Setting a course for growth

Just like its pies, Domino’s Pizza, Inc., is hot. In terms of market share, the company took the number-one spot from rival Pizza Hut in 2017. As of June 30, 2018, Domino’s recorded its 29th straight quarter of same-store sales growth.

To help sustain its remarkable success, Domino’s is upgrading its employee learning and development capabilities. Domino’s corporate office implemented Adobe Learning Manager to help instructors deliver course materials, administer tests and assignments, and track student progress in both online and hybrid courses. Compared with other solutions, Adobe Learning Manager makes eLearning delivery faster, easier, and more reliable — especially across a large, geographically diverse organization.

Beginning in 2017, the company’s international eLearning team started encouraging franchisees, who own more than 97% of Domino’s 15,000 restaurants in 85 countries, to explore the benefits of moving to a learning management system (LMS).

“Domino’s franchisees love the idea of how an LMS like Adobe Learning Manager can support personalized learning on any device,” says Chris Taylor, Director, International Training & Standards, Domino’s Pizza, Inc. “Because we use Learning Manager for corporate training, it’s the solution we recommend worldwide.”

To promote the benefits of an LMS, Domino’s international eLearning team leveraged knowledge and expertise from Adobe and technology implementation partner Clarix Technologies. They helped Domino’s address the challenges of creating a corporate learning culture, transitioning international franchisees from in-person training to eLearning, and enhancing mobile capabilities to meet the needs of today’s learners.

From a training to a learning culture

Domino’s is transitioning from a training culture, in which participation in courses is compulsory, to a learning culture supported by organizational conventions, values, practices, and processes that promote personal and professional growth. The company believes a culture of skills development encourages employees to enhance their current job performance and career opportunities while fostering loyalty. Loyalty is critical because employee turnover in the fast-food industry typically hovers around 150%, meaning a restaurant that needs a regular staff of 10 people can expect to hire 15 people annually.

“If you’re able to keep just three people out of ten by encouraging them to learn, you can really improve internal efficiencies, business consistency and performance, and employee morale,” says Taylor. “Delivering eLearning with Adobe Learning Manager helps Domino’s get away from employees feeling like they have to take training. Instead, it makes them want to find ways to improve their skill sets and grow their opportunities within the company.”

Domino’s delivers two kinds of eLearning with Adobe Learning Manager. Store-level training includes modules for day-to-day restaurant tasks, such as making pizzas and providing customer service. Above-store training targets franchise owners and managers with courses including business strategy development and technical training for enterprise applications. Domino’s current eLearning library contains approximately 150 store-level and 50 above-store courses.

Previously, international franchisees developed learning content from scratch. With Adobe Learning Manager, content developed in English by the primary eLearning team in the United States becomes available immediately to international users. The ability to share and collaborate across markets and translate existing materials in local languages as soon as they are produced has been a major selling point of Adobe Learning Manager.

Domino’s also uses Adobe Learning Manager features such as gamification and leaderboards to engage learners. In addition to dovetailing nicely with Domino’s corporate philosophy of friendly competition, they keep learners excited about and involved in their learning. In fact, the company is working to attach its employee rewards program to Learning Manager.

“Domino’s currently awards employees points for achievements such as the fastest learner to complete assigned courses and the most optional course content taken by a learner. Employees can use the points like cash on gift cards or online shopping,” says Taylor. “We want to tie the Domino’s employee rewards program to Adobe Learning Manager so that, beyond earning badges and climbing the leaderboard, employees get monetary rewards for stepping up and learning new skills on their own.”

Worldwide eLearning management

Global adoption of learning management systems is a major foundation for building Domino’s learning culture. The company expanded its Adobe Learning Manager user base from 1,000 in June 2017 to more than 14,000 as of August 2018. The Adobe solution is the standard for all corporate restaurants and franchisees in Canada and the United States. Several franchisees in Latin America, Europe, and the Asia Pacific region have also adopted Learning Manager.

The latest challenge for Domino’s international eLearning team is to upgrade international franchisees who still rely solely on instructor-led training. Each country outside the United States in which Domino’s operates has an exclusive master franchisee with its own organizational structure for functions including operations, finance, and training. Getting franchisees to standardize training is a matter of education.

“Domino’s works closely with the international franchisees to set up training programs and to provide content, but many of them haven’t taken the leap to eLearning yet,” says Justin Senkbeil, International eLearning Manager, Domino’s Pizza, Inc. “We want each market to have an LMS. But if they’ve never thought about an LMS or don’t know where to go, we put them in contact with Adobe and our technology implementation partner, Clarix Technologies.”

The Domino’s international eLearning team’s educational outreach has focused on how learning management systems work and guidance on the resources needed to run an LMS, such as instructional designers and system administrators. The team also publicizes how Clarix and Adobe have partnered with Domino’s to examine franchisees’ unique needs and then incorporate Adobe Learning Manager into their business processes and IT environments.

“I’ve never seen a willingness in the eLearning industry to help solve problems like what we’ve seen with our partners Adobe and Clarix,” says Senkbeil. “Clarix gives each implementation incredible attention to detail and in many cases when Domino’s has suggested modifications to Learning Manager, Adobe has included the modifications in the next release.”

With concerns about implementation and ongoing support alleviated, the international eLearning team is free to emphasize other benefits of Adobe Learning Manager, such as personalizing modules using learner data, scaling to support growth, and automating manual tasks.

“It’s expensive for a franchisee organization to dispatch trainers across its service area for classroom training,” says Senkbeil. “eLearning powered by Adobe Learning Manager helps eliminate travel costs and time spent out of the office, meaning the franchisee has more money to spend on other business priorities and trainers have more time to spend on developing new course content and learning strategies.”

Immediate and mobile

For end users, Domino’s goal is to make its learning easy. The shift to a learning culture is evident in the company’s shift from “push” learning to “pull” learning, in which the learner, not the teacher, controls their motives and reasons for learning. When a learner is interested and engaged, they tend to learn faster and retain information longer.

With that in mind, technologies including the internet and mobile devices help make “pull” learning more accessible and attractive to learners. Because today’s learners expect to receive training in the time, place, and manner that works best for them, mobile enablement is at the forefront of Domino’s eLearning strategy.

“Even the franchisees who don’t yet have an LMS recognize the need to provide mobile-enabled training,” says Senkbeil. “Accordingly, many of them are very interested in Adobe Learning Manager. The Fluidic Player in Adobe Learning Manager lets Domino’s deliver uninterrupted video-based, animation-based, and interactive training without worrying about browser or bandwidth issues.”

The Fluidic Player in Adobe Learning Manager also benefits eLearning administrators. Franchisees that have moved to the LMS have reduced the number of support calls to address playback issues and content availability.

“Once content is really easy to find, no matter what device the learner is using, they stay engaged,” says Senkbeil. “Learners don’t have to fumble around for content using Adobe Learning Manager, which ties back to our goal of creating a learning culture. In fact, we’re creating videos to explain the importance of ease of use to franchisees who aren’t using Learning Manager — using the LMS to demonstrate the value of the LMS.”

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