IT’s Share of The Pizza : Ajay Kaul
Ajay Kaul
CEO, Domino's PizzaIn early 90's, Domino in the US called off their 30-minutes-orfree program after a woman sued them when a harried delivery person hit her. Domino's in India, however, stuck to its guns. It decided to make it's guarantee count while simultaneously taking the heat off delivery people. By using IT to tweak internal processes, the company took its focus on speed out of the street and into their stores. With the help of IT, Domino's introduced speed and accountability at every level. They made time - in addition to their pizzas - a differentiator that their competition can't beat.
Interview Questions
- Q.CIO: How important is speed to Domino’s USP?
- Q.Where does technology fit in the hustle?
- Q.What benefits has the POS software given Domino’s?
- Q.How does it help you make better business decisions?
- Q.Do you use BI to determine your toppings? How else do you use this data?
- Q.Managing inventory and the supply-chain is another challenge in the fast-food industry. How do you stay on top of that?
- Q.Domino’s intends to ramp up to almost 500 outlets over the next three years. What challenges do you foresee?
- Q.You spent two years in Indonesia with the delivery company TNT Express. What did you learn that you use today?
- Q.So, what kind of quality control measures does Domino’s have in place?
- Q.In an organization like Domino’s, what’s the role of an IT head?
- Q.What technologies do you plan for in the near future?
- Q.Do you see further growth of ready-to-eat foods in India and do you plan to join it?
Full Interview with Ajay Kaul
Due to an increase of double income families, the growing number of TV channels that are enticing people to stay glued to their TVs and the growth of nuclear families, people have less time to cook. Therefore, I expect the market for ready to eat foods to grow rapidly like it has in the US. We often say that our real competition is not from what anybody perceives as competition but from home food. At the moment, however, Domino's is not planning for any diversification of any sort into the ready-to-eat business.
Technology has an important role. It ensures that once an order is taken, it gets executed within 30 minutes. Through technology, we track load time, dispatch time and delivery time. IT helps us find patterns of systematic delays in specific areas or at specific times of the day, etcetera. Then these can be looked into and corrective action can be taken to improve our service to the customer. To do all this, we use our POS (Point Of Sale) software. The software is tailormade for the pizza delivery business. It has been designed externally and is meant primarily for 'quick-service' restaurants with specific focus on pizzas - 80 percent of their customers are pizza companies. Fortunately, the software dovetails into the system which we use in the US, the userfriendly one that uses a touch screen. Our aim is to scale up from our POS to the US system over the next one or two years.
Due to an increase of double income families, the growing number of TV channels that are enticing people to stay glued to their TVs and the growth of nuclear families, people have less time to cook. Therefore, I expect the market for ready to eat foods to grow rapidly like it has in the US. We often say that our real competition is not from what anybody perceives as competition but from home food. At the moment, however, Domino’s is not planning for any diversification of any sort into the ready-to-eat business.
Domino's in the US has launched a pizza tracker service. We make a '30-minutes or free' offer and now if customers want to know which stage within these 30 minutes their pizza is at, we can tell them. Ten minutes after placing their order, customers will be able to know whether their pizzas are still in the oven or on the road. In India, that service will be launched soon. All we require for that is a 100 percent seamless online connectivity. Within the next few months, our main server will have 100 this. Then customers will be able to order online, via SMS and we will be able to track their pizzas.
Due to an increase of double income families, the growing number of TV channels that are enticing people to stay glued to their TVs and the growth of nuclear families, people have less time to cook. Therefore, I expect the market for ready to eat foods to grow rapidly like it has in the US. We often say that our real competition is not from what anybody perceives as competition but from home food. At the moment, however, Domino's is not planning for any diversification of any sort into the ready-to-eat business.
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