Domino’s is a global pizza chain and leading tech company that focuses on innovation, customer engagement and automated delivery. It is the largest pizza company in the world, generating more than half of global retail sales through its digital channels, including smart TVs, Alexa and Google Home devices, mobile phone apps, Slack, social media and smart watches. All Domino’s digital ordering platforms are built and run using its proprietary operating system, which gives the pizza company a unique competitive advantage in a fragmented marketplace.
In 2012, Domino’s began a major shift in marketing campaigns and ingredients. They embraced their pizza’s bad taste, and used digital channels to communicate this in a creative, tongue-in-cheek way that showed they cared about their customers. This was a crucial step in changing the perception of Domino’s as a generic company and establishing them as a brand with personality.
The word domino comes from a Latin phrase, “Dominium” or “dominium dei,” meaning “supreme power.” The most common use for dominoes is in positional games, where one player in turn places a domino edge to edge against another so that the adjacent faces are either identical or form some specified total. Each domino is normally twice as long as it is wide, and is marked with a pattern of spots or pips (indicated by a line or ridge) on one face and blank or empty on the other.
There are several variations on the basic game, but most commonly players score points by making a play that causes their opponent to “bleed” their dominos of all or most of their matching pips. When a player cannot make another play, the game ends and all players count their remaining dominoes to determine the winner.
Dominoes’ emphasis on digital innovation has been key in its growth over the past decade. The company has invested in building a cutting-edge technology infrastructure that includes Domino’s Digital Lab, its new innovation center located in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The facility was opened in 2019 to enable employees across the country and around the globe to collaborate on and test new ideas that are designed to improve the Domino’s experience for its millions of customers.
While the Domino’s Digital Lab is a hub of innovation, it is also an incubator for new products and services that can be leveraged in the digital and physical realms. Domino’s has already begun leveraging data collected by its proprietary systems to drive innovation and speed up the pace of new product development. The Domino’s team uses Splunk to track the performance of their systems and the ways in which they are used by employees and customers.
Domino’s has also created a number of innovative ordering and delivery platforms for different devices, enabling the company to reach a more diverse audience. For example, the Domino’s App allows users to order and pay for their food through a voice-activated virtual assistant like Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant, as well as through other third-party apps. This is an effective strategy to increase the reach of Domino’s, while also increasing customer loyalty through the use of a variety of convenient and easy-to-use interfaces.