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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. Its evolution must continue in order to satisfy TM Forum members’ actual implementation of the eTOM.

This white paper offers a justification for the future of eTOM, below level 3, and how this can be achieved.

What Lies Below eTOM Level 3? Jan 2010

Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd | 2

Contents:

1. Introduction ............................................................................................. 4

2. What Is the Current and Future eTOM?................................................. 5

3. Why Do We Need eTOM Level 4+? ..................................................... 10

3.1. What Does eTOM Level 4+ Bring To Us?......................................................13

3.2. 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



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



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 Huawei’s 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.



2. WHAT IS THE CURRENT AND FUTURE 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

suppliers ⁄partners.

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.



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 organization’s 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.

OperationsFulfillment Assurance Billing & Revenue

ManagementOperations Support & Readiness

Service Management &Operations

Resource Management &Operations

Supplier/Partner RelationshipManagement

Customer RelationshipManagement

Retention & Loyalty

Customer Interface Management

Selling

Resource Data Collection & Distribution

Supplier/Partner Interface Management

S/P PerformanceManagement

S/P Problem Reporting &Management

S/P Requisition

Management

ResourceProvisioning

ResourceTrouble

Management

ResourcePerformance Management

ServiceQuality

Management

ServiceProblem

Management

CustomerQoS / SLA

Management

S/P Settlements& Payments

Management

Service Guiding & Mediation

MarketingFulfillmentResponse

S/PRMSupport &Readiness

SM&O Support &Readiness

RM&O Support &Readiness

CRM Support &Readiness

ServiceConfiguration & Activation

OrderHandling

ProblemHandling

Bill Payments & Receivables Mgt.Bill Invoice

Management Manage

Billing Events Charging

Bill InquiryHandling

Resource Mediation& Reporting

Manage Workforce

Figure 1 eTOM Level 2 – Core Processes in Operation Domain

4) Level 3:



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.

Produce & Distribute Bill

Create Customer Bill Invoice

Apply Pricing, Discounting, Adjustments & Rebates

Bill Invoice Management

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:



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.

Resolve Revenue Assurance Trouble

Close Revenue Assurance Trouble Report

Assess Revenue Assurance Trouble

Report Revenue Assurance

Create Revenue Assurance Trouble Report

Track & Manage Revenue Assurance Trouble Resolution

Monitor Revenue Assurance Controls

Manage Revenue Assurance Operations

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.



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.



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 vendor’s (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.



The eTOM business process framework has been decomposed to level 3.

Looking at the description of the majority of the L3’s, 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 application’s 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 provider’s / operator’s 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”.



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:

• “Obtain Billing Event”

• “Determine Customer Account”

• “Review Agreed Customer Bill Adjustment ”.

The “Create & Deliver Bill ” business process can be decomposed to 3 tasks which

are:

• “Design & Develop Invoicing Process ”

• “Render & Format Invoice”

• “Verify Invoice Quality”

• “Deliver Electronic Invoice ”

• “Store Customer Invoice”.

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.



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



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 it’s 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.



4. WHO WILL USE eTOM LEVEL 4+?

All the roles played by organizations in the industry’s 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 provider’s 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

customer’s requirements and increasing core competitiveness.



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.



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



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.



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.



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.



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).



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.



8. GLOSSARY

eTOM Business Process Framework FMC LTE Long Term Evolution M2M Machine to Machine SID Information Framework TAM Application Framework TIP Interface Framework



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 Implementer’s Guide, John P. Reilly & Mike Kelly, TM Forum, 2009.

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