2023-12-19 22:43:46
São Paulo, December 19, 2023 – Domino’s Pizza UK & Ireland Ltd. is optimizing processes, previously done in thousands of spreadsheets, to deliver the right product to its customers using artificial intelligence, automation and analytics, creating positive opportunities for its employees and the communities it serves.
“Demand planning is knowing what our consumers want before they even know it. If we’re doing our job, we know they’ll want a pizza next Thursday before they even decide on it,” jokes Darren O’Keefe, Head of Inventory at Domino’s Pizza UK & Ireland Ltd. In 2022, the chain sold more 106 million pizzas in over 1,300 locations across the UK and Republic of Ireland.
Managing the quantity of orders and resources needed to meet customer demand requires solid supply orchestration, while also anticipating unforeseen factors such as a football game or a major storm passing through Scotland. These external events can impact how and when consumers place orders, and individual stores were not always prepared. This means that Domino’s virtuoso inventory planners, who have been dealing with hundreds of spreadsheets, need to understand and execute at the highest levels of forecasting, essentially manually planning for these 1,300+ locations.
“We get our data from multiple sources, and much of it is done in spreadsheets, which can lead to human errors and omissions. This level of complication is difficult to deal with,” says Neil Runchman, Inventory Systems Development Manager at Domino’s Pizza UK & Ireland Ltd.
While inventory planners had a very high rate of accuracy in their demand planning, the company wanted to enable an integrated, automated, single-source-of-truth ecosystem. As a self-identified digital company, Domino’s knew it needed a strategy to forecast demand; make faster, data-driven decisions; and simplify your operations to ensure customers receive hot, fresh pizza when and where they want it. “We want to work with partners who are seeing what is changing in the economy and how technology can help businesses like ours deal with change,” says Neha Batra, Head of Business Solutions at Domino’s Pizza UK & Ireland Ltd. “It’s a no-brainer that we look to Microsoft.”
An AI revolution in demand planning
The centerpiece of this mission is demand planning, in which the company began using AI to predict customer needs. There are many variables involved, from historical sales and economic indicators to market trends and weather events. “We don’t become victims of trendy technology, but rather listen to our customers and internal stakeholders to understand their goals and visions,” explains Sody Kahlon, Chief Information and Technology Officer at Domino’s Pizza UK & Ireland Ltd. “This allows us to embrace the most relevant solution to meet your needs. The field of AI has opened up our options to further increase our personalization, improve internal efficiencies, derive quick conclusions from data insights, improve our predictions, strengthen our cybersecurity, and experiment with innovations.”
Planning and forecasting tasks for stores in the UK and Ireland are the responsibility of a small team of highly skilled, experienced demand planners. Historically, demand planning for the four distribution centers has relied primarily on manual processes – one plan for each supplier and one plan for each product, all in different spreadsheet tabs. Trapped in a system with unstable and unreliable processes, the company aimed to improve accuracy and simplify daily operations, so it turned to Microsoft for a solution that combined Microsoft Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management with demand planning capabilities. .
Already leveraging the built-in analytics, smart integrations, and scalability in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance, Domino’s wanted to leverage the same advantages for demand planning. “The more data we have, the more accurate our forecasting is, and the more we use it, the more efficient our decision making will be, and we will be in a much better position for our customers,” says O’Keefe.
With demand planning intelligence enhanced by Microsoft’s AI capabilities, planners can run what-if scenarios and make changes within the forecasting solution to make it more flexible. They can also quickly aggregate and disaggregate data to include human insights, such as increasing or decreasing demand figures depending on the weather or a major sporting event. With this customized demand planning solution, Domino’s accelerates the planning process.
The company can develop and approve plans in hours rather than days, and now has the tools to anticipate demand, minimize food waste and efficiently manage its facilities. Using machine learning, Dynamics 365 with demand planning capabilities intelligently forecasts demand, identifying trends that Domino’s did not. The company has already experienced a 72% improvement in accuracy using demand planning capabilities.
About Microsoft
Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT” @microsoft)’s mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. Present in 190 countries, with 122 subsidiaries, the company is a leader in innovation and the development of promising technologies, such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) and cloud applications. In Brazil for 34 years, Microsoft has an ecosystem of more than 25 thousand partners. In this way, the company maintains a robust, highly efficient business structure, which also has a Transparency Center, which aims to promote reliable and secure computing, the Advanced Technology Laboratory (ATL – Advanced Technology Lab), and the Microsoft Technology (MTC – Microsoft Technology Center), in operation in Brazil since January 2012. With the aim of contributing to actions capable of preparing professionals for the digital economy, reducing inequalities and promoting inclusion in the country, Microsoft also launched in 2020 the Microsoft Mais Brasil Plan, which has, among its pillars, the training of professionals for the technology market, an essential condition for promoting the digital transformation of Brazilian companies. From July 2020, when the Mais Brasil plan was established, until July 2023, 7.8 million people were reached with different qualification and requalification initiatives.
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