The Business Process Framework is an operating model framework for telecom service providers in the

telecommunication Telecommunication, often used in its plural form or abbreviated as telecom, is the transmission of information over a distance using electronic means, typically through cables, radio waves, or other communication technologies. These means of ...

s industry.Brenner, Michael, et al.
Service Provisioning-Challenges, Process Alignment and Tool Support
" Bergstra, J. und M. Burgess (Herausgeber): Handbook of Network and System Administration. Elsevier (2007). The model describes the required

business process A business process, business method, or business function is a collection of related, structured activities or tasks performed by people or equipment in which a specific sequence produces a service or product (that serves a particular business g ...

es of service providers and defines key elements and how they should interact. The Business Process Framework (eTOM) is a standard maintained by the TM Forum, an association for service providers and their suppliers in the telecommunications and entertainment industries.

History

The development of business process standardization for telecom service providers started with the founding of the TM Forum in 1988. The initial goal was to facilitate the creation of 'interoperable network management products'.Robert Oebele Reitsma (2011) ''Innovating Mass-customized Service.'' p. 128 The first approved standard was the 'OSI/NM Forum Protocol Specification,' an extension of OSI protocols developed since the late 1970s. The direct development towards the Business Process Framework (eTOM), as Brenner (2007) explained, was "the Telecom Operation Map (TOM) was first published in 2001. The goal of TOM was the creation of an industry-owned framework of business processes, including the definition of a common enterprise-independent terminology for service management. It was also supposed to serve as a basis for discussing the scope of information management necessary for the execution of the processes. The result of this latter effort has meanwhile spawned its own TMF document family, the Shared Information and Data Model (SID). The Telecom Operation Map (TOM) was extended in 2001 to eTOM, an acronym for Enhanced Telecom Operations Map. The process model eTOm was renamed "Enhanced Telecom Operations Map (eTOM)" and in 2013 to "Business Process Framework (eTOM)." There have been many versions of eTOM. Version 14 was published in May 2014. It has also been developed into a component of NGOSS, which has been renamed Frameworx.

Building blocks

Hierarchy

The Business Process Framework model consists of processes at 5 levels: * Strategy, * Network Operations, * Level-2, * Level-3, * Level-4. These levels form a hierarchy, with each level encapsulating a group of processes at the next level of detail.

Rows and columns

The graphic representation of a Business Process Framework (eTOM) model consists of rows and columns, the intersections of which denote specific business processes. * The top row includes customer facing activities such as marketing, * While the bottom row includes supplier facing and support activities. In this manner the Business Process Framework map covers the whole value chain. The map also indicates the interaction between processes.

Three broad sections

Business Process Framework (eTOM) processes fall into three major process areas, * "Strategy, Infrastructure & Product", * "Operations", and * "Enterprise Management", ; Strategy, Infrastructure & Product: :; Columns :: Strategy and Commit, Infrastructure Lifecycle Management and Product Lifecycle Management :; Rows :: Marketing & Offer Management, Service Development & Management, Resource Development & Management and Supply Chain Development & Management ; Operations :; Columns :: Operations Support & Readiness, Fulfillment, Assurance and Billing :; Rows :; Relationship Management, Service Management & Operations, Resource Management & Operations and Supplier/Partner :; Relationship Management.

Other standards

* ITIL is an analogous standard or framework for best practices in

information technology Information technology (IT) is a set of related fields within information and communications technology (ICT), that encompass computer systems, software, programming languages, data processing, data and information processing, and storage. Inf ...

. * Both of these frameworks are part of

Total Quality Management Total quality management (TQM) is an organization-wide effort to "install and make a permanent climate where employees continuously improve their ability to provide on-demand products and services that customers will find of particular value." ...

, in which industries have, since 1950, formalized their business processes and metrics in search of higher quality, fewer defects, and greater efficiency. *

ISO 9000 The ISO 9000 family is a set of international standards for Quality (business), quality management systems. It was developed in March 1987 by International Organization for Standardization. The goal of these standards is to help organizations en ...

is another of these "process and results improvement" standards, but it is far more generic than either Business Process Framework or ITIL. * Business Process Framework has been adopted by the

ITU-T The International Telecommunication Union Telecommunication Standardization Sector (ITU-T) is one of the three Sectors (branches) of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). It is responsible for coordinating Standardization, standards fo ...

as a Recommendation and published in the M.3050.x series. * OpenReference is a business process framework developed for product and service businesses and includes processes, metrics and practices.

References

External links

* {{cite web , url=https://www.tmforum.org/resources/suite/gb921-business-process-framework-etom-r17-0-0/ , title=Business Process Framework (eTOM) R17.0.0 , publisher= TM Forum , access-date= December 11, 2017
Business Process Framework (eTOM) R23

ITU M.3050

OpenReference Frameworks
Standards Telecommunications systems IT service management