Is Delivering On-Premise Software Becoming a Challenge? Take Some Cues From Domino’s.

Domino’s Delivers

While the pandemic has been especially hard on restaurants (where I live in Massachusetts, the estimate is that 1/5 have shuttered permanently because of business slowdowns), one restaurant chain actually managed to grow sales by 16% according to the Wall Street Journal: Domino’s.

That said, Domino’s may not want you to categorize it as a restaurant. For more than a decade now, it has been busy remaking and resurrecting itself as “an ecommerce company that sells pizza.” A major accelerator here is having access to data to launch new ordering and delivery channels and move quickly to anticipate shifting trends and consumer preferences. The actions taken as a result – things like car-side delivery and GPS tracking apps – have proven invaluable during the pandemic.

While the analogy may not be perfect, on-premise software vendors can draw lessons from Domino’s story in implementing software monetization strategies as they seek to maximize revenue and evolve offerings in the face of changing consumption and delivery patterns.

Consider that while some 65% of Domino’s customers order digitally, there are still 35% that do not. Also consider that nothing has really changed about Domino’s core business. It is still at its most basic level making money from pizza. What changed is the competitive environment and expectations of the people who wanted pizza. Success has come from focusing on the quality of that product and using data and technology to align with customers on how they wanted to get it. Sounding a little more like your business?

Taking Slices From a Single Pie

Whether a customer orders a pizza on the phone or by texting a pizza emoji, all of Domino’s point of sale data is fed into Domino’s Information Management Framework and combined with lots of other structured and unstructured data, according to an article in Forbes. With all of this data in the same place, Domino’s can learn a lot about its business and its consumers. It can easily use the data to build financial forecasts, model out scenarios and most of all, segment the data to create deeply personalized customer experiences.

For vendors that deliver software on-premise and in the cloud, getting a single view of customer licensing and entitlements is really valuable for learning about your business and your customers. A software monetization platform tracks entitlements, updates and upgrades delivered and monitors usage that span products customers have on-premise and in the cloud. This is helpful in figuring out whether entitlements are in line with contracts, discovering patterns in usage and matching pricing to customer value.

Not Everyone Likes the Pepperoni

In an interview with Diginomica, Domino’s VP of Global Infrastructure and Enterprise Information said that it uses data for “dynamic personalization” to cross-sell and upsell products customers haven’t tried before and continue to measure how they react to the experience. A major part of this strategy is in looking at the consumer not only as an individual, but within the context of his or her household or family, according to an interview in Forbes. This helps both at the store level to come up with discounts and promotions that will resonate in different areas, as well as products to upsell to add more revenue channels. It also helps deliver personalized offers to consumers in the same household to deepen loyalty.

That household example is a good analogy for a business that may be using some of your products on-premise and some in the cloud. What products and features are being used by which subset of customers and how does that differ according to the deployment model in which they’re consuming them? Are there bundles of features being used by on-premise customers that may make sense to package and deliver in the cloud? If you want to increase subscription or usage-based revenue, what products are they more likely to consume in that manner? With a single view of all data about usage and entitlement across on-premise and the cloud, you can make decisions for future product development and pricing base on customer and product insight.

People Like Faster Delivery

Domino’s is “constantly looking for value in the undervalued parts of our experience,” according to an interview with Domino’s Chief Data Officer in Adobe’s CMO Magazine. Having data makes it easy for Domino’s to identify areas of friction in the customer experience, quickly improve upon them and measure the impact of that improvement – such as reducing the amount of clicks in a standard order from 27 to five.

Software suppliers need usage analytics data to help identify needs of their users and to quickly fix problems or deliver new functionality that will keep them engaged with their product. That means delivering functionality in weeks or months, not years, in iterations that take erode pain points and make users’ jobs easier. It helps immensely to be able to see what users think about the upgrades – as Domino’s does with its A/B testing for anything it rolls out in digital channels.

That’s why insights gained from customers through software usage tracking are one of the key benefits of a software monetization system. Usage data enables product teams to develop the features the user base wants and helps product management, sales and marketing work together to simplify software product packaging and align pricing with customer value.

Like Domino’s, your business is continuing to prove that you don’t have to be a startup to wow and delight your customers and define market leadership. Your software monetization platform should be central to delivering innovation.