Fresh hot innovation: How Domino’s perfected operational agility with unified commerce

It’s Wednesday night, which is close enough to Friday to justify ordering takeaway. A quick tap of the app, a skip to the front door, and it’s sitting on your coffee table: a fresh hot Domino’s pizza. You sink your teeth through the golden cheese, melt into your couch, and sigh:

“What a delicious slice of innovation!”

Okay, those probably aren’t the first words to leave your lips. But if they were, you wouldn’t be wrong. From the thermopolia of ancient Pompeii to the drone-delivered delicacies of today, the world of quick service restaurants (QSRs) has a rich history of leveraging innovation to satisfy our endless craving for carbs plus convenience. And few QSRs embody that history the way Domino’s Pizza does.

Founded in 1960, Domino’s has long favored a “first-mover” approach, investing early in digital capabilities that enable it to deliver its product in innovative ways. Domino’s wasone of the firstto leverage home delivery, went online as far back as 1996, introduced its Pizza Tracker technology in 2008, and had launched its highly-rated smartphone app by 2011. It’s the first company to deliver pizza by drone, has been testing autonomous vehicle deliveries for the past year, and has made advanced payments technology a key part of its growth strategy.

“Domino’s was one of the first QSR companies that saw the world was changing,” says Casper Mooyman, Head of Marketing at Domino’s.

“We are constantly rolling out new innovations, so it’s clear to our customers that we’re on top of things,” says Mooyman. “And this is really important to our brand. We put a lot of work into setting up our own ecommerce platforms and ensuring we had the infrastructure in place to manage online orders and deliver efficiently.”

It’s this commitment to innovation that has helped secure Domino’s position as an industry leader, even in the face of ever-growing competition from the likes of UberEats and Just Eat Takeaway.com. But more than that, it’s the understanding that before you can even think of the word “innovation”, you need to have the right digital tools and IT functions in place. No surprises then that from 2010 to March 2017, Domino’s share priceoutperformedthose of tech giants Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google.

“Lots of investment went into new stores and infrastructure and distribution channels,” says Mooyman. “But we’ve also invested heavily in technology.”

But this isn’t innovation for the sake of it. Everything adopted by Domino’s and its franchisees has a purpose: streamlining the process of ordering and delivering pizza. And that’s where Adyen payments play a key role for the QSR giant.

“A continuous challenge for us is to make ordering pizza online as easy as possible. The more friction we add, the more time it takes, the higher the chance the consumer will leave the website without placing the order. 

"Customers won’t buy Dominos because we have these digital platforms, but they will buy from Domino’s if it is seamless, secure, and hygienic."

In an industry where speed and convenience are everything, QSRs like Domino’s need a payments platform to streamline operations and keep pace with evolving customer demands. Before the rise of online and in-app delivery services, do you remember the frustration of ordering dinner over the phone, only to realize you didn’t have cash? The pain of having to rush out, find a local ATM, get cash, and risk a missed delivery was real.

Today, it’s no longer about convenience, but hyper-convenience. Saved payment details. Apple Pay over credit cards. Seamless, instant gratification, right to our doorsteps. And Domino’s is dedicated to delivering that experience.

“Innovation comes first of all from consumer demand,” says Andre Ten Wolde, CEO of Domino’s Europe.

"We want to make it as convenient for the customer to order with Domino’s as possible. Every customer tension point, we want to solve.”

Knowing that today’s consumers hunger for a seamless experience across every channel, device, and location, Domino’s Netherlands chose ourunified commerce solutionto ensure they can continue to deliver exceptional experiences now and into the future.

“From a customer perspective, payment is a necessary thing to do if you want to place an order. So the less friction you have, and the more payment options you have, the better,” says Mooyman.

By consolidating their online and in-store payments into one platform, Domino’s can ensure a level of service far beyond omnichannel sales, elevating everything from operational efficiency and decision making to customer loyalty and staff empowerment.

With a unified payments platform, Domino’s can enjoy the benefits of advanced operational agility, including streamlined reporting, consistent and transparent payouts, and fallback processing options. All of which are critically important for any successful franchise business.

“It’s great for our franchisees,” says Mooyman. “We want to offer them the best tools, reports, and insights to run their business. If you split out your online and in-store payments you have all these different systems and tools and reports from which the franchisee must collect the revenue per day all by themselves.

“Unified commerce means we have a one-stop environment for franchisees to better understand what money they’ve made from which channels.”

Our centralizedSales Day Payoutdashboard provides Domino’s Netherlands with greater operational transparency and consistency: franchisees know exactly when they’ll be paid out, and how sales result into payouts across channels and payment methods, all broken down by day.

Unified commerce enables strong fallback processing options too. If a store experiences network connectivity issues, Domino’s staff can continue to accept payments with offline processing, store and forward, or even failover to 3G or 4G.

“Whether it's predictive tools for rostering or for estimating the amount of features we’re going to sell this week. It makes the business stronger. It prevents waste, it prevents us from doing the wrong thing... so innovation is fun but also really necessary to make the business better.”

With all its payments data in one place, Domino’s has a centralized overview of operations and localized, cross-channel customer insights for franchisees.

“Adyen has helped us to get a holistic view on the customer,” says Wolde.

“A customer is sometimes a delivery customer and sometimes a pickup customer, and we had no visibility on the pickup side. A delivery customer tells us where they want a pizza delivered, who they are, their contact details - but a pickup customer just walks into the store and walks out.

“We now have a full view of that customer. We can see if they use the same payment method as for ordering delivery, and then we can see that it’s the same customer. Then we can analyze what drives them to sometimes order through our platform for delivery, and sometimes walk into our store to get a pizza, picked up."

With unified payment insights, Domino’s has a far greater understanding of sales, customer trends, and fulfillment needs. The company can quickly identify opportunities for immediate improvement while also making better decisions for the future, such as how to roster staff for quiet periods versus rush hours, or what type of promotions are most successful for increasing longtime customer loyalty.

From tailoring pizza toppings and size for local tastes and budgets to catering to local regulations and payment methods, Domino’s operational agility is a key ingredient to its long-term resilience.

“What is a pizza? A pizza is not the same in every market,” says Wolde.

“Domino's is a 62-year-old brand from the U.S. It has been a delivery brand forever. And it’s a franchise model, but one with a lot of freedom. It’s very adaptable.”

Take the recent impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. When faced with the unexpected, Domino’s could pivot in-store sales to online channels far better than those with more limited payment setups. As our latest data shows, 50% of unified commerce retailers have seen transactions remain consistent during the pandemic.

“90-95% of transactions are now online payments and we’ve seen a lot of great feedback regarding stores going cashless,” says Mooyman.

It’s even helped the company increase security of both stores and delivery drivers, making staff feel safer and positioning Domino’s as a more attractive employer. As a result, Mooyman says a type of contactless delivery and carry-out service will stay, even after COVID.

With unified payments, strong data insights, and an appetite for customer-centric innovation, it’s no wonder that Mooyman and Wolde feel confident that the future of Domino’s will be as supreme as its past. And choosing the right technology to support that future is essential.

So the next time you indulge in one of Domino’s gooey golden circles of goodness, remember to enjoy that fresh hot taste of innovation.