Conclusion

       After researching about Domino’s its interesting to find out how big this company actually is. People think of pizza as something that is just made in 15 minutes and go pick it up. But after learning in class about the technology and innovations that go into a business you are better able to understand Domino’s. Domino’s spent millions on research and development of there database and data warehouses. Domino’s was founded off only a few hundred dollars and now is worth millions with thousands of stores across the country. It has began moving across the world in the past few years.

      Domino’s is always looking to be number one and trying to stride for what the people want. For instance when they changed there style of pizza last year they surveyed thousands of people to see what the customers really wanted and back it by a guarantee they would like it or there money back. This was a big move for Domino’s but seems to be paying off for them. In conclusion after this project we will be more appreciative of how much work that actually goes into that pizza next time we either order from the phone or online since Domino’s offers all the great services to the customer. With recent apps added to the IPhone and Android market.

Networks

A network is a collection of terminals, computers, servers, and components which allows for the easy flow of data and use of resources between one another. Domino’s uses a wide rnge of networks. The main one is built with Nortel Networks (NYSE/TSE: NT) equipment, and it supports the company's focus on improving customer service and operating efficiencies that have made Domino's the world leader in pizza delivery. Domino's relies on the new infrastructure that creates robust and highly reliable local and wide area network (LAN, WAN) environments that serve not only their branches and corporate offices in US but also in foreign countries. The strategy of their network is to create a dynamic and robust environment with end-to-end management to accommodate all of the company's data-intensive needs now and in the future. At the forefront of those needs is the ability to share information more quickly between Domino's network of corporate and regional offices and food distribution points, resulting in improved decision-making and customer service.

The data analysis also includes information on pizza sales, allowing corporate management to closely track customer sales by item size and type, which in turn helps them more effectively project sales and manage inventories. In addition, the new network ultimately will facilitate on-line, just-in-time ordering of dough, cheese and other ingredients from Domino's regional warehouse distribution centers, speeding processing and delivery, and assuring fresher products for consumers.

Key administrative functions also are being facilitated through the back-office infrastructure. These include payroll processing, personnel records, and other human resources functions, as well as access to safe driving records on potential delivery hires. Use of the Internet for email, departmental intranets and other applications also flourish with the robust network.

Domino's LAN and WAN infrastructure features a collapsed backbone network with two Nortel Networks' Accelar routing switches, connected 1800 feet apart by fiber optic cable. Nortel Networks' Distributed 5000 intelligent hubs connect into the company's wiring closets, with System 5000 backbone chassis installed in the largest of the closets. Nortel Networks' BayStack 350 and 450 10/100 switches are used for uplinks from hubs and server connections. Nortel Networks' Access Node (AN) routers provide connectivity to remote sites. The company also is using the Nortel Networks' Optivity Network Management System suite of network management tools to monitor and configure equipment. Domino's uses Nortel Networks' compression technology to reduce communications costs.

Hardware and Software

Hardware is the physical devices that make up a computer. Software is the set of instructions that your hardware executes to carry out a specific task for you.

(Information Systems Essentials, 3rd Edition. McGraw-Hill Create 32).

All hardware technology falls into one of the following six basic categories:

1. An input device.

2. An output device

3. A storage device.

4. The central processing unit (CPU.

5. A telecommunications.

6. Connecting devices.

(Information Systems Essentials, 3rd Edition. McGraw-Hill Create 33).

Dominos uses the following hardware and software:

Primary application

In-store point-of-sale system

Primary hardware

• HP Neoware c50 Thin Clients

• HP t5545 Thin Clients

Primary software

• Domino’s Pulse POS system

• Linux OS

• Microsoft Windows Server® 2003

• Microsoft Windows Terminal Services

• VMware Server

• Remote Desktop Protocol

• HP Factory Express Services

Domino’s Pizza, became the leader in the pizza delivery business by promising customers they will have their pizza in 30 minutes. To deliver on that promise, the company depends on a sophisticated, internally developed point-of-sale system called Domino’s Pulse. Domino’s Pulse is accessed through HP thin clients.

Domino’s chooses HP thin clients to secure credit card information while saving franchises thousands. “Our HP thin clients provide a highly secure, durable, low-cost front end for our point-of-sale system.” Says Wayne Pederson, Vice President for Information Systems, Domino’s Pizza.

Most of the orders at Domino’s start with a phone call. And the employee taking the phone call in every Domino’s store uses Domino’s Pulse. Domino’s Pulse, available through HP thin clients, powers the order-taking stations, kitchen pizza-making stations, and the dispatch station where the order is assigned to a delivery driver.

Domino’s settled on HP thin clients running the Linux operating system, customized with a standard Domino’s image. The thin clients come straight from the factory with the customized image installed. Domino’s has installed more than 12,000 thin clients in some 2,500 franchise stores. In the nearest future, the company will be buying HP t5545 Thin Clients for Domino’s corporate stores and eventually for international locations.

It is beneficiary for the Dominos to use HP t6645 Thin Clients because there are fewer things to troubleshoot - most notably, applications. Those are all provided by an in-store virtual machine using Microsoft Windows Server® 2003 running through VMware Server. Microsoft Windows Terminal Services and Remote Desktop Protocol are used to serve applications. So applications can’t get permanently corrupted by something happening on the thin client. If there is a problem at the user end, employees can simply reboot the thin client.

Maintenance is far easier now as well. In the past, every time Domino’s had a new release of the Domino’s Pulse POS system, the software had to be sent to every workstation for installation. Now, Domino’s updates the central server and that’s all the stores require.

Domino’s in-store thin clients typically are equipped with a PS/2 keyboard complete with credit card swipe reader, a USB or PS/2 mouse, receipt printer and touch-screen monitor. For stores with exceptionally large kitchens, the kitchen-based thin client can be connected to dual monitors.

Databases and Data Warehouses

With Pizza being America’s second favorite fast food Dominos needs a key way recording all of its findings. Domino's wanted to understand delivery areas by geocoding and mapping the households that bought Domino's pizza and non-pizza items. Domino's selected Qualitative Marketing Software Inc., (QMSoft) and its Centrus GeoStan solution--an embeddable address hygiene and geocoding technology--in July 1996. GeoStan provided Domino's with a solution that in a single pass can parse each record, fix poorly formatted or misspelled address elements, correct ZIP codes and add ZIP+4. What's more, it appends records with carrier route, delivery point bar codes (DPBC), line of travel (LOT) codes, and check digits; creates Postal Form 3553; and assigns address-level and ZIP+4 latitude/longitude coordinates, block group, MSA, census block, census tract and other geographic information. Domino's is now able to locate prospects for target, relationship and micro marketing; evaluate existing markets; create new sales territories; identify streets, neighborhoods or entire cities by level of penetration; refine direct mail lists and reduce postage; and perform point-in-polygon and radial analyses--all of which helped in the recent successes of its direct marketing campaigns.

Implementation on Domino's Informix 7.24 database, using QMSoft's 32-bit software in a batch mode, was immediate.A “Database” is a collection of information that you organize and access according to the logical structure of that information.

(Information Systems Essentials, 3rd Edition. McGraw-Hill Create 84).The only additional requirement that needed to be met before GeoStan could be put into action was for an interface to be written so that GeoStan could call from Domino's 4GL programs, which the pizza company used along with Perl language prior to developing its data warehouse. That project took a couple of months, with help from a local 4GL C programmer. Benchmarking GeoStan was not a priority. Domino's was primarily looking for functionality; response time was not that essential.

Yet, it has proven to be fast enough to handle the loading and cleansing of 12 million customer names in a 120GB data warehouse, which was built using an IBM RS/6000 hardware platform and IBM AIX 4.1 operating system on an Ethernet and TCP/IP network.A “data warehouse” is, in fact, a special form of a database that contains information gathered from operational databases for the purpose of supporting decision-making tasks.(Information Systems Essentials, 3rd Edition. McGraw-Hill Create 82).” What's more, Domino's implemented Cognos' PowerPlay software for its data warehouse to handle query and reporting as well as data mining, and Informix software to store data and manage the warehouse. The benefits of utilizing this setup are simple: it's flexible, it's top of the line and its common use throughout a number of industries has produced a lot of programmers who know how to work with it.

History

There is only one company out there that has almost 9,000 stores that delivers more than 1 million pizzas a day. It’s Domino’s. Using the same recipe for almost 50 years and focusing on the same mission “to be the best pizza delivery company in the world”
Domino’s has a long story since it’s beginning. Tom Monaghan and his brother James grew up in orphanage in Michigan­. In 1960 they bought a pizza shop near Eastern Michigan University near Ypsilanti, called DomiNick’s for $500 each. They had an idea that delivering hot pizza to college students could bring them a lot of money, and the idea was right. But it didn’t take long before James decided to get out of pizza business and traded his part of the store for Tom’s second-hand car. By 1967 DomiNick’s pizza was renamed to Domino’s and Tom’s one small store had expanded throughout the entire state of Michigan. Tom decided to focus only on simple product line and pizza delivery. There was no table service available, simply to keep the cost low. Within ten years the company had opened over two hundred stores in the U.S. In the early 1980’s Domino’s owned it’s first international store and it’s 1000th store. By 1989 the number of stores had grown to 5000. A few were company run, but the majority were owned and operated by franchisees. Over the next years company had grown to thousands of locations worldwide and by March of 2010 Domino’s opens it’s 9000th store worldwide.
The business partners of Domino’s Pizza, Inc. rely on the honesty and integrity of the Company’s employees. To support this trust, the Directors, officers and employees of Domino’s Pizza, Inc. must commit themselves to the following Code of Business Ethics. Directors, officers and employees must avoid conflicts of interest. A conflict of interest occurs when an individual’s private interest interferes in any way, or even appears to interfere, with the interests of Domino’s Pizza, Inc. A conflict situation can be when an employee is interfered and is not able to perform his or her company work effectively. Conflicts of interest also may be managing a friend or family member which is not aloud.

Kinds of E-Commerce Domino’s uses.

Domino’s uses B2C and B2B E-Commerce.“Business to Consumer (B2C) e-commerce occurs when a business sell products and services to customers who are primarily individuals.” “Business to Business (B2B) e-commerce occurs when a business sells products and services to customers who are primarily there businesses.” (Information Systems Essentials, 3rd Edition. McGraw-Hill Create 148). page(147-148) Domino’s Pizza claims to be the first one in the world to utilize the internet and interactive TV pizza ordering system. Since 2006, Domino’s Pizza has been trying to expand and push their customers to order online and throughout mobile devices athttp://www.dominos.com/. And indeed they succeeded with that. In 2009 Domino’s exceeded over $1.37 billion in online sales, which is almost a quarter of their total revenue for that year. Being that successful, in 2009 Domino’s launched their Pizza Trackerapplication, which allows customers to watch the progress of their order in real time. Customers are now able to see the entire Pizza making process online, beginning with the name of the person making their pizza and ending with approximate delivery time and the name of the driver delivering it. For B2B services Domino’s can sets up accounts with other businesses and organizations such as schools, corporations or event caterers and supplies them with pizza products at a discounted rates.

Domino’s Internet Business Model.

Domino’s uses B2C Internet business model. Online ordering is the fastest growing segment for Domino’s and as the Domino’s IT Director Jane Kimberling said “The web site is, without a doubt, the most important thing we do – if something is taking up such a significant part of your delivered sales, you cannot afford for it to be down or not running properly.” (http://www.computing.co.uk/computing/analysis/2237657/domino-uses-grab-bigger-slice-4503691#ixzz12pDce6Ku) Domino’s uses their website http://www.dominos.com/ and attracts customers by providing easy to order platform, pizza tracker, special coupons and offers. Also one can find local stores as well as corporate information and career services as well.Domino’s Pizza haven’t utilized their website for B2B business model as of yet. In order to set up an account for B2B one has to call in or email a local store to place a large order.
Domino’s Marketing Mix.In the beginning of 2010, Domino’s launched their campaign called “Pizza Turnaround”, a campaign in which they wanted to get feedback from customers on how to improve its pizza recipe.“The company paid to create a commercial featuring someone who says, "Domino's pizza crust to me is like cardboard.” But through admitting that its product wasn’t perfect, Domino's was promising to make it better.” (http://www.msnbc.com/)Although, a lot of critics said that this type of campaign would never make them successful, they were wrong. Thankfully to this campaign, Domino’s Facebook, and Tweeter pages became more like customer service forums, where users from all over the world commented and suggested their own recipes and ways to improve pizza, and by March of 2010, Domino’s introduced their new tomato sauce and garlic crust. This was not an ordinary way of marketing and company took a tremendous amount of risk by presenting it, but it paid off at the end. With the new recipe Domino’s revenue went up in the third quarter.Domino’s actively uses a variety of marketing tools. Besides the use of media ads, such as TV and radio, they use banners, posters etc. The biggest and the most successful tool for Domino’s is Internet. Domino’s Pizza utilizes the use of online ads, which are “small advertisements that appear on other sites” as well as viral marketing that “encourages users of a product or service supplied by a B2C e-commerce business to encourage friends to join in as well.” (Information Systems Essentials, 3rd Edition. McGraw-Hill Create 157).

Payment System

Domino’s Pizza accepts a wide variety of payments, cash, checks, credit/debit/smart cards. One can either pay online at the time of ordering or in the store at the time of pick up or directly to the delivery driver. About two months ago, Domino’s partnered with ACI worldwide, Inc. to strengthen their payment processing system. “New York, N.Y. – Aug. 25 2010 – ACI Worldwide, Inc. a leading international provider of electronic payments software and solutions, today announced that Domino’s Pizza, Inc. has partnered with ACI to consolidate payments processing, add more features and improve personalization for customers ordering online. The new system enables Domino’s to accept new payment types in the future, and will be available across all locations.” (http://www.internetretailer.com/2010/08/31/dominos-pizza-chooses-aci-worldwide-payment-processing)

              There is only one company out there that has almost 9,000 stores that delivers more than 1 million pizzas a day. It’s Domino’s. Using the same recipe for almost 50 years and focusing on the same mission “to be the best pizza delivery company in the world”

            Domino’s has a long story since it’s beginning.  Tom Monaghan and his brother James grew up in orphanage in Michigan­. In 1960 they bought a pizza shop near Eastern Michigan University near Ypsilanti, called DomiNick’s for $500 each. They had an idea that delivering hot pizza to college students could bring them a lot of money, and the idea was right. But it didn’t take long before James decided to get out of pizza business and traded his part of the store for Tom’s second-hand car. By 1967 DomiNick’s pizza was renamed to Domino’s and Tom’s one small store had expanded throughout the entire state of Michigan. Tom decided to focus only on simple product line and pizza delivery. There was no table service available, simply to keep the cost low. Within ten years the company had opened over two hundred stores in the U.S. In the early 1980’s Domino’s owned it’s first international store and it’s 1000^th store. By 1989 the number of stores had grown to 5000. A few were company run, but the majority were owned and operated by franchisees.  Over the next years company had grown to thousands of locations worldwide and by March of 2010 Domino’s opens it’s 9000^th store worldwide.    

  The business partners of Domino’s Pizza, Inc. rely on the honesty and integrity of the Company’s employees. To support this trust, the Directors, officers and employees of Domino’s Pizza, Inc. must commit themselves to the following Code of Business Ethics. Directors, officers and employees must avoid conflicts of interest.  A conflict of interest occurs when an individual’s private interest interferes in any way, or even appears to interfere, with the interests of Domino’s Pizza, Inc. A conflict situation can be when an employee is interfered and is not able to perform his or her company work effectively.  Conflicts of interest also may be managing a friend or family member which is not aloud.