TM

The Domino’s PULSE System: Reading the pulse of the customer

CASE STUDY

Domino’s is an international pizza-delivery franchise, headquartered in Ann

Arbour, Michigan, in the United States. Founded in 1960, Domino’s pizza has
more than 10,000 corporate and franchise stores in 70 countries across the
world. Domino’s was sold to Bain Capital in 1998 and went public in 2004. The
company started operations in India in 1996.

It subsequently changed its name to Jubiliant FoodWorks Limited in 2009. Due

to the sluggish growth of the U.S. economy, the company started spreading its
operations aggressively to other nations. More than half of Domino’s revenues
come from its overseas businesses. It sells more pizzas in India than anywhere
else outside the US. With four lakh pizzas every day, and more than 12 crore
pizzas every year, Domino’s sells nearly twice the number of burgers that
McDonald’s sells in India.

Owing to an aggressive expansion of operations and growing order counts

from customers, the information system employed by Domino’s plays an
important role in increasing the operations efficiencies of the pizza chain. It
provides the management with accurate information at any given point of time.
Right from the time a customer places an order to when the management
wants to track sales, the information system supplies the data in real time.

Domino’s PULSETM Point-of-sale (PoS) system is a graphical user-interface and

touch-screen based computerized information system that manages ordering
inventory, and reporting at Domino’s Pizza. It has been implemented in over 50
percent of the international stores. More than one-third of the stores’ orders
originate from online sources; so to efficiently manage orders, the firm decided
to roll out its new PoS system at all its domestic stores.

The PULSETM user-interface is kept simple: gives the information about menu.
Functions, and customers. A Domino’s employee selects a menu item (based
on the customer’s choice) from a list of available items appearing as tabs on
the screen.
When a customer orders or calls Domino’s for a pizza, the representatives
requires about some basic information of the customer (such as their name and
contact number and the address they are calling from), which serves as a
primary input for the processing the order. For returning callers, the contact
number is used to identify the customers and retrieve their account details.

Whenever Domino’s receives a call, the customer’s number flashes on the

screen. Since all previous orders are save in PULSETM, the representative knows
whether the call is from a new or existing customer. The employee makes
suggestion to the customer based on their order history.

Once an order is placed, be it via phone, online, or at the counter, it

automatically gets transferred into a centralized computer and the main
servers. This enables the management to plan their operations effectively.
When a manager sees that a particular customer does not ordered for some
time, he or she personally calls the customer with a special offer to encourage
them to come back.

Domino’s has also successfully deployed voice over IP (VoIP). Using this facility,
the pizza chain has been able to allocate a particular number to a specific
region or geographic area. When a customer calls the pizza chain, VoIP
automatically detects the location of the caller and intelligently routes the call
to their nearest store location.

This way, the customer does not need to memorize more than one number for
different store locations. For the firm too, this system eliminates the need to
maintain multiple analog lines for each number, thereby saving costs. Since
VoIP transmits voice calls over the internet by converting voice into packet data,
there is a Significant reduction in telecommunication expenses for the
company.

Additionally, Domino’s maintains hosting agents or virtual call centers along

with its VoIP services. When the incoming load at the store is at its peak, such
as during weekends or holidays, the calls are routed to these agents who
professionally take orders and transmit them to the nearest pizza chain, where
they are processed and delivered. Domino’s PULSETM even manages the refund
process in case a customer is not satisfied with the product, the wrong order is
delivered, or the delivery is not made within the stipulated time.

Considering the volume of orders received by Domino’s, a back-up server has

been installed at each store to increase the speed of processing of the orders.
The operating system has also been upgraded from Windows XP to Windows
Server 2008 R2, which has a Hyper-V virtualization technology built into it. This
has not only increased the performance of the PoS system, but also lowered
the IT costs.

To provide the additional comfort to its online customers, Domino’s pizza

launched a new initiative: a mobile phone application for both Android and iOS
devices. This application allows the user to browse through all products on the
menu and also access their promotional coupons.

Besides this, the app lets the consumer design their own pizza. The interface of
the app is user-friendly- it displays the order at the top of the screen while the
user is navigating through other content. The payment and delivery options
can also be selected by the user.

The app fetches the account details whenever the user logins into the
application. The success of this app is also due to the fact that Domino’s focuses
strongly on SMS marketing. The user who receives a Lucrative offer via SMS
now does not have to call or visit the Domino’s website to redeem it. The user
can redeem the offer by ordering using the mobile app.

Due to large presence over multiple geographical areas, internal

communication among the employees within the chain was a key challenge for
Domino’s. The solution to this was provided by eConnect, a subsystem within
PULSETM. Through eConnect, a branch manager can contact any of the other
branches or even the headquarters. For evaluating the performance of the
stores, managers can generate reports from PULSETM.

Each store prepares a monthly report using this system, which helps determine
the consolidated performance of the store. Some of the items which the report
contains are:
• Net sales of the present month, net sales for this month last year, net sales
of the last month, and expected sales.
• Growth rate and achievement over budget for the month
• Orders Delivered

These reports help compare the past sales for different months with the current
month. This can be used to make future projections and check the growth or
decline in sales for each branch. These reports are then forwarded to the senior
management with the help of the ‘push’ facility within PULSETM. In a similar
manner, any data can be accessed from the information system using the ‘pull’
feature. Reports of daily services, inventory, and even the guidelines from the
superiors are issued via the push-pull feature.

No firm can run without having an efficient evaluation and tracking system in
place. In order to keep an eye on the sales of a Domino’s store, its manager
analyzes the store sales every week. The manager assesses the order
frequencies and also identifies the areas from where new orders are coming.

On the basis of the data collected, the manager divides the areas into three
main sectors discussed below:

• Yellow: The localities where new customers have started ordering pizzas are
categorized as yellow. These are 5 to 10 percent of total orders. In order to
encourage these customers to order more frequently, the manager initiates
distribution of pamphlets in these localities, that contain a few of the basic,
inexpensive pizzas from Domino’s.

• Green: The localities from where the orders are coming at a steady rate are
categorized as green. These are 10 percent to 30 percent of the total orders.
In order to increase the orders in the segment the manager orders
distribution of pamphlets containing medium-range pizzas.

• Red: The localities from where the stores receives the maximum orders are
categorized as red. These are 60 percent of the total orders. The order
frequency in this segment is higher than that of any other area, and so the
manager orders distribution of pamphlets containing the store’s specializes
range of pizzas. The most costly items are promoted in these areas.
 PULSETM also aids in inventory management. The details of the inventory at
each branch are regularly prepared in worksheet. Each item of raw material
which is used to make the finished product is described in this sheet. The
used quantity of each item is compared against available quantity and ideal
usage. Then variance is calculated to identify whether products are being
optimally utilized. This helps contact wastage analysis at each branch, and
the reports are then collated at the head office to see the comparative
wastage at different branches.

These are some of the ways in which the information system at Domino’s
pizza has been able to provide a competitive edge to the chain. It has
ensured real-time data processing, efficient communication, consistent
reporting for decision making, and effective management of store
operations. In a nutshell, it has guaranteed customer satisfaction.

CASE STUDY QUESTIONS

1 To what extent does the Domins PULSE system achieve the 5 objectives of
Information Systems?

2 Identify the MIS components (TPS/DSS/ESS) in this Domins PULSE system.

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