Takeaway technology

Domino’s Pizza has left no stone unturned in its battle to conquer the European online fast food market. BM meets its IT Director Jane Kimberlin, the brains behind the newly launched Domino’s iPhone application and online pizza tracker service.

“We had a look at our customers’ technology and saw that 85 percent of our customers use Windows, the next percentage up use Mac, then around 4.2 percent are on the iPhone, so we thought we must do something for them”
-Jane Kimberlin

There's nothing new about pizza delivery. But thanks to an aggressive technology and marketing strategy, Domino's Pizza has taken the concept to a new level. No longer content to provide telephone and online ordering facilities, Domino's now allows customers to order their pizza over their iPhones and even track how long it will be before the food is delivered. The brains behind this takeaway technology is Jane Kimberlin, Domino's Pizza's UK IT Director. Speaking on the eve of the 10th anniversary of Domino's' online launch, she describes how strong demand is from customers ordering pizzas from its website: "Online ordering has been increasing over the last four years from 10 percent, 15 percent, 20 percent then 25 percent. We had a mega week two weeks ago, which broke every single record so far, at 34 percent. Demand is growing all the time and it's obviously helped by broadband which means greater use of the website. Word of mouth, but also the whole digital marketing arena, are very important."

Online ordering

Although the majority of customers still order their pizzas by telephone, Kimberlin says she predicts that proportion will eventually drop in favour of online ordering instead. In the meantime the company has launched a bid to target even more customers with its iPhone applications. Kimberlin describes the thinking behind the launch of the technology: "We had a look at our customers' technology and saw that 85 percent of our customers use Windows, the next percentage up use Mac, then around 4.2 percent are on the iPhone, so we thought we must do something for them. It's taken off very well indeed. We're delighted with the numbers – we've had thousands of orders through already on the URL." She goes on to say that the application was designed to match as far as possible other iPhone applications in terms of functionality and appearance: "You go straight into a website that has been enhanced for the iPhone and it deliberately looks very iPhoney. It's very intuitive to use and very advanced. It has all the functionality of our normal site - the deals are there and you can still customise your pizza." Despite having made pizza ordering a much more technically advanced process, Kimberlin says the company is keen for this not to impact on the job of Domino's' frontline staff. So it has designed the system so that all orders appear the same on the in-store system, regardless of what channel they came through: "The back office side of our stores is the point of sale system and all orders simply integrate into that regardless of whether they are iPhone orders, or whatever. All orders go straight through to the point of sale system and appear there. Our staff are fantastic and good customer service is about making pizzas and delivering them. We don't want them to be distracted into dealing with technology."

It's a long way from the online ordering system that was first launched 10 years ago when orders were delivered to the various stores by fax. But, says Kimberlin, there is still room for improvement in the way the system is run: "IT is constantly evolving at Domino's Pizza. We invest in it all the time. Every time we have a record event on the website we go back and look at where the pinch points were, whether we had the right levels of connectivity, if the right firewalls and servers were in place and if we had the right pipes to the internet."

Behind the scenes

Kimberlin is also involved in the IT that goes into running Domino's as a business and says there are various major projects in the pipeline, including the possible introduction of cloud computing and new CRM technology. Regarding the latter, she says: "I think that is certainly within our arena. We know where you live and we know all about you and your eating habits. But CRM is more about how good your customer experience is and what we can do to make that better." This increased amount of customer data, which is highly valuable to Domino's when putting together its marketing strategies, means it runs a large and complex data storage system: "We have a massive data warehouse for every single imaginable statistic that we can measure. We're always adding to and enhancing that system." One of the enhancements the team has made is to ensure the data is available to the managers of its 570 stores – wherever they are in the UK: "We're a franchised system and most of our franchisees have more than one store. You can't be in two places at the same time so what we have is a facility which allows them to look at all sorts of information in real time on their Blackberry or PDA or whatever mobile device they have. It's a simple URL link from wherever they are. So if you are a franchisee for 10 stores for example, you can see how many orders you've had that day, whether that is up or down versus the previous week and even your service staff's out of the door times. And it's refreshed regularly so minute by minute the information is updated."

Kimberlin says Domino's is keen to explore the possible benefits of cloud computing for the organisation, however she says the company, though normally ahead of the pack when it comes to technology, is taking a more cautious approach to this particular branch of IT: "We won't be an early adopter in this arena but it's more about looking at what benefits there will be and how they will be delivered. We will be looking at it from a potential disaster point of view, and in terms of cost of ownership. Everybody's talking about it so let's have a look at what it can do." She goes on to say that her team is also looking into the possible adoption of VoIP within the Domino's headquarters however, VoIP within the stores themselves is at least two years off. Where the team will be focussing serious efforts however will be in the area of social media, which the company is already capitalising on heavily to market its products: "The whole social media and the mobile arena in particular are two of the areas that we're very focussed on. It's really all about looking at our customer profile and where they are. Some of our stores individually, for example, have a Facebook page. We also take advantage of things like Google Ad words and SEO opportunities. We don't want to just be about selling people pizza, we want to be part of their lifestyle." This wish to connect with customers has extended to getting them involved in tracking the pizza making process. Domino's in the UK has recently launched Pizza Tracker – an application which has been available in the US since January 2008. It allows online customers to track exactly what stage the pizza making process is at and how close the food is from delivery. Kimberlin admits she could not have predicted how high demand for the application would be in the UK: "We were inspired by the US on this one, because when the application first came out we just thought 'this is a bit sad actually. Who's going to sit and watch the tracker for 20 minutes?'. But we've had amazing success from it." She goes on to reveal that on average 34 percent of customers that order pizzas online use the pizza tracker facility. She says this is no surprise given the number of customers that would phone the stores to find out what time their pizza would be delivered prior to Pizza Tracker being launched: "I spoke to my colleagues in the US and they said people use it more for feedback and assurance. They were surprised themselves by how well it has taken off."

Domino's is not the only European pizza delivery company that is investing in online and social media technology to grow market share but Kimberlin says that as the leader in the field, Domino's still remains ahead of the pack: "One or two of our competitors do online sales and we monitor that carefully. What we believe is that we have a far better product than them because we use fresh dough, fresh cheese and fresh sauce. We stole the march on this technology and it's hard for others to catch up now. We feel we offer an all-round better experience." And despite working in an environment where she is surrounded by pizza every day, Kimberlin says she still regularly indulges in a slice or two: "At Domino's we're obsessed with pizza. It's absolutely what we think about the whole time. I do love pizza. It's unlike chocolate where if you have the chance to eat as much as you want, you do eventually stop. With pizza it never feels like that. Pizza is part of my balanced diet."

About Domino's pizza

The Domino's brand was founded in the US in 1960 by Tom Monaghan. Since then, that business has grown into a global network of over 8700 stores in more than 60 countries, employing around 180,000 staff and involving over 2000 franchisees. DPG is the master franchisee of Domino's Pizza in the UK and Ireland. Since the business was purchased from DPII in 1993, it has developed to become the leading UK home delivery pizza brand. Since the first store opened in the UK in 1985 and in Ireland in 1991, the group has expanded to 583 stores (as at 27 September 2009) in the UK and Ireland. Of these stores, 456 are located in England, 45 in Scotland, 22 in Wales, 14 in Northern Ireland, 45 in Ireland and one mobile unit. The group's total annual system sales for the 52 weeks ended 28 December 2008 amounted to €392.8 million, representing growth of 18.4 percent over prior year sales. The Group's operating profits from continuing operations increased from €20.5 million to €25.6 million over the same period.

This article first appeared in CXO magazine.