD (year to date) values for the current year and full-year data for prior years, along with charts that show full years by month, overlaid for easy visual comparison. YTD includes only the current year, and only

Traffic

Glance Views (GV) and Conversion are shown at the top of these reports in both graphical and tabular form, the latter along with ordered units (the second input to conversion, along with traffic).

Lower down are ‘movers and shakers’ - the products that are driving the largest period over period change in key metrics. These tables reflect the “current month (or week)” selected at the top. and show products with largest GV overall, as well as largest gains and declines.

Sales

Similar in layout to Traffic reports, the Sales reports focus on Shipped COGS/Revenue/Units and ASP. Top gainers/decliners in Shipped COGS are shown toward the bottom of the page.

ASIN Detail

Whenever you need to dive deeper on an ASIN that you find anywhere inside the VC Core Dashboard, simply right-click to drill though to ASIN Detail. You’ll land on a new report optimized for fast-read reporting at an ASIN level across all major KPIs, allowing you to quickly diagnose potential product-level issues. Use the back arrow (top left) to return to your previous page when done.

ASIN Browser

This report shows a list of all ASINs with “mover and shaker” KPIs that you can sort and filter to find product-level drivers of change. Once you have a target you want to see more about, right click to drill through to ASIN Detail.

NetPPM

Use these reports to track Net PPM % more effectively over time, and see which products are generating the largest Net PPP (pure product profit) the currency amount associated with Net PPM, calculated as Net PPM% * Shipped Revenue. For instance, a product with a Net PPM of 25% and $100,000 in shipped revenue generates $25,000 in net PPP for that period. Net PPP is the right metric to capture magnitude of profit contribution of a particular product, or of a time period. This metric is used in the ‘movers and shakers’ section of Net PPM % reporting tabs for exactly that reason - we don’t care about a product that went from 50% to 5% Net PPM if that product only sold two units, but we DO care about one that went from 25% to 20% and happens to be our top seller.

Inventory

The Inventory tabs feature common inventory KPIs at the whole-business and product level, sourced from the Retail Analytics inventory table. Included is ‘Procurable Product OOS’, which is similar to the now deprecated “Replenishable OOS’, and captures the percent of glance views for ASINs that are out of stock but which Amazon believes to be healthy and procurable. The VC dashboard uses daily “Proc OOS” as a basis for calculating weekly and monthly values; since Amazon provides the ‘Procurable Product OOS’ percentage, and total GVs can be obtained from the Retail Analytics traffic report, we calculate total ‘Procurable Product OOS’ GVs for the day and then aggregate that to weekly or monthly levels and recalculate ‘Procurable Product OOS’ percentage at the higher level of aggregation. Note that values aggregated in this manner may differ slightly from weekly/monthly values reported by Amazon.

PO (Purchase Orders)

High-level purchase order data is presented at the monthly and weekly level in these tabs. Tables at the bottom show top products by PO amount confirmed and rejected.

Brand Store

These new reports show sales and traffic (views/visits) performance across your Amazon brand store pages.

Ads

The first two graphs on the Ads tab put ad-attributed sales (using the 14-day attribution window value) in the larger context of Shipped Revenue and Ad Spend. On the left, Paid % of Revenue (Ad-Attributed Sales/Shipped Revenue) is shown alongside the inputs to this metric. On the right, Ad spend is shown with attributed sales across Sponsored Display, Brand and Product ad types.

The middle left chart shows ad impressions by ad type with CTR (green line), and on the right, spend is shown across the three ad types in combination with ‘Traffic Paid %’, which shows ad clicks as a percentage of total GVs.

The remaining charts show ACOS and ROAS by ad type, along with ad spend. A summary table below the charts groups these metrics in tabular form. Below that are movers and shakers - top ASINs driving change across impressions, clicks and ad spend.

Ad_Type

These tabs repeat some of the reports from the Ads tabs, but with ad types broken out separately, giving a focused look at performance by ad type.

About

In addition to providing version information and resource links, this tab also provides a readout on data recency, showing the earliest and latest dates where data is available for particular data sources.

On this page

• Vendor Core - User Manual
• Introduction
• Newest Features
• Dashboard Requirements
• Glossary
• User Interface & Navigation
• Data History
• Data Presentation
• Reporting Tabs
• Exec (Executive Summary)
• Traffic
• Sales
• ASIN Detail
• ASIN Browser
• NetPPM
• Inventory
• PO (Purchase Orders)
• Brand Store
• Ads
• Ad_Type
• About

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