Management information systems in pizza delivery business operations

Domino's Pizza Case Analysis

Domino's Pizza is a dominant competitor in the home delivery market for pizza, which averages $15B in revenue on an annual basis. Domino's was founded in Ypsilanti, Michigan in 1960 and steadily grew to 200 stores by 1978 and 9,000 stores located in all 50 U.S. states and in 60 international markets. By 2009 the company had attained $1.5B in sales and earned a profit of $80M. Despite this rapid growth, Domino's has gained a reputation for having poor product quality, with every area of delivery through supply chain aspects of ingredients and their freshness being problematic. As a result of these shortcomings, Domino's was facing customer attrition and a reduction in sales.

IT Analysis of Domino's

The company initially began with its own proprietary Point-of-Sale (POS) system, Pulse. This system was architected as a thick client, meaning it required each franchisee to have a laptop personal computer installed in their locations. This system captured customer transactions, and could be extended to support Web-based transactions for franchises through customization as well. The goal of the system was to capture transactions while also tracking which products were the most and least in demand. The advantage of POS systems include the ability to track sales in real-time while also analyzing how selling trends will impact the supply chain forecasting requirements by ingredient (Boorstin, 2005). The Pulse system was able to track sales as an input and produce usage and consumption data by supplier item as well, which helped Domino's to streamline their supply chains. This helped Domino's to anticipate customer demand and better align their supply chain systems for the ingredients they need, when they need them. The outputs of this system then have helped Domino's to overcome the major limitations they faced in terms of product and service quality.

In 2003 Domino's chose to replace their Pulse system with a thin-client version called Pulse Evolution. In conjunction this decision, the company also launched a consumer-based Web application called Pizza Tracker. Pulse Evolution made it possible for Domino's franchisees to run their POS systems more efficiently as all that was needed was an Internet connection. The Pulse Evolution also made it easier to track customer purchases over time, which gave franchisees and Domino's corporate the flexibility of seeing trends in their purchasing histories, while also giving supply chain management systems greater visibility into customer demand. Inputs of customer data and outputs of sales analysis, accounting and financial data, and forecast inputs for supply chain all make POS systems invaluable for retailer businesses (Boorstin, 2005).