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BSS EVOLUTION
IN THE DIGITAL WORLD

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IN THE DIGITAL WORLD
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BSS EVOLUTION IN THE DIGITAL WORLD

TM Forum’s Quick Insights research reports are free
and can be downloaded by registering on our website

Report author:
Rob Rich
Managing Director, TM Forum Insights Page 4 The big picture
rrich@tmforum.org

Senior Director, Editorial:

Annie Turner Page 6 Section 1
aturner@tmforum.org The promise of the new digital world
Managing Editor:
Dawn Bushaus
dbushaus@tmforum.org Page 9 Section 2
Editor, Digital Content:
Digital transformation and BSS requirements for the digital world
Sarah Wray
swray@tmforum.org
Page 16 Section 3
Content Delivery and Program Manager:
Paul Davis Addressing the challenges
pdavis@tmforum.org

Content Delivery and Program Coordinator: Page 20 Section 4

Joia Tulloch
jtulloch@tmforum.org Make it happen – how to accelerate digital transformation and BSS evolution
Business Development Director, Research & Publications:
Mark Bradbury Page 23 Sponsored feature: Amdocs
mbradbury@tmforum.org
BSS evolution in the digital world
Director, Solutions Marketing:
Charlotte Lewis
clewis@tmforum.org

Senior Director, Research and Content:

Aaron Richard Earl Boasman
aboasman@tmforum.org

Advisors:
Barry Graham, Senior Director, Agile Business & IT Program
bagraham@tmforum.org

Dave Milham, Chief Architect, Service Provider Engagement

dmilham@tmforum.org

Report Design: We hope you enjoy the report and, most importantly, will find ways to use the ideas,
thePAGEDESIGN
concepts and recommendations detailed within. You can send your feedback to the
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 BSS EVOLUTION
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THE BIG PICTURE

Welcome to our new report on the
critical role of next generation BSS

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D igitization is enabling companies to communicate

and transact business across the world in real
time. It’s also helping them dramatically cut costs and
Read this report to understand:

How the platform business model has

learn much more about their customers. Above all it is evolved and how service providers are
empowering customers, giving them more information, using it
options and channels of communication to their
suppliers. Why IT, specifically BSS, has to evolve

Information technology has taken a central role in the The drivers for digital transformation
digital world, and in many cases IT is no longer just including customer centricity, business
an enabler. It literally is the business, or at least the agility and operational agility
platform on which the business runs. IT combined with
business process innovation is helping businesses How BSS is evolving
serve customers better, lower capital and operating
costs, and gain the transparency, security and privacy Challenges service providers face in
needed to thrive in the digital world. transformation

The role of BSS Lessons learned so far

Business support systems (BSS) are a critical part of
the IT portfolio, drawing much of their importance How TM Forum can help service providers
from their customer-facing nature, but they, too, must evolve BSS
transform to remain relevant. In this report we will
discuss the requirements of an evolving BSS portfolio
as well as the business transformation the systems play
a key role in enabling.

While the overall effort needed for digital transformation

may seem daunting, the payback for leading companies
that have made the commitment and are executing
has been huge. We believe that service providers who
differentiate themselves with a superior digital strategy
and related BSS evolution, and demonstrate strong
execution will be winners in the brave new digital world.

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SECTION 1 :

THE PROMISE OF
THE NEW DIGITAL
WORLD

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For communications service providers, navigating the
digital world is challenging to say the least. Digitization
has resulted in an explosion of new digital products
and services, competitors and potential partner. This
is giving rise to innovative new business and delivery
models, complex new technologies, highly competitive
pricing – especially for traditional services that slide
toward commoditization – and increasingly empowered,
connected customers.
One of the most interesting and transformational
business models digitization enables is the digital
platform. For network operators to embracing this
model necessitates not only cultural transformation
within the organization, but also replacing monolithic,
siloed business and operational support systems
(BSS/OSS) with next-generation systems that can
help network operators increase agility and reduce
operational costs.
In this report, we focus primarily on BSS, which
includes customer, order, product and revenue
management systems.
The platform approach
In his book Staying Power, MIT Sloan School of
Management Professor Michael Cusumano writes this
about platforms: “Platform or complement strategy
differs from a product strategy in that it requires an
external ecosystem to generate complementary product
or service innovations and build positive feedback
between the complements and the platform. The effect
is much greater potential for innovation and growth than
BSS EVOLUTION
IN THE DIGITAL WORLD
a single product-oriented firm can generate alone.” Power of platforms
Platform businesses are not new. IBM in the 1970s,
Microsoft in the 1990s and more recently Apple
and Google have fueled tremendous growth in their
respective business segments by attracting developers
to create value on top of their platforms. Alibaba Apple’s
most valuable listed App Store
On the transactional side, companies like Amazon, eBay firm in Asia at $266 bn more than140 bn apps
and Alibaba have attracted huge numbers of sellers, downloaded
which in turn have enabled ever increasing customers
and transaction volumes.
This is an example of the ‘network effect’ – the greater Amazon’s Google
the variety of products or services offered, the more Q2 2016 profits, buys API company
they’re used, which increases the value of the platform. $857 m, up from Apigee
$92 m Q2 2015 for estimated $625 m
This, in turn, attracts even more partners and customers.
Moreover, since the inventory is typically owned by
third parties, the cost of scaling the platform business is
lower, further eliminating capital requirements.
Networks as platforms
As they virtualize their networks and operations, many
service providers are adopting a platform strategy.
Companies like BT, Orange and Vodafone see end-to-
end management and orchestration as a key component
of their strategies to become platform providers.
This is how it will work: Multiple orchestrators
in multiple software platforms will communicate
with each other and with other network and OSS/
BSS components to deliver services – through open
application program interfaces (APIs).
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Watch executives from all three companies explain their

strategy as they participated in a workshop on platforms
in July 2016, at Action Week in Vancouver, at which
TM Forum announced a shift in strategic direction to
embrace the platform economy.

BSS has to change

IT has taken a central role in the digital world, whether
enabling platform strategies, smaller ecosystems,
or modernizing more traditional, vertically-oriented
businesses. In many cases IT is not just an enabler,
it literally is the business, or at least the platform on
which the business runs.

Customers expect an easy-to-use, consistent,

seamless, transparent and secure experience,
regardless of what they’re consuming. Partners
expect efficient on-boarding and operation. Investors
expect (and the markets demand) ever lower costs of Watch executives from BT, Orange and Vodafone
doing business. And all parties expect operations and discuss the platform economy. For more about how
evolution to be conducted with increasing levels of network operators are adopting platforms, see our
speed, transparency, security and privacy. This can only recent Insights Research report Orchestration:
be accomplished with higher levels of automation and
Get ready for the platform revolution
increased innovation in IT and business process.

BSS is a critical part of the IT portfolio, due to the

customer-facing nature of the systems, but they, too,
must transform to remain relevant. In the next sections, IT has taken a central role in the digital world, whether
we discuss key requirements for an evolving BSS
portfolio as well as the business transformation the
enabling platform strategies, smaller ecosystems, or
systems play a key role in enabling. modernizing traditional, vertically-oriented businesses

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SECTION 2 :

DIGITAL
TRANSFORMATION
AND BSS
REQUIREMENTS FOR
THE DIGITAL WORLD

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W e cannot talk about the evolution of business
support systems (BSS) without talking about the
evolution of the companies that use them. After all, BSS,
which includes customer, order, product and revenue
management systems, must reflect the business goals and
strategy to automate processes, and in many cases they
must deliver the key metrics that guide implementation of
the strategy and reflect operating results.
BSS will evolve as part and parcel of the digital
transformation efforts that many service providers have
already begun. Most service providers we have spoken
with are driving their transformation programs based on
some form of customer centricity.
“Customer centricity drives nearly everything we
do these days,” says an executive at large Western
European service provider. “There is barely a project
that we initiate without discussing the implications of it
to the customer.”
Customers are in charge
Over the last few years, service providers have come to
recognize that the customer is now steering the ship.
actions. Service providers who are late to recognize this
are already losing their customers to those who do, and
are scrambling to catch up.
“[Platform] companies are indescribably thin layers that sit on top of the vast
supply systems (where the costs are) and interface with a huge number of
people (where the money is). There’s no better business to be in.”
BSS EVOLUTION
IN THE DIGITAL WORLD
Platform businesses understand this: Airbnb, Alibaba,
Amazon, Apple and Uber focus on the customer
throughout the lifecycle, not just at purchasing, and their
primary mission is to maintain that focus. As advertising
and marketing guru Tom Goodwin puts it,“These
companies are indescribably thin layers that sit on top of
vast supply systems (where the costs are) and interface
with a huge number of people (where the money is).
There is no better business to be in.”
We will discuss digital transformation more broadly in
the following sections, but suffice it to say that customer
centricity sits squarely at the front of both the digital
transformation strategy and the BSS evolution initiatives.
Key principles for customer centricity
In 2014, we developed a set of customer centricity
principles based on interviews with a number of
leaders in various industries (with a bias toward service
industries like transportation, retail, aviation and
hospitality). The principles were outlined in our how-to
guide Becoming a customer-centric business. These
principles are equally relevant for digital and traditional
brick-and-mortar businesses. We’ve updated them
here in the context of driving requirements for next-
generation BSS.
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1. Take an outside-in, solutions-oriented approach Figure 2-1: TM Forum Customer Experience Management Lifecycle
Looking at things from the customer’s point
of view is critical to success. Without this
orientation, it is difficult to understand intent and
to design effective journeys. It is also difficult to
solve problems. The important principle here is
to understand that customers don’t want to just
buy something; they want their problems solved.
Addressing this need can endear a supplier to
them, so design and execution of systems and
processes must focus on engagement outcomes.

2. Understand customer experience across

the lifecycle
Service providers must understand how customers
experience their company, including their intent and
interactions – and their experiences and sentiments
in pursuing that intent. Moreover service providers
must understand how they can help customers
realize their goals by providing highly personalized,
contextually relevant experiences across a variety
of channels. This requires journey analysis.
“Journey analysis is what drives much of our
work,” says a customer experience director at
a European wireless provider with operations
in multiple countries. “It puts us squarely in the
customer’s shoes.”
of survey respondents said customer
98% journey analysis is very important or
important
Source: TM Forum, 2015
Source: TM Forum, 2015
TM Forum’s Customer Experience Management
Lifecycle (see Figure 2-1) can be an important
tool in helping service providers analyze customer
journeys.
BSS elements critical to this principle
include analytics and a robust, intelligent
set of engagement capabilities to leverage
personalization and context to guide the
interaction and overall journey to an appropriate
conclusion. Many vendors focus on journeys in
the engaging (buying) phase, but these capabilities
are important across all phases, as in when
customers are seeking support or learning how to
accomplish a specific task.

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3. Empower customers at the point of interaction
Customer-centric companies empower their
customers with the information, support and
tools they need to achieve their goals. This may
include, for example, access to agents (live and
virtual), internal information, external knowledge
(such as social media) and automated tools. The
bottom line is that the customer needs to be
able to resolve problems through their channel of
choice, whether it’s selecting and purchasing a
new product, getting help, providing feedback or
any number of other activities.
Critical BSS capabilities for this principle include
intelligent, guided engagement using appropriate
tools and methodologies, for example, social
engagement models, analytics to better
understand the situation and establish context,
recommendation engines to suggest solutions,
and integration with external capabilities such
as content management systems, social-media
platforms and third-party or partners’ applications.
4. Develop efficient, personalized business
processes
Empowerment is important, it’s not enough
to provide a satisfying experience. Processes
and engagement tools must enable customers
to realize their goals as quickly and easily as
possible. This level of simplicity and convenience
means significant personalization capabilities –
systems must combine preferences and context
to guide an appropriate experience.
BSS EVOLUTION
IN THE DIGITAL WORLD
5. Strive for cross-company consistency and
transparency
Customers build their perception of a company
based on their experiences with the whole
company, not a single location, department
or channel. They expect consistency and
ultimately predictability in all of their interactions.
Moreover, customers increasingly are looking
for transparency, both at informational and
transactional levels.
All of this starts with information management
capabilities that allow BSS to access a variety
of information and content that is consistent
across all systems and channels, but also a set
of tools that allows customers to quickly and
efficiently access the information they need. This
also applies across the various constituents in a
platform business; partners expect consistency
and transparency too.
6. Adopt data-driven strategies and operations
Customer-centric companies understand that
executing business strategy successfully is
highly dependent on having the right information
available at the right time.
Certainly data management and sharing of
common data across applications is important,
with customer data and enterprise product catalog
being two important examples, but deployment
of analytics tools in virtually all areas of BSS is
equally important.
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Analytics for understanding customer behavior, Next-gen BSS requirements

product and service performance, and customer
preferences have long been recognized as a
source of competitive advantage. More recently Deliver a seamless omnichannel experience
advances in areas like interaction management
and product/service recommendations have Support consistent customer experience
added to this. This is also an area where machine not just across channels, but across the full
learning shows great promise. lifecycle

The importance of being agile Capabilities to enable offers should include

Customer centricity may lead the list of drivers for digital
transformation and BSS evolution, but there are several
other important requirements for next-generation BSS
(see infographic). These features boost business agility.
Two areas in particular where agility and speed are
critical are new product introduction and partner
onboarding. Over-the-top providers can create and
deploy services in hours, rather than the months or
years it can take network operators.
an extendable product catalog, open APIs
and policy-driven business logic to respond
to rapid market change
Exploit the benefits of virtualization, which
include scalability and cost-effectiveness
(for example, cloud-based systems)
Capture and leverage clean data to help
customers make quick decisions

A common product catalog with a powerful set Continue support for existing services
of management tools can greatly speed the
implementation of new products across all channels and
business units. Moreover, product catalogs need to be
extended to include partners’ products.

Rapid partner onboarding is especially critical to platform

businesses seeking to scale quickly (see page 14), but
automated onboarding of partners is important for all
companies wanting to participate in digital ecosystems.
Arugably, the key enabler is application program
interface (API).

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Catalyst looks to automate partner onboarding

AT&T, China Mobile, Orange and Verizon are championing the NFV Ecosystem
Catalyst , a multi-phased project aimed at automating procurement and
onboarding of virtual network functions (VNFs) and developing a model
for the digital Operations Center of the Future (OpCF). The project will be
demonstrated in November at TM Forum’s Innovation InFocus in Dallas.
The Catalyst is a mash-up of two award winning projects. One of them
described the business and operational aspects of a VNF package to help
advance the thinking around transforming traditional procurement processes,
which typically take months. The team developed a new paradigm where
procurement and onboarding can be automated. This level of agility and
standards are required to develop a component-based architecture and
specifications for the OpCF. The first phase of that project also developed
a clear view of the NFV ecosystem, the roles within it and its lifecycle
management.
“First we need to have industry agreement on non-functional elements that
need to be described in a VNF package,” says Jenny Huang, Lead of OSS/
BSS Standards Strategy Group, AT&T, and Co-leader of the Forum’s Zero-
touch Orchestration, Operations and Management (ZOOM) project. “The
information needs to be delivered as part of the product package to reduce
manual hand-off and to increase clear responsibility between the service
providers to reach automation and business agility.”
The non-functional information includes, for example, metadata about
licensing, maturity and metrics models and service level agreements (SLAs).
The implementation of the OpCF in this Catalyst will then put the metadata
into action to automate the procurement and onboarding processes, as
well as facilitate the lifecycle management of the components and their
composed services in an ecosystem environment.

The other project developed a working model of the OpCF, which dynamically
connected stakeholders in an end-to-end lifecycle of digital services using
open APIs. Early versions of that Catalyst showed how to use dynamic APIs
to mediate connections between diverse systems. Dynamic APIs allow the
payload to vary depending on the product or service that’s being ordered,
procured or managed. In the case of the Catalyst, the Open Digital API acted
as a bridge between an orchestration system and the OSS/BSS, allowing
suppliers to invest in a single set of APIs and use them to supply multiple
products to many buyers. Conversely buyers could also use a single API
investment to integrate with many suppliers, which allows a true marketplace
to form.

Getting agreement
During this phase of the combined project, the team will actually implement a
component-based architecture using TM Forum’s Information Framework and
the TOSCA (Topology and Orchestration Specification for Cloud Applications)
data model, which is being developed by OASIS. Watch participants explain the Dynamic APIs Catalyst.

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The role for APIs
APIs connect business processes, services, content
and data to channel partners, internal teams and
independent developers in an easy and secure way.
They also reduce the cost and complexity of operations,
reduce integration cost and risk, and provide a platform
for further innovation.
Two of the most important attributes of a platform
business are modularity and external interconnectivity:
Modularity allows systems to be assembled,
disassembled and reassembled quickly and cheaply,
using APIs for easy external interconnectivity.
APIs are not new – they enable conversations between
software systems for a multitude of purposes. But
the technology they are built on, their functions and
roles have evolved. In particular in the digital era, open
– that is, publicly available, standardized APIs – have
proliferated massively and are used by many companies,
including household names mentioned in Section 1, to
encourage external talent to exploit those core assets to
everyone’s advantage.
To scale like digital companies, both BSS and OSS must be adapted
to function flawlessly in a virtualized computing environment
BSS EVOLUTION
IN THE DIGITAL WORLD
This is why TM Forum’s member organizations have
developed a suite of 18 Open APIs, with more in the
pipeline, to open up their assets. Their application is not
limited to the communications industry, as our many
{open}:hack events have demonstrated.
Operational agility
While the focus of this report is BSS, it’s important to
mention operational agility as well. In the digital world,
service providers need to be able to scale capacity
to quickly address customers’ changing needs: Think
Amazon on Black Friday. It is no coincidence that
Amazon has long been a leader in virtualization and
cloud computing: Its business required extremely high
levels of economic infrastructure scaling long before it
offered cloud services to customers.
To scale like digital companies, both BSS and OSS
must be adapted to function flawlessly in a virtualized
computing environment (see page 14).
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SECTION 3 :

ADDRESSING THE
CHALLENGES

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D igital transformation is a daunting task for companies

in all industries, including communications service
providers. Not only does it require cultural changes
What do top execs think about digital business?

within the company, it also demands new business and

see a digital business view their organizations
operational support systems (BSS/OSS). Unisys and IDC
recently surveyed 175 IT and business executives at US 72% model as critical for
success, but only
15% as nimble enough for full
digital business
and European companies that have 1,000 employees
or more and found that a large majority believe a digital
business model is critical for success, but only a small
number of them believe their company is agile enough to
leverage this model (see infographic).
cite cloud cite
It isn’t easy
These findings are not surprising when you consider the
88% security as top 32% significant
priority, but only progress
breadth and complexity of what’s required:

Strategy and leadership – this drives the overall

transformation effort. Service providers must set a
compelling company vision; develop bold but achievable
of apps are cite progress in
strategy and goals; organize and cultivate leadership
capabilities; focus resources on critical areas; and provide 55% already in 24% creating scalable IT
regular and appropriate cross-company communications. the cloud for digital business

Customer engagement – as discussed earlier, Source: TM Forum, 2015

understanding and communicating with customers is
fundamental, but using the knowledge gained to enhance
products, services, operations and brand are critical
differentiators.
Products and services – understanding and evolving
product and services development, introduction,
management, support and delivery is important for all
products, including those of partners.
Organization, talent and culture – management
of people, talent, skills and knowledge are critical to
realize the vision, and the evolution of all aspects of the
organization is fundamental. Identifying and fostering
a target culture and rewarding progress toward it are
particularly important.

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Digital operations – processes must be reengineered
to support business objectives, and metrics and controls
must be identified and implemented to guide progress.
Appropriate tools and technologies (for example, real-time
analytics) are needed to support operational processes at
the accelerating speed of the digital world.
Addressing the complexity
The transformation challenge is especially vexing for
large incumbent service providers. End-to-end control of
services has long been a problem, but an explosion of
new services, business models and partners expands the
challenge. Data integrity and integration is also an issue,
especially given the history of organizational stovepipes
and legacy systems, and adding a set of partners with
their own data structures increases this challenge.
The complexity of systems and processes is a major
concern. Organizational fragmentation and focus
on departmental goals has led to complexity and
suboptimization, where a company focuses on making
changes in one area, ignoring the effects on others. Much
of this complexity has directly impacted customers.
Departmental priorities have negatively impacted the
justification for cross-organizational investment, making
funding difficult or adding complexity, which increases
suboptimization and project risk and slows time to delivery.
Outsourcing some business and IT functions can lead to a
skills shortage, and pressure on management for short-
term results and concerns regarding program risk have
slowed management commitment as well.
BSS EVOLUTION
IN THE DIGITAL WORLD
Developing a digital strategy
Communications service providers are realizing the
importance of committing to a digital strategy by:
adopting an ‘outside-in’ view of customer
experience and engagement as a driver of digital
transformation, and investing in customer-focused
programs, tools and technologies;
accepting the customer trend toward digital and
mobile channels, and attempting to consolidate
their disparate channels of interaction – several
companies have launched omnichannel initiatives;
experimenting with new digital technologies and
methodologies to bring services to market more
quickly and in a more agile way – implementation of
product catalogs has been particularly important;
addressing data management and implementing
enterprise-wide product catalog strategies;
leveraging new analytics capabilities to deliver a
better experience, though most have a long way
to go; engaging cross-functional teams to simplify
and align cross-organizational processes, using the
customer point of view as a primary driver;
consolidating and shedding legacy systems; and
reskilling employees to increase their effectiveness
with new initiatives, processes and technologies.
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Applying lessons learned

Many TM Forum members are in the midst of multi-year
transformation projects. KPN, for example, which won
TM Forum’s 2016 Digital World Award for
Transformation of the Year, is in the midst of a multi-
year customer-centric transformation to achieve better
Net Promoter Score and improve quality of service.

The company has realized:

n an estimated €230 million ($250 million) savings on

run-rate CapEx and OpEx within 18 months;
n significant Net Promoter Score improvements in its
Watch Bouke Hoving, Senior Executive Vice
consumer business;
President, Simplification and Innovation, KPN,
n standardization across channels and products, which
has reduced customer and other supporting processes discuss the company’s successful transformation,
by more than 50 percent; and and read the company’s case study on Inform.
n a reduction in its product portfolio of nearly half with
a target of 80 percent.

Multiple transformation projects
Orange Group also has several transformation projects
underway. Its Essentials2020 strategy includes:
n nine projects involving customer relationship
management (CRM), order management and billing
(including for convergent charging) in the Middle East
and Africa region;
n In Europe, the focus is on reducing the complexity of
legacy systems, with 300 applications simplified in
France alone; and
n In all regions, there are big data projects for customer
experience management and combatting fraud.
AT&T, BT, Telecom Italia, Telefónica and Vodafone are
also undergoing major transformations with similarly
impressive results. For a more in-depth look at how
Orange and Telecom Italia are tackling transformation,
see our recent Quick Insights report Digital
transformation: So hard, so necessary – so here’s what
to do.
You can read case studies for AT&T, BT and Telefónica
and learn more about BT’s and Vodafone’s efforts to
become platform providers in the new Insights Research
report Orchestration: Get ready for the platform
revolution.

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SECTION 4 :

MAKE IT HAPPEN
– HOW TO
ACCELERATE DIGITAL
TRANSFORMATION
AND BSS EVOLUTION

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C ommunications service providers must prepare for
doing business in the digital world or risk their very
survival. While they grasp the concepts and principles
of customer-centric digital transformation, it is not an
easy task. Their organizations are huge and they are
encumbered with many legacy business and operational
support systems (BSS/OSS).
When viewed through the context of digital
transformation, it’s easy to see the importance of
BSS as a fundamental enabler. Following are some
key takeaways to help service providers accelerate
transformation and evolve their BSS capabilities.
Realize the customer is steering the ship
The customer is clearly in charge in the digital
world, and we have already seen that the most
successful companies – platform providers
like Amazon, Airbnb, Uber and others – are
focusing on the customer first and foremost.
Customers are looking to solve problems
quickly and efficiently and increasingly expect
their suppliers to have sufficient knowledge
of their preferences and to provide tools and
assistance to affect a smooth convenient
shopping experience. Moreover, they expect
BSS must help service providers deliver a consistent
experience, not just across channels, but the full lifecycle
BSS EVOLUTION
IN THE DIGITAL WORLD
to be able to change channels seamlessly,
carrying their progress with them as they go.
BSS must support these requirements,
delivering a seamless omnichannel experience,
a set of easy-to-use tools for empowerment,
engagement analytics to guide a personalized,
contextually appropriate experience, and the
ability to quickly incorporate new interaction
sources and technology (for example virtual
agents) as they emerge.
Understand it’s about the entire
customer lifecycle
For traditionally fragmented organizations
like incumbent service providers, customer
centricity creates a compelling mission and a
rallying point for cross-functional cooperation.
BSS must help service providers deliver
a consistent experience, not just across
channels, but across the full lifecycle. A lot
of the early focus in omnichannel solutions
has been on the buying phase, but service
providers should be looking for BSS to
supports all the functions of the customer
lifecycle.
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WWW.TMFORUM.ORG
Strive for agility
The pace of change in the digital world is
dizzying and appears to be accelerating. BSS
must able to adapt to and support this change.
This means rapid assimilation of new products
and services, partners, and business models.
Service providers should be looking for
capabilities such as an extendable product
catalog, open APIs and policy-driven business
logic to respond to rapid market change.
Service providers should also be looking
for systems that can take advantage of the
benefits of virtualization, such as scalability
and cost effectiveness.
Embrace data-driven decision-making
Whether it’s understanding customer intent,
guiding a journey, recommending a product or
selecting a pricing plan, success depends on
the rapid analysis of data, and the quality of the
underlying data supporting that analysis. BSS
Service providers should be looking for capabilities such as an
extenable product catalog, open APIs and policy-driven business
logic to respond to rapid market change
BSS EVOLUTION
IN THE DIGITAL WORLD
must be able to capture clean data, provide
that data in a timely fashion across all functions
of the lifecycle, and leverage it to provide
effective, responsive engagement. This means
customer information and product catalog
data must be available to all components of
BSS, not just the CRM systems, and real-
time analytics must be embedded into the
applications themselves.
Continue to support existing services
With all the focus on digital and new
opportunities, it’s important to remember that
the majority of revenue for the foreseeable
future will continue to come from existing
services. While many service providers
are simplifying their product portfolios to
make them easier to support – as KPN and
Telefónica have done – new BSS must be able
to continue support existing services, hopefully
with a higher degree of operational efficiency.
22
SPONSORED FEATURE
BSS evolution in the digital world
The American scientist Bruce Lipton once said,
“Crises are harbingers of evolution.” This is
especially true in the world of service providers.
Driven by a combination of factors, business
support systems (BSS) are facing an inflection
point, forcing them to evolve and adapt to new
digital era requirements. Today’s digital world is
impacting BSS across multiple dimensions.
New consumer behaviors driving need for
new capabilities
Today’s consumers are predominantly digital
natives and require a plethora of options in terms
of devices, channels of interactions (retail, Web,
mobile apps, etc.) and modes of communication
(email, chat, online self-service and social media).
In this environment, their expectations from their
service provider are higher than ever before and
can be categorized by four dimensions:
n Personalized: Customers today expect
their service providers to know them, their
behaviors, preferences and interests. They
expect to be able to interact in the channel of
their choice, at a time of their choosing and
using a device that best suits them.
n Consistent: Customers expect personalized
behavior across all channels. Whether a
customer walks into a store or calls the call
center or is interacting via social channels,
it is vital that the service provider be able
to recognize the customer and provide
consistently personalized experiences.
n Fast: Generation-C customers are characterized
by speed and impatience. They are no longer
willing to wait to have their needs addressed
and expect rapid responses and self-service
options for all their interactions.
n Holistic: Customers expect that service
providers will engage them digitally across
all dimensions of their engagement lifecycle.
Whether the customer is discovering
information, buying, using or asking for support
as it relates to your products and services, they
want flexibility in channel used and mode of
communication.
Hyper-competition driving need for
service agility
Service providers today are subject to
competition from traditional and non-traditional
players in the market. The coming of age of the
Internet in the past decade has redefined the
meaning of “telecommunications”, while social
networks and over-the-top (OTT) players such as
Facebook, WhatsApp and Apple are challenging
the service provider’s core business. One of
the key competitive advantages that these
competitors bring is “speed”… they are not
afraid to try new approaches, as “fail fast” is a
mantra they live by. In this environment, service
providers cannot be hobbled by BSS that are
23
designed for traditional product development and
introduction lifecycles. To compete effectively
they must evolve solutions that allow them to
rapidly rollout new product and services, often in
partnership with third-parties.
Shrinking traditional revenue streams driving
need for new platform approaches
Voice revenues are continually declining,
and pure play data services are becoming
commoditized faster than ever before. Service
providers recognize the need to explore and
generate new sources of revenue to make up
for this shortfall, as they continue to invest
heavily in upgrading networks to the latest new
technologies. Domains such as Internet of Things
(IoT), B2B, OTT and multi-play services represent
attractive new market opportunities. However,
unlike in the past, the service provider will need
to partner with multiple vendors to provide a
solution that addresses customer needs in these
domains. In this situation, it is critical that their
internal BSS evolve to support this open partner
ecosystem, and allow for fast but secure end-to-
end automation of business processes across the
entire value chain.
New technologies causing greater
architectural complexity
In the digital era, there is no shortage of new
cloud-based business applications that are ready
SPONSORED FEATURE
BSS evolution in the digital world
to deliver new functionality and benefits. Be it
marketing, sales, customer care or any other
business function, there are a multitude of
options available for service providers to choose
from. Cloud technologies have the potential to
accelerate deployments and reduce total cost
of ownership, if adopted well. However the two
critical questions to consider in adopting these
new technologies are:
n How well do they integrate into my existing
systems? Since all of a service provider’s core
customer information and intelligence resides
in these systems, difficult integrations can
severely hamper the service provider’s ability
to deliver engaging experiences.
n Am I creating new data islands? It’s important
to have a full 360-degree view of customer
information and their touch-points across
all channels to deliver truly personalized
experiences… is your solution helping you do
that?
Amdocs digital
Amdocs’ strategy and vision to help service
providers evolve into digital service providers is
based on four key aspects.
1. Immersive engagements
Customer interactions are increasingly becoming
more digital, specifically automated, non-human
and social modes of engagement. Service
providers need to serve customers in the
channel of their choice through consistent
and personalized engagements regardless
of the channel – retail store, call center
or online. To deliver the extended reach
customers crave and enable interactions
across any medium, Amdocs delivers
fully digital front- and back-end
offerings, which provide contextual and
personalized customer engagements
via the following principles:
n Omni-channel – Delivers consistent
business rules, views and data across
any human-powered or automated
channel. Widgets help abstract core BSS
capabilities for consistent consumption.
n Intelligent assisted interactions –
Delivers integrated tools for guided
interactions, personalization and
contextual experiences. Amdocs
leverages partners for capabilities such as n Best-in-classuser experience – Delivers
Natural Language Processing (NLP), linguistics relevant, personalized and easy experiences for
and speech recognition. agents and customers across any touch point.
n Multi-modal engagement – Expands
communication channels, enabling customers 2. Data intimacy
to engage the service provider using interaction Digital innovation relies on ensuring service
models such as video, social, visual IVR, bots providers can make informed, real-time decisions
and virtual agents, which are integrated with that are based on data and insights. As customers
Amdocs’ Omni-Channel Experience solution. traverse their customer journey they leave a
24
SPONSORED FEATURE
BSS evolution in the digital world
digital footprint, which needs to be combined
with their customer profile to truly understand
the customer. Leveraging insights derived from
customer demographics, service information,
usage and buying patterns, social and location
information, as well as online browsing, service
providers are better able to identify customer
intent to proactively engage the customer in real
time with a highly personalized and contextual
experience. In this way, data becomes the
differentiator for the digital service provider.
3. Service agility
Amdocs delivers three key elements to enable
service provider service and business agility:
n Single Master Enterprise Catalog spans
traditional, digital and partner offerings across
the enterprise, enabling service providers to
deliver new offerings, promotions and bundles
in hours. The business, partner and technical
catalog resides within the single catalog,
providing a rich “single source of truth” for all
channels.
n The integration of Amdocs widgets and
Amdocs Master Enterprise Catalog with Web
content management platforms, such as Adobe
Experience Manager (AEM).
n Fully virtualized, private and public cloud
deployment options provide the agility to meet
service provider business needs.
4. New revenue streams
As revenues from traditional services continue
to shrink, service providers need to diversify and
capture additional revenue streams to remain
relevant. Amdocs delivers a complete multi-
play solution that spans new digital economy
services such as video, gaming, entertainment,
OTT content and cloud services, as well as a
comprehensive IoT platform. Across multi-play
services Amdocs delivers key foundational
elements, including a common commerce
platform and a single catalog to enable the
bundling of traditional and digital services, as
well as to provide personalized promotions that
leverage data-driven insights. These services
rely on an extensive partner ecosystem and
the ability to onboard and manage partners
(advertisers, content developers and providers,
external developers and others) in an agile way.
Integrating BSS applications, such as Amdocs
Convergent Charging with Google’s YouTube app
enables service providers to monetize data usage
and deliver an enhanced user experience.
Delivering against the strategy
Evolving into a digital service provider requires
agility, an open and robust partner ecosystem and
a culture of continuous innovation. To realize this,
service providers need to be anchored into BSS that
are designed from the ground up and specific to
their industry. Horizontal applications that promise
25
faster time to launch might be appealing at first, but
eventually end up as fragmented business logic and
data islands across the enterprise, reducing the
service provider’s ability to innovate over time.
Amdocs’ offerings for the digital economy provide
end-to-end capabilities. With in-depth industry
experience, market leadership and comprehensive
implementation services, Amdocs provides agile
solutions that have the extensive breadth and
depth needed for rapid time to launch. Leveraging
insights and data, we help service providers
develop a complete customer profile to deliver
differentiating contextual and personalized
customer experiences across omni-channel and
multi-modal engagements. Innovative partnerships
and an open partner ecosystem give business
users the agility they need to offer flexible
traditional and multi-play bundles and promotions.
Summary:
A combination of forces – changes in customer
behavior, shrinking revenues from traditional
services, and a need to develop an open and
robust partner ecosystem is forcing service
providers to transform. The risk of not doing so,
is simply too great. Amdocs, a leader in BSS
provides comprehensive digital capabilities. We
are delivering transformation projects on a global
basis, helping our customers evolve. Learn more
on how you can accelerate your digital journey.
WWW.TMFORUM.ORG
BSS EVOLUTION
IN THE DIGITAL WORLD

TM FORUM TOOLKIT FOR DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION

AND BSS EVOLUTION
RESEARCH & PUBLICATIONS

eBOOKS

n Navigating the IoE roadmap of challenges:

Insights and opinions for digital business
n Building the Operations Center of the Future

INSIGHTS RESEARCH

n Orchestration: Get ready for the platform

AGILE & VIRTUALIZED OPEN & PARTNER EFFECTIVELY CUSTOMER CENTRICITY revolution
n Delivering end-to-end services in a hyper-

OSS/BSS Futures Architecture
This exploratory report provides initial steps
toward the required architecture for the Future
Mode of Operations, which incorporates
virtualization and software-defined networking
with current networking architectures.
Open APIs
TM Forum offers 18 Open APIs (with more
under development) to manage services end
to end and throughout their lifecycle in a
multi-partner environment.
Digital Services Toolkit
Customer Experience Management
Solution Suite
This set of tools consists of six components:
a guidebook, hundreds of metrics, a maturity
model, a lifecycle model, more than 40
implementation use cases and an ROI model.
connected world
QUICK INSIGHTS
n DigitalTransformation: So hard, so
necessary – so here’s what to do
n Agile operations: Moving toward the

Transformation of NetOps to DevOps
This report is a guide for communications and
digital service providers detailing what DevOps
is and how it can apply to network operations.
TM Forum Security Management Model
This report provides guidance concerning
architecture, processes, information and data
models, applications, interfaces, and testing to
meet the expanded responsibilities for security
management among all stakeholders in a
digital ecosystem.
Currently under development, this toolkit will
help companies rapidly address business
problems using a collection of interlinked
assets based on Frameworx.
Online B2B2X Step-by-Step Partnering
Guide
This guide explains the five stages required
to build a partner relationship. Each stage
provides key concepts, strategy and
approach, worksheets, examples and exit
criteria to enable streamlined and repeatable
implementation.
Big Data Analytics Solution Suite Operations Center of the Future
This set of tools includes a big data reference
model, a guidebook containing 65 use cases HOW-TO GUIDES
and 1700+ pre-defined metrics.
n Becoming a customer-centric business
360 Degree View of a Customer n Transforming to a digital business
This guidebook offer a 360-degree view of a
customer and explains how to put customers
at the center of considerations and actions. 

26
 BSS EVOLUTION
COLLABORATIVE R&D MAKES IN THE DIGITAL WORLD

DIGITAL BUSINESS REAL WITH

FRAMEWORX 16
The latest version of the blueprint for digital business success, TM Forum Frameworx™ 16,
contains new toolkits, best practices, guides and reports to empower companies across
multiple industries with actionable information to thrive in the digital economy. The Forum’s
diverse global membership, which includes more than 90 percent of the world’s largest
service providers, can make use of them immediately.

Since February 2016, hundreds of individuals n continued development of the complete

from a diverse range of member companies
have worked in TM Forum’s unique
collaborative environment, in ten distinct
projects, to deliver new features in Frameworx
16. The projects were all within the context
of the Forum’s strategic programs: Agile
Business & IT, Open Digital and the Internet of
Everything, Customer Centricity, and Security &
Privacy.
Agile Business & IT
This program helps enterprises continuously
optimize their IT and business operations. One
of the key projects in this program is Zero-touch
Orchestration, Operations and Management
(ZOOM). New features in Frameworx 16
include:
n evolvingthe Business Process Framework
and Application Framework through Catalyst
projects to support DevOps methodologies;
commercial lifecycle of virtualized resources
including procurement, as was showcased
recently in the NFV Ecosystem Enabler:
A well-enabled VNF Package Catalyst.
n extending the Information Framework to
support the new concepts required for
network functions virtualization (NFV) and
software-defined networking (SDN);
n working with other standards-development
organization and open-source groups to
develop a common network resource model;
n publication of the first draft of an end-to-end
orchestration architecture; and
n publication of a study of five Catalyst
projects that have proven various aspects of
automation and which collectively provide a
complete model architecture.
Customer Centricity
This program focuses on development of
the Forum’s extensive library of customer
experience management (CEM) assets, metrics
and best practices for big data analytics. Key
features for Frameworx 16 include:
n enhancement of the Omnichannel Guidebook
with a fully functional omnichannel
architecture;
n 12 new CEM use cases, which expand the
library to 40 business scenarios for service
providers to improve customer experience;
n more than 400 new metrics for managing
virtual CPE and networks, SLAs, business
process and more; and
n a new Data Governance best practice, along
with a roadmap for how to achieve a high
level of maturity in this area.

27

Open Digital and the Internet of Everything
This program helps service providers,
enterprises and their suppliers succeed in the
digital world by making it easier to create,
build and operate complex innovative services.
The goal of the program is to enable an open
digital ecosystem where new services can be
delivered quickly, easily and securely using a
wide range of business models and partners.
Additions in Frameworx 16 include:
n a fascinating new white paper called
Navigating the IoE Roadmap of Challenges,
which catalogs the common challenges
encountered across multiple industry
sectors, provides insights and options,
and maps the challenges to existing best
practices to help translate challenges into
actionable steps;
n a new technical report, Building and Enabling
a Digital Payment Ecosystem, which helps
communications service providers and
other stakeholders understand business
requirements, challenges and opportunities,
and take advantage of existing TM Forum
assets; and
n an updated B2B2X Partnering Step by
Step Guide, which walks through the key
concepts of a partnership lifecycle and the
five stages to building a partner relationship;
and
n anupdated Business Scenario Template,
which provides a consistent structure to
effectively communicate to a business and
technical audience about Catalyst projects
and member use cases.
Open APIs
TM Forum offers 18 Open APIs (with more
under development) to manage services end
to end and throughout their lifecycle in a multi-
partner environment. Enhancements include:
n a new Onboarding API, which enables rapid
onboarding of partners and helps rapid mash-
up of new products. Combined with existing
capabilities such as SLA Management and
Billing APIs, it enables revenue sharing
across complex ecosystems;
n a new Privacy API enables service providers
(of any kind) to ensure alignment with
new European Union privacy requirements
scheduled to go into effect next year;
n a new crowdsourcing API template to
simplify the process for organizations to
submit full new APIs to the suite of
TM Forum REST based APIs; and
n MEF Lifecycle Service Orchestration
Reference Architecture mapping to TM
Forum APIs, which ensures alignment on
the configuration and activation capabilities
across different standards organizations and
in this instance for ease of management of
Ethernet services.
28
BSS EVOLUTION
Security & Privacy IN THE DIGITAL WORLD
This program, which underpins all others,
aims to bring security and privacy to the
forefront of organizational thinking. With
the EU Parliament’s recent approval of the
European General Data Protection Regulation
(GDPR), it is timely that the latest version of
the Privacy Management Technical Report now
includes a ‘dashboard template’ and API that
will make compliance easier. As the GDPR
implementation process is refined over the next
2 years, we will be engaging with the EU to
further develop these tools.
Revenue Management
The drive in this program is to improve existing
tools and models and help companies be more
effective and profitable. Additions in Frameworx
16 include:
n a new Revenue Assurance Survey Report
provides the latest insights and case studies
from BT and Deutsche Telecom groups.
n a Fraud Management Survey Report that
assesses how fraud management practice
is being implemented and includes an
enhanced maturity model; and
n Phase II of the Charging and Billing
Guide, which highlights the impacts and
opportunities provided by NFV and SDN.
 For more about the Forum’s work on agile transformation, including
how to get involved, Barry Graham, Senior Director, Agile Business & IT
program, TM Forum via bagraham@tmforum.org