Domino's Indonesia: Expanding its business across a vast nation with Google Maps Platform
About Domino's Indonesia
Domino’s Indonesia is a leading chain of pizza restaurants dedicated to becoming Indonesia's best pizza delivery company. With a presence across 34 cities and 180 stores, the franchise plans to expand to capture the energy of a promising emerging market through tech innovation.
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About Searce
Google Partner Searce partners with clients to ‘futurify’ their businesses.
Domino's Indonesia grew to 180 stores across 34 cities, optimized cost structures, boosted customer acquisition and loyalty, and developed intelligent store site selection with Google Maps Platform.
Results:
- Reduced maps billing costs by 30%, freeing up funds for tech investment
- Boosted conversion rate by 6% increasing revenue growth
- Increased zone mapping accuracy by 60% assisting the selection of new store sites
- Reduced incorrect addresses to near zero, reducing customer loss rate
Reduced location errors from 50 per week to one or two per month
Around the world, Domino's Pizza stores sell more than 3 million pizzas every day, and each is tasked to meet a pledge to deliver in under thirty minutes. That's a particularly tough challenge in a country such as Indonesia, a large archipelago nation with mega-cities known for traffic congestion and confusing street layouts.
Domino's Indonesia appointed Mayank Singh as Senior General Manager to lead Digital, IT and Marketing functions in 2018, tasking him with an ambitious strategy that would leverage his experience from a career driving e-commerce innovation in India. That included building the e-commerce ecosystem for Domino's Pizza India.
At the time, Domino's Indonesia's growth strategy was struggling with customer acquisition and retention due to inaccurate addresses causing order cancellations. It was also looking for new store sites with limited demographic intelligences. While it deployed Google Maps Platform at a basic level, the franchise used a legacy location intelligence solution for core mapping needs, as well as scooter drivers equipped with GPS to navigate cities.
"Discovering optimal uses for powerful Google Maps tools such as Place Details API, Places API and Geocoding API transformed our ability to grow our business and bring in a new generation of customers. Partnering with Searce opened new possibilities in Google Maps that we never before imagined."
—Mayank Singh , Chief Digital Officer and VP Marketing and IT, Domino's IndonesiaSingh worked with Google Partner Searce, to execute a comprehensive transformation of Domino's Indonesia's Google Maps Platform architecture. This included address optimization in a revamped app and it launched a wave of expansion that has enabled the franchise to quickly grow to 180 stores in 34 cities.
"Discovering optimal uses for powerful Google Maps Platform tools, such as Places API, Place Details,and Geocoding API transformed our ability to grow our business and bring in a new generation of customers," says Singh. "Partnering with Searce opened new possibilities in Google Maps Platform that we never before imagined."
Pinpoint precision for timely delivery in a huge emerging market
At Domino's Indonesia, every store has a defined territory and can only take orders from within that zone. Instead of customers picking a store, Domino's Indonesia assigns a store based on their location, so it can expedite the delivery in the most timely fashion possible. That means flawless accuracy of customer address and location data is critical to Domino's Indonesia's ability to keep to its thirty-minute delivery pledge.
Such pinpoint precision is enabled by a combination of Google Maps Platform APIs, including the Geocoding API, Places API, and Place Details API, used in different ways depending on customer location settings. For example, if the customer allows Domino's Indonesia to use their current location, the system uses the Geocoding API to convert those coordinates into a readable address. Conversely, if the customer provides an address using Place Autocomplete, the system first uses Places API to identify the location, then converts it into a geolocation using Geocoding API. Finally, it obtains more granular location information with Places Details, enabling faster delivery times.
"After Searce suggested Geofencing API, we achieved a dramatic improvement in address accuracy, from roughly 50 such errors per week to, at most, one or two per month, meaning a big jump in satisfaction for our hungry customers."
—Mayank Singh , Chief Digital Officer and VP Marketing and IT, Domino's IndonesiaWhile the system itself performs like clockwork, it has been prone to customer error. In the past, customers would regularly select the wrong address when typing their location which would result in the wrong store being assigned the delivery job. That might happen, for example, if the customer first types in the initial letters of the capital Jakarta, generating an address that assigns the order to a store in the city center, instead of the customer's real location on the city outskirts.
By turning to partner Searce to help solve this problem, Domino's Indonesia achieved much greater customer satisfaction. The solution led to a major breakthrough in the franchise's overall expansion journey.
Searce worked with Domino's Indonesia on a location strategy that deployed the Geocoding API to block customer inputs in Place Autocomplete that are liable to lead to address errors. These include the customer starting the address line with the name of a big city or province. By using the Geocoding API, the consumer is guided to enter correct Place Autocomplete inputs according to an established template.
"After Searce suggested Geocoding API we achieved a dramatic improvement in address accuracy, from roughly 50 such errors per week to at most, one or two per week, meaning a big jump in satisfaction for our hungry customers," says Singh.
The improvement produced an even more important effect of enabling business growth, by ensuring that first-time customers are not driven away by late or cancelled orders. A more accurate, user-friendly experience for location identification, Singh says, has driven a 6% improvement in the conversion rate of new customers ordering online.
"My whole system depends on the accuracy of the addresses we obtain from customers," says Singh. "The Google Maps Platform API optimization we have achieved through our partnership with Searce has almost entirely eliminated this problem of customer loss due to incorrect addresses while boosting our conversion rate."
Enabling cost optimization with proactive partner support
By enabling more store openings and greater customer satisfaction, Domino's Indonesia has seen its order contribution from new customers increase by 50%. This good news, however, led to an additional challenge: rising Google Maps Platform usage costs due to a flood of new customers into the system.
Again seeking the help of partner Searce, Domino's Indonesia achieved a significant improvement in cost optimization, while further enhancing customer location accuracy and, thereby, timely delivery.
"My whole system depends on the accuracy of the addresses we obtain from customers. The Google Maps API optimization we have achieved through our partnership with Searce has almost entirely eliminated this problem of customer loss due to incorrect addresses while boosting our conversion rate."
—Mayank Singh , Chief Digital Officer and VP Marketing and IT, Domino's IndonesiaSearce reviewed Domino's Indonesia's Google Maps Platform usage data and identified several inefficiencies in the way it was using APIs. These included using Place Details when the same information could be obtained from Geocoding API, and an unusually high number of Place Autocomplete API requests from customers. Searce taught Singh's team how to minimise such requests, by requiring customers to make at least three letter inputs before querying an address fill.
"By working with Searce on a cost optimization strategy that streamlined our use of Google Maps Platform APIs, we were able to secure a 30% reduction in our Google Maps Platform billing," says Singh. "With those funds, we can invest in advanced tech to further improve customer experience."
0btaining essential mapping intelligence for profitable strategic expansion
Under Singh's expansion strategy, Google Maps Platform now also plays an instrumental role in the Domino's Indonesia value chain even before a new store begins selling pizzas. In selecting store sites, granular mapping information is used to discover whether a particular location will generate enough revenue to be profitable. The first step is defining a zone around the potential location within a specified optimal drive time for delivery to any point in the territory under various traffic conditions. This is enabled by Google Maps Platform APIs, such as Distance Matrix API.
Next Singh deploys a third-party location intelligence service to glean demographic insight of the zone's population, such as average income and age range, to gauge the potential profitability of the territory. The team has developed a store predictor machine learning based algorithm to estimate revenue. If the estimated numbers look promising compared to a surrogate existing store, the zone is tapped for a new store site.
In the past, Domino's Indonesia charted specified drive time zones for each new potential location by fanning out scooter drivers equipped with GPS to manually map out coordinates from the test store site. By deploying Google Maps Platform for this task, Domino's Indonesia has achieved a significant improvement in the accuracy of its zone mapping, enhancing its ability to abide by its thirty-minute pledge and boosting customer satisfaction and retention.
A future of unlimited possibilities with Google Cloud machine learning
Now that Domino's Indonesia has achieved its mission of growing faster with Google Maps Platform optimization, it is looking to revamp its customer relations management (CRM) through predictive analysis of customer needs and wishes.
Vast amounts of consumer data come into Domino's Indonesia's systems every day, and Singh plans to leverage that with data analytics and machine learning to help customers receive a more personalised service. Google Cloud tools, such as BigQuery and BigQuery ML, promise to play a significant role in these future steps. The team is already using many machine learning algorithms for optimising its marketing campaigns so it can get a better ROI. All this happens manually, but the team plans to move near to realtime using cloud services.
"Thanks to Google Maps Platform we're finally expanding at the rate we want. Now we're planning the next stage of our evolution with tailor-made offerings driven by Google Cloud data and ML tools," says Singh. "The sky's the limit for improving our food delivery solutions with Google Cloud."
Tell us your challenge. We're here to help.
Contact us
About Domino's Indonesia
Domino’s Indonesia is a leading chain of pizza restaurants dedicated to becoming Indonesia's best pizza delivery company. With a presence across 34 cities and 180 stores, the franchise plans to expand to capture the energy of a promising emerging market through tech innovation.
About Searce
Google Partner Searce partners with clients to ‘futurify’ their businesses.