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Case Study Handbook 2017: Moving toward end-to-end digitalization

06 Dec 2016
Case Study Handbook 2017: Moving toward end-to-end digitalization

Case Study Handbook 2017: Moving toward end-to-end digitalization

Many communications service providers are making the leap to become digital businesses, as the latest edition of TM Forum’s Case Study Handbook illustrates. The Case Study Handbook is our annual collection of real-life success stories from service providers all over the world. One of the most dramatic examples of transformation in this year’s edition is Telefónica. The company is using TM Forum Frameworx in a massive effort aimed at digitalizing its operating businesses in 15 countries. Telefónica knows it can no longer compete in the digital world without taking steps to modernize the network, business processes and operational and business support systems.

“We have chosen to compete in this aggressive telco market and not become a commodity, but to be able to compete, we need to transform Telefónica into a digital telco that provides the best customer experience,” says Phil Jordan, Global CIO. “To do so, we need to change the way we operate; the products and services and how we offer them; the information and insights of our customers; and finally, the way we interact with them. This necessity is more and more urgent – we cannot afford the risk of being left behind. This is not an option.”

We take a look at Telefónica’s overall goals for transformation and highlight progress so far at Telefónica Argentina, the first operating business to put the plan into action. The idea is to adopt out-of-the-box solutions in all the operating businesses and minimize customization. The results so far are encouraging: Across the businesses, Telefónica has been able to eliminate 33 percent of all IT applications, 20 data centers and more than 6,200 physical servers.

The promise of platforms

Still, this crucial simplification isn’t Telefónica’s end goal. The real promise lies in achieving end-to-end digitalization and being able to operate as a platform provider. This is a goal for many of the operators featured in the pages of the handbook. Telefónica’s UK operating business, 02, offers an excellent example of how to deliver a platform-based service rapidly. O2 used TM Forum’s Open Digital Ecosystem, in particular the B2B2X Partnering Guide, the Digital Services Reference Architecture (DSRA) and Open REST-based Application Program Interfaces (APIs), to build and offer its O2 Drive service, which is provided in conjunction with insurance brokers and offers customers rewards for safe driving. The O2 Drive platform is hosted on Amazon Web Services, which allowed O2 to get it up and running in just six months.

“We’re the first platform in O2 to build with an elastic model,” says Stephen Devereux, Head of Digital Products, Innovation & Insight, Telefónica UK. “We know we can scale very quickly, practically on demand. As a result we are now looking to move many of our other services to AWS, which for a telco is a major shift.”

BT’s Cloud of Clouds is another good example of a company leveraging the Forum’s work to build digital ecosystems. The company developed some of the core technology for its Cloud of Clouds platform through a series of joint, accelerated R&D Catalyst projects, which act as proofs of concept. This case study shows why choosing products certified as conforming with Frameworx is so important, and how an ecosystem of ecosystems benefits from the Forum’s B2B2X partnership work, which BT contributed originally and others developed. This is now in use all over the world, in more than 200 commercial deployments, including the smart city of Milton Keynes.

Improving customer centricity

The handbook offers many more examples of how companies worldwide are using TM Forum assets to improve their businesses and customer experience:

  • Ultrafast Fibre’s rollout was greatly speeded up by using Frameworx and the Forum’s Open APIs – and the company has improved its Net Promoter Score (NPS) by 71 points.
  • KPN improved NPS by 13 points for its mobile services by combining the Business Process Framework with its own customer journeys during a big transformation project.
  • The Philippines’ Globe Telecom transformed by building a new enterprise architecture, based on TOGAF and leveraging Frameworx. It achieved “cost avoidance” of at least $1 million.
  • In Singapore, MyRepublic leveraged the Business Process Framework with principles from the ZOOM initiative (for zero-touch orchestration and management) and Open APIs to automate an omnichannel order-to-cash processes, achieving customer satisfaction improvement of 94 percent.
  • VIVO in Brazil reduced costs by $700,000 in three months, largely by improving its processes.
  • Ooredoo in Myanmar chose a Frameworx-conformant solution to rapidly deploy an entire national mobile network ‘out of the box’. As a result, it was serving 5 million mobile customers within three months in this green-field market.
  • Frameworx and the Forum’s omnichannel best practices enabled Liberty Global to rapidly deploy 20 digital services in ten European markets. In every subsequent country where services have been launched, the rollout has happened within two to three months, with 75 percent total effort reusability. A traditional approach would have yielded less than 30 percent reusability.
  • A quad-play provider in the Caribbean moved from siloed systems to a single platform for service activation using a solution certified by TM Forum as conforming to Frameworx and is now able to get to market with new services three times faster.
“No matter how different the companies and the customers they serve appear to be, all the companies featured in these pages have two things in common: They’re seeking to transform their business operations to underpin new paths to growth, and they’re basing that transformation on TM Forum toolkits, frameworks and Collaborative R&D to get the job done,” TM Forum Deputy CEO Nik Willetts explains in the handbook’s foreword. “By taking this approach, these companies have leveraged existing and proven best practices, based on millions of hours of work by our international network of member professionals.”

The Case Study Handbook is free for everyone to download. We hope you enjoy reading the inspiring stories of success, and as always, we welcome your comments and ideas for new case studies. If you would like to submit a case study for consideration, please contact me directly. Download TM Forum’s Case Study Handbook 2017, now, free and get inspired!