Welcome to the New Inside BSS!
Relaunch focuses on the changing face of the Communications industry.
By Alex Leslie, Director of BSS, TM Forum

Our industry is changing. In a few years’ time, it will look very different, but we are not sure exactly how. The investments that companies are now making to be ready for this unknown future are speculative, and the watchword is flexibility. It is a time of uncertainty for many industries trying to get closer to its customers, trying to find ways to support them better as they, in turn, demand more and more from suppliers. Traditional business models are falling by the wayside and new businesses are emerging, but they are not tried or tested, and therefore provide even more uncertainty.

In this time of great change and upheaval, strong leadership is needed. The associations that support the industry are also changing. As an example, the GBA is now part of TM Forum and is providing a focus and energy not just around Billing but the whole of BSS.

To reflect this, its Billing publications are also changing.

Beginning with this issue, Inside Billing is now Inside BSS, and the next issue of print-based The Billing Journal will be branded The BSS Journal. This will be published in January and will be distributed at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

The format of Inside BSS will remain largely the same as Inside Billing – with news, views and opinions from Service Providers and others on the current challenges and current focus of the market, as well as articles and insights that we hope will encourage discussion and thought about a range of subjects that impact BSS.

I hope you continue to enjoy it.

Kind regards,

Alex Leslie
Director of BSS, TM Forum


Back to top


GBA Map and eTOM Integration: Bringing a Strong BSS Presence to TM Forum
First results to be seen at Management World 2008 in Nice.

Now that the GBA is part of TM Forum, its GBA Map is getting a makeover that will reflect the evolution to next-generation services and the growing importance of the partnerships that are emerging as the key method of success in this next-generation environment.

When GBA first developed its map of the billing process and related Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), the emphasis was mostly on a post-paid environment. But now alongside the addition of Partner Relationship Management (PRM) and revenue management elements, the GBA Map is undergoing a transformation that will include integration with TM Forum’s eTOM.

“This work is bringing a strong BSS view to the current TM Forum work area,” says Graham Carey, director of industry solutions at Oracle Communications Global Business Unit and president of the GBA. “It will enable billing managers and CIOs from both telcos and other organizations such as media, entertainment and publishing companies to understand fully where ‘billing’ fits and its relationship with the other business processes as defined within eTOM.”

In fact, the GBA Map was developed using eTOM concepts so that ultimately it would be able to synchronize with the eTOM environment. This integration is a major focus going forward for the combined TM Forum/GBA organization.

“GBA has deep expertise and insight into billing-related issues and has already carried out analysis that adds process insight into the material in eTOM that relates to billing,” says Mike Kelly, Senior Program Manager at TM Forum. “And the eTOM work provides an enterprise-wide context for the billing perspective as well as offering ready-made process content in areas to which the GBA work needs to link or refer to.”

Specifically, much of the GBA work is already directly compatible with eTOM and has already been linked in specific areas such as Fulfillment,” Kelly says. “There are some areas where the more detailed analysis carried out by the GBA has thrown up new process content, and we are currently looking to use this to enhance eTOM’s process in relevant areas. We do not currently see any areas where there is fundamental incompatibility or conflict.”

According to Carey, although this integration work is an ongoing process, we can expect to see the first results by the time of Management World 2008, which takes place from May 18-22 in Nice, France.


Back to Top


OSS / BSS Integrated Business Intelligence
Telco data has to go to the next level to be truly customer-centric.

By Martin Morgan, Teradata Corp.

Traditionally, network information was used by network engineers and operations, and business data was used separately by marketing, finance and sales. Also, phone companies sold dial tone. This traditional model is now a distant memory. More services, more complexity, more partnerships, increased focus on the need to be truly customer-centric are all drivers in today’s market.

With the introduction of multi-play convergence, telcos now have more data than ever before from a wide range of BSS source systems. Getting all this divergent data into a single repository to enable convergent business intelligence is becoming the norm for leading telcos. The opportunity is now to take convergent business intelligence to the next level and integrate network OSS data with BSS data for all networks and service. This will be required in order to become truly customer-centric, as customers will use voice, data and content services over circuit-switched and IP networks.

Understanding the customer’s experience for all services, over all networks, is key. Adding relevant information, such as customer value, service level agreement (SLA) performance and churn score to customer experience records provides a deeper level of understanding of the customer and enables faster responses to situations. This intelligence can only be sourced from network OSS and BSS systems. Bringing this data together, turning it into information and presenting it to the end user as business intelligence that enables the telcos to make faster and better decisions is the role of the enterprise data warehouse (EDW), which provides the intelligence layer for all services, for all networks, for all customers to give a single view of the truth, particularly as related to customer experience.