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WHAT LIES BELOW eTOM LEVEL 3?
Jan 2010 Author: Mingjun Shan, Wenjie Zhu, Sihao Li, Qibiao Chen
WHITE PAPER
The Business Process Framework (eTOM) has been widely adopted in our industry. implementation of the eTOM. This white paper offers a justification for the future of eTOM, below level 3, and how this can be achieved. Its evolution must continue in order to satisfy TM Forum members actual
What Lies Below eTOM Level 3?
Jan 2010
Contents:
1. Introduction ............................................................................................. 4 2. What Is the Current and Future eTOM?................................................. 5 3. Why Do We Need eTOM Level 4+? ..................................................... 10
3.1. 3.2. What Does eTOM Level 4+ Bring To Us?......................................................13 Why Huawei Interested? ..............................................................................14
4. Who Will Use eTOM Level 4+? .............................................................. 15 5. When Would You Do It the Future of eTOM?.................................... 16 6. Where Are The Impacts?...................................................................... 19 7. How Do You Go Below Level 3? .......................................................... 21 8. Glossary ................................................................................................. 23 9. Reference .............................................................................................. 24
Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd |
Jan 2010
Contents of Figures:
Figure 1 eTOM Level 2 Core Processes in Operation Domain ...........................6 Figure 2 eTOM level 3 Bill Invoice Management Business Process Segment ...7 Figure 3 Manage Revenue Assurance Operations Process Segment ................8 Figure 4 eTOM level 4 Apply Pricing, Discounting Adjustment & Rebates Business Process Segment (for example) .........................................................9 Figure 5 Level 3 Process Flow Advice of Charge .................................................12 Figure 6 Level 4 Process Flow Advice of Charge .................................................13 Figure 7 eTOM Decomposition Driven by Business Requirement .......................17 Figure 8 Lifecycle of TM Forum Frameworks..........................................................19
Jan 2010
1. INTRODUCTION
During the course of implementations, such as dialogue with service providers and operators and implementing solutions for customers, Huawei uses the Business Process Framework (eTOM). Huawei shares a common view in the industry that eTOM v8.0 and its previous versions can be seen as the only business process reference model. In many cases, a more detailed process framework is required. This led to the writing of this white paper. Based on Huaweis experience in Telecom Management Industry, the
requirements of service providers and operators, this white paper addresses a future view of the eTOM. The paper reviews the history, presents the current situation, and the presents a possible future of the eTOM.
Jan 2010
2. WHAT IS THE CURRENT AND F UTURE eTOM?

The eTOM business process framework is the most widely accepted and adopted standard for business processes in the telecommunications industry and other relevant management area. The eTOM delivers a business process model/framework for use by operators, service providers and others organizations within the telecommunications and related sectors industry. As with other sets of business standards, eTOM is regularly updated. The current version is Version 8.0. The eTOM model consists of Level-0, Level-1, Level-2 and Level-3 business processes in the eTOM 8.0 release. The process structure in eTOM uses hierarchical decomposition, so that the business processes of the enterprise are successively decomposed in a series of levels. Process descriptions, inputs and outputs, as well as other key elements are defined. The eTOM process model depicts process flows in a vertical swim lane approach that drives end-to-end process and process flow-through between the customer and the supporting services, resources and supplierspartners. A. The Current eTOM This section describes the current structure of eTOM business framework. 1) Level 0:
At the overall conceptual level, eTOM business framework shows business activities that distinguish operational customer-oriented processes from management and strategic processes. There are three L0 process areas: Strategy, Infrastructure and Product, Operations, and Enterprise Management.
Jan 2010
2)
Level 1:
Below the conceptual level, the level 1 eTOM model provides a more detailed view of the enterprise processes. The model shows eight horizontal process groupings and seven end-to-end vertical process groupings that are required to support customers and to manage the business. 3) Level 2:
Level 2 processes are often referred to as core processes. A core process is a key activity or cluster of activities which must be performed in an exemplary manner to ensure an organizations continued competitiveness because it adds primary value to an output; the process achieves a key business goal. A typical characteristic of a L2 process is that it manages the life of some key group of business entities, such as customer orders. The figure below shows eTOM L2 processes within the Operations process area.
Operations
Operations Support & Readiness Fulfillment Assurance
Customer Interface Management Selling Order Handling Problem Handling Customer QoS / SLA Management Bill Payments & Receivables Mgt. Bill Invoice Management Manage Billing Events Bill Inquiry Handling Charging
Billing & Revenue Management
Customer Relationship Management

CRM Support & Readiness Marketing Fulfillment Response
Retention & Loyalty
Service Management & SM&O Operations

Support & Readiness
Service Configuration & Activation
Service Problem Management Resource Trouble Management
Service Quality Management Resource Performance Management
Service Guiding & Mediation
Resource Management & Operations RM&O

Support & Readiness Manage Workforce
Resource Provisioning
Resource Mediation & Reporting
Resource Data Collection & Distribution S/P Requisition Management S/P Problem Reporting & Management S/P Performance Management S/P Settlements & Payments Management
Supplier/Partner Relationship Management S/PRM

Support & Readiness
Supplier/Partner Interface Management
Figure 1 eTOM Level 2 Core Processes in Operation Domain
4)
Level 3:
Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd | 6
Jan 2010
A level 2 process can be decomposed in level 3 processes. Level 3 includes tasks and associated detailed success model business process flows. The detail is essential to ensure every action adds value to the business or is an essential requirement.
Bill Invoice Management
Apply Pricing, Discounting, Adjustments & Rebates
Create Customer Bill Invoice
Produce & Distribute Bill
Figure 2 eTOM level 3 Bill Invoice Management Business Process Segment
B.
The Future eTOM
Previously it was thought that at Level 4, steps and associated detailed operational process flows with error conditions and product and geographical variants, were defined. While they still involve more detail business process flows defined at level 3, the thought is that they no longer specify the operation environment and including the multiplex scenarios showing the details of alternative actions, failure and error recovery. This is left to process steps that exist below the lowest level task. 5) Level 4:
Jan 2010
This work is an important step in the evolution of the Process Framework. Many members find the need to decompose the framework further and perform this task on their own. The L4 level of decomposition will relieve members of this task, while providing a consistent set of processes at this level. The level of processes is often also used as the basis for the identification of SOA Services and TM Forum Business Services (aka Contracts). An upcoming section of this white paper will further describe why lower levels of decomposition are needed. At levels below L3 decision points are often introduced to show optional paths that can be taken within a process flow. This is typical because processes at this level represent the level of tasks where decisions typically are made. Some Level 4 processes exist today in the eTOM as shown in the figure below.
Manage Revenue Assurance Operations
Monitor Revenue Assurance Controls
Create Revenue Assurance Trouble Report
Assess Revenue Assurance Trouble
Resolve Revenue Assurance Trouble
Track & Manage Revenue Assurance Trouble Resolution
Report Revenue Assurance
Close Revenue Assurance Trouble Report
Figure 3 Manage Revenue Assurance Operations Process Segment
The figure below shows proposed new L4 processes for the Apply Pricing, Discounting, Adjustments, & Rebates within the L2 Bill Invoice Management process.
Jan 2010
Figure 4 eTOM level 4 Apply Pricing, Discounting Adjustment & Rebates Business Process Segment (for example)
6)
Level 5+:
Level 5 delivers further decomposition into lower level tasks and associated operational process flows where required. There is no common understanding regarding what the picture is looked like below level 5 and whether standardization is needed. However, Hauwei believes the eTOM, in many cases, could be decomposed even below level 5 to satisfy certain the business requirements.
Jan 2010
3. WHY DO WE NEED eTOM LEVEL 4+?

If we look at the historical reason for the creation of eTOM from service provider s perspective, eTOM provides a neutral reference guideline. This guideline is useful when a service provider interacts with other roles, such as content providers, equipment providers, suppliers, and customers. In addition, eTOM helps internally to establish a common business processes understanding and to provide a unified view in collaboration with across the organization. From a vendors (both internal software vendor and external software vendor) perspective, the eTOM business framework provides a candidate boundary of software components and the functionalities which must be supported by corresponding products. The eTOM also serves business and operations management system software designers and integrators, as well as the equipment providers. It can help them establish how the business and management processes and application collaborate with each other to the benefit of service providers and operators. This helps ensure that requirements and benefits to the service provider / operator, vendor, and the system integrators are successfully satisfied and achieved.
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Jan 2010
The eTOM business process framework has been decomposed to level 3. Looking at the description of the majority of the L3s, it is apparent that a number of sub-tasks are represented. Because of this, it may cause misunderstanding and confusion regarding inputs and outputs of the L3 processes. This may also lead to misunderstanding/confusion of an applications functionality and interfaces developed to support the processes. This can present challenges when integrating product components from different vendors.. Furthermore, in single end-to-end business process, the various departments in an enterprise may not fully understand their own responsibilities and boundaries between processes. This can lead to the collaboration inefficiency and increased operation costs among the multiple departments which are involved in the end-to-end business process. The end result may cause a potential loss of customers and decrease in core. In addition, service providers / operators and vendors may not have same understanding of eTOM business process framework at level 3. When this happens, the products provided by a vendor may not satisfy the requirements from the service provider / operator. The vendor may have to modify the applications after installation to fit the service providers / operators requirements. This can result in an increase in development costs and delivery cycle. In consideration of this analysis, the business processes and corresponding descriptions of eTOM can be further refined and clarified decomposing L3 processes to lower levels where possible. This can be demonstrated by the following example of Advice of Charging process flow shown at Level 3 and Level 4. The following diagram is the Level 3 Process Flow Advice of Charge which is contained in eTOM document of GB921F 7.5 Example Process Flows.
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Jan 2010
Figure 5 Level 3 Process Flow Advice of Charge
Examining the L3 descriptions of the processes in Figure 5, reveals several sub-tasks that are performed. The Apply Pricing, Discounting & Rebate business process can be decomposed to 3 tasks which are: are: Design & Develop Invoicing Process Render & Format Invoice Verify Invoice Quality Deliver Electronic Invoice Store Customer Invoice. Obtain Billing Event Determine Customer Account Review Agreed Customer Bill Adjustment .
The Create & Deliver Bill business process can be decomposed to 3 tasks which
It is apparent that the Design & Develop Invoicing Process should not be part of this flow. This may lead to misunderstanding for vendors during product development. After further decomposition, the level 4 business process is shown in below figure.
Jan 2010
Figure 6 Level 4 Process Flow Advice of Charge
In the L4 process flow Advice of Charge, the task Design & Develop Invoicing Process can be removed. Hence, the eTOM level 4 decomposition clarifies and
refines the L3 business process and provides better direction to the product design and development for vendors.
3.1. WHAT DOES eTOM LEVEL 4+ BRING TO US?

What eTOM Level 4+ brings to us can be seen from service provide and vendor s perspective. For the service provider, a further decomposed eTOM business process framework contains more detailed standardized business process that can be used to construct flows for service providers and operators. Service providers have a better understanding of each business process to satisfy their customers needs and enhance the customers experience. Internal to the organization, eTOM helps employees in various departments understand their responsibilities and process
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Jan 2010
boundaries. It increases the efficiency of internal collaboration and reduces operating costs. Vendors benefit because a clearer understanding of the interfaces between different functional modules and the essential functionalities represented by the business processes. Integration costs can be significantly reduced. Moreover, vendors can clearly realize the business requirements from their customers because of additional detail provided by the further decomposition of the eTOM. It leads to reduction of development costs and delivery cycle by providing more precise application requirements, which better satisfies the needs of their customers, reducing necessary application modification.
3.2. WHY HUAWEI INTERESTED?

From Huawei's perspective, as a vendor, serving the customers and satisfying customer demand is the fundamental driving force of our development. Based on eTOM level 4+ decomposition, Huawei can better realize the business requirements from service providers because this further level of detail 1) Helps eliminate business process understanding gaps between Huawei and its customers, so that applications better satisfy customers requirements 2) Identifies each functional module s interface and its essential functionality in support of business processes, which reduce integration difficulty and costs 3) Enhancing the core competitiveness of the applications by
comprehending and implementing the L4+ eTOM business process framework. It is expected to see the further decomposition of the eTOM Business Process Framework to assist Huawei in achieving further business success.
Jan 2010
4. WHO WILL USE eTOM LEVEL 4+?

All the roles played by organizations in the industrys value chain, actually, may be interested in this level of decomposition in the eTOM Business Process Framework, whether they are service providers, vendors, application/system suppliers and so forth. The eTOM level 4+ decomposition specifies and clarifies the description of each business process. After decomposition, each business process will be more distinct and specific. Employees working for organizations may utilize the eTOM level 4+ processes to identity the duties and responsibilities of different departments. As discussed earlier, it would increase the efficiency in team work and collaboration between various departments. Hence it decreases the operation costs and improves operation efficiency. The suppliers/partners could improve and enhance the business ability, network capability, service management and so forth for smoothly interacting with the service providers infrastructure with specific business processes of suppliers/partners part in eTOM. The vendors could understand the practical service requirements from the eTOM level 4+ decomposition used as functional requirements in product design and development. This results in producing applications more closely aligned with a customers requirements and increasing core competitiveness.
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Jan 2010
5. WHEN WOULD YOU DO IT THE FUTURE OF

ETOM?
The history of operation mapping can be traced to TOM (Telecom Operation Map), whose focus was to be a standardization of service management and service procedure for the telecom industry. eTOM expanded its architecture to an enterprise wide view, with the aim to also provide a detailed description of e-commerce. In general it is leveraging the gap between enterprise
management, marketing business support, customer care, vendor and variety of roles played by partners. There are two dimensions in consideration of the future of eTOM, horizontal, and vertical development. The horizontal direction is to extend as necessary based on new business requirements. The vertical direction is to extend as necessary following a TOP-DOWN approach to build the -TOM hierarchy. The following figure depicts these two dimensions.
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Jan 2010
Figure 7 eTOM Decomposition Driven by Business Requirement
In the near future, we believe there is a need for the vertical extension. With the feedback from industry implementations of the eTOM, the development of lower level processes (L4+) is going to be more urgent than ever. For horizontal development, if we review the footprint of eTOM development, there might be some influencing factors: 1) New business model s With FMC, LTE, M2M, Cloud computing effect on telecom industry, service provider and operators is challenged by more emerging business models than ever. This might drive the eTOM forward. Support for the next big mobile transformation is also becoming more urgent than ever. 2) Customer experience management
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Jan 2010
To manage customer experience is becoming one of the top level areas of interest in the telecom industry. This requires increased service operation support. At the top of the eTOM hierarchy, the interface to the customer might be a critical factor in implementing a customer experience plan. The starting point may be exemplified as customer care, various payment options, or, in general, an improved billing interface for the customer. 3) Service orientation The era of telecom, with the emergence of co-existing varieties of IP/voice services, beyond all doubts, the service oriented concept is necessary for application development, which might lead a refinement for the operation of the business as a result. Therefore, it is necessary to develop the eTOM level 3 to keep our pace with emerging new business models, to focus on customer experience management, and to be led by service oriented concepts.
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Jan 2010
6. WHERE ARE THE IMPACTS?

The eTOM, SID, Integration Framework (including TM Forum interfaces), TAM and others form a systematized standard for operation systems and software. The eTOM decomposition influences the evolution of the SID, the Integration Framework, and the TAM, and vice versa. In fact, the eTOM reveals and standardizes the basic functionally requirements. The further eTOM decomposition will drive a requirement of more detailed information model, new interfaces and business services, as well as new application functionalities. And the further development of these frameworks will have an effect on business processes.
Figure 8 Lifecycle of TM Forum Frameworks
In general, SID focuses on the analysis of information model and provides the entities upon which the business processes act. The Integration Framework emphasizes the functionality/capabilities as well as the interfaces between difference modules and business services necessary to construct an application and support interoperability. The TAM provides an application-oriented view of the other three frameworks.
Jan 2010
The eTOM, SID, Integration Framework and TAM should be viewed as a whole picture. They are inter-related and should be consistent with each other. The eTOM decomposition may lead to refining and extending the SID helping even to develop and standardize lower levels of SID Aggregate Business Entities (ABEs). The TAM, Integration Framework, and other TM Forum work products need inputs from eTOM and SID.
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7. HOW DO YOU GO BELOW LEVEL 3?

Decomposition and refining of eTOM business process framework to lower levels must be accomplished by following a set of guidelines. Otherwise there may be quite a diversity of processes at the lower levels. This diversity may cause arguments between difference service providers and vendors because of difference points of views at eTOM level 4+. It isn t easy to work forward below level 3. One of the techniques used by Huawei Billing L4s Contribution was semantic analysis. In linguistics, semantic analysis is the process of relating syntactic structures, from the levels of phrases, clauses, sentences and paragraphs to the level of the writing as a whole, to their language-independent meanings, removing features specific to particular linguistic and cultural contexts, to the extent that such a project is possible. The elements of idiom (a fixed distinctive expression whose meaning cannot be deduced from the combined meanings of its actual words) and figurative speech, being cultural, must also be converted into relatively invariant meanings. Semantic analysis is much like sentence diagramming that we all learned at an early age. The descriptions of L3 processes can be used and analyzed to begin identifying L4 processes. This is accomplished by performing semantic analysis on the description of a process: Look for nouns (entities) upon which actions are performed Look for verbs that act on nouns (entities) Look for phrases that imply actions on nouns (entities).
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Caution: Verbs and phrases may represent processes in other areas of the framework that interact with the processes being identified. Semantic Analysis should be considered as just another of the many techniques described in the User Guidelines for eTOM (GB921-U) that can be used to decompose processes. The techniques can be viewed as supplemental to the techniques currently in use within an organization. Often, Semantic Analysis is carried out iteratively with other techniques and may result in updating the description of a process to which Semantic Analysis was originally applied. The goal would be that the final decomposition(s) are consistent with the parent process description(s) from a Semantic Analysis viewpoint. For simple L3 processes whose description is brief, such as Close Service Performance Degradation Report and Audit Data Collection & Distribution, decomposition to L4 may not be possible.
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8. GLOSSARY
eTOM FMC LTE M2M SID TAM TIP Long Term Evolution Machine to Machine Information Framework Application Framework Interface Framework Business Process Framework
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9. REFERENCE
GB921: Concepts and Principles, TM Forum, 2009. GB921-D: Process Decompositions & Descriptions R8-0, TM Forum, 2009. GB921F: Example Process Flows, TM Forum, 2009. The eTOM: A Business Process Implementers Guide, John P. Reilly & Mike Kelly, TM Forum, 2009.
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WHAT LIES BELOW eTOM LEVEL 3?

What Lies Below eTOM Level 3?

Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd |

What Lies Below eTOM Level 3?

Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd |

What Lies Below eTOM Level 3?

Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd |

What Lies Below eTOM Level 3?

2. WHAT IS THE CURRENT AND F UTURE eTOM?

Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd |

What Lies Below eTOM Level 3?

Billing & Revenue Management

Customer Relationship Management

Retention & Loyalty

Service Management & SM&O Operations

Service Configuration & Activation

Service Problem Management Resource Trouble Management

Service Quality Management Resource Performance Management

Service Guiding & Mediation

Resource Management & Operations RM&O

Resource Mediation & Reporting

Supplier/Partner Relationship Management S/PRM

Supplier/Partner Interface Management

Figure 1 eTOM Level 2 Core Processes in Operation Domain

What Lies Below eTOM Level 3?

Bill Invoice Management

Apply Pricing, Discounting, Adjustments & Rebates

Create Customer Bill Invoice

Produce & Distribute Bill

Figure 2 eTOM level 3 Bill Invoice Management Business Process Segment

The Future eTOM

Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd |

What Lies Below eTOM Level 3?

Manage Revenue Assurance Operations

Monitor Revenue Assurance Controls

Create Revenue Assurance Trouble Report

Assess Revenue Assurance Trouble

Resolve Revenue Assurance Trouble

Track & Manage Revenue Assurance Trouble Resolution

Report Revenue Assurance

Close Revenue Assurance Trouble Report

Figure 3 Manage Revenue Assurance Operations Process Segment

Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd |

What Lies Below eTOM Level 3?

Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd |

What Lies Below eTOM Level 3?

3. WHY DO WE NEED eTOM LEVEL 4+?

Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd |

What Lies Below eTOM Level 3?

Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd |

What Lies Below eTOM Level 3?

Figure 5 Level 3 Process Flow Advice of Charge

What Lies Below eTOM Level 3?

Figure 6 Level 4 Process Flow Advice of Charge

3.1. WHAT DOES eTOM LEVEL 4+ BRING TO US?

Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd |

What Lies Below eTOM Level 3?

3.2. WHY HUAWEI INTERESTED?

What Lies Below eTOM Level 3?

4. WHO WILL USE eTOM LEVEL 4+?

Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd |

What Lies Below eTOM Level 3?

5. WHEN WOULD YOU DO IT THE FUTURE OF