Domino's Pizza saves dough with Lotus Domino
As an international business with annual earnings in the billions, Domino's Pizza needed a software solution to support a large number of users and a constant influx of data. Although the pizza franchise has made record profits since 1994 (more than $3.1 billion in 1997 alone), it also faced problems associated with rapid worldwide growth. Improving corporate- and franchise-wide communication, collaboration, and coordination has become a high priority.
Founded in 1960, Domino's Pizza is headquartered on a 300-acre campus in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The company's operations include 1250 franchises and more than 6000 stores worldwide. "Domino's Pizza is spread out geographically," said Paul Messink, director of intranet development. "Because franchises are independent businesses, tying them directly to our internal systems is difficult. Consequently, communication has always been a challenge for us."
Domino's Pizza already uses computers for order entry, inventory, and billing systems at its distribution centers, and the company maintains a corporate dial-up bulletin board system (BBS) for product information. However, most systems are centrally located, and remote users can't access them. In addition, communication links to headquarters in Ann Arbor are weak, and franchises can't access data directly.
| Domino's Pizza implemented an NT-based extranet to securely distribute information and provide applications at a low cost. |
Implementing a Windows NT-based Extranet
To improve business operations, Domino's Pizza decided to implement a Windows NT-based extranet. In the short term, the company will use this new system to provide current business information (e.g., product data, policy changes, and sales promotions) and online resources (e.g., a corporate telephone book, a document library, and discussion forums) to remote users. Over the long term, Domino's Pizza wants to develop and integrate line-of-business applications, such as systems for collecting and analyzing financial data from stores and distribution centers.
According to Messink, Domino's Pizza needed a manageable, scalable, and secure system to integrate with legacy systems that wouldn't require labor- and time-intensive HTML coding tasks. The heterogeneous computer systems that franchises use presented another problem. "Each franchisee is independent and can choose its hardware platform and accounting software, which makes data transfer difficult," Messink said.
Before planning began, Messink considered several Web server solutions, including Novell NetWare, UNIX, and NT. After evaluating solutions involving HTTP servers from vendors such as Netscape Communications and Microsoft, the company chose Lotus Development's Lotus Domino for NT Server 4.0 because it supports several network protocols and has a reputation as a solid server platform. Domino's Pizza originally used Lotus Domino 4.5 and then upgraded to 4.6a. (For an overview of Lotus Domino, see Carlos Bernal, "Lotus Domino 4.5 Server and Notes 4.5 Client," July 1997.)
Using Lotus Domino, Domino's Pizza information managers will create and manage Web site content. Users can then use Web browsers to access this information after logging on with a password. "We never envisioned separate internal and external intranets," Messink continued. "We began using Lotus Domino to develop one system that we could expand from our headquarters to regional offices, remote small office/home office users, and distribution centers, and then to franchises and suppliers. Ultimately, the system will be global. The extranet lets us distribute more information and provide more applications to a larger number of people more securely and at a lower cost."
Solution Summary
Domino's Pizza's rapid growth worldwide necessitated an efficient system of distributing information to remote users. This need to improve communication, collaboration, and coordination throughout the company resulted in the implementation of an NT extranet based on Lotus Development's Lotus Domino. Lotus Domino runs on an NT server and integrates legacy systems and a data warehouse. Without coding HTML, about 20 information managers use Lotus Domino applications to create and maintain online directories, newsletters, discussion forums, and document libraries that headquarter personnel, distribution centers, and traveling employees can securely access. Fry Multimedia (providing Web site design) of Ann Arbor, Michigan, and MicroAge (providing Lotus Notes expertise) of Novi, Michigan, teamed up with the pizza company to implement a solution. |
NT and Lotus Team Up
Domino's Pizza teamed up with Fry Multimedia in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and MicroAge, in Novi, Michigan, to implement Lotus Domino. Fry provided Web site design, and MicroAge provided Lotus Notes expertise. After Fry overcame the Lotus Notes learning curve, Domino's Pizza phased out MicroAge's involvement, but continues to use MicroAge on other Notes development projects.
"The biggest challenge was getting Lotus Domino to run as a Web development tool," said Lawrence Lazare, chief of intranet design at Fry. "When we began, the software was in prerelease, and we received little documentation with it."
Lazare also pointed out a long-term challenge--preserving ease of use and efficient navigation. "The importance of look and feel as well as easy navigation were put on par with the data the system needed to deliver. Too often, data is perceived to be the only priority without regard to how the average user will access the information," Lazare said.
Messink concurred, adding that Fry rewrote the navigation system based on initial user feedback so that it was easier to use and more intuitive. "Currently, the Java applet that Fry wrote provides navigation controls for our system. The applet presents menu buttons based on the specific applications each user can access. A Notes database stores all menu and security information. The applet reads this information in realtime and determines which buttons to present to the user," he said.
Lotus Domino is an integrated system, containing dynamic information. "We see the extranet, which collects and distributes corporate data as needed, partly as an extension of our data warehouse," Messink said. "This warehouse contains most of the operational information users need." Currently, the data warehouse holds about 270GB of information in Informix database structures.
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