Creating a playbook to help CSPs seize the ecosystem opportunity

TM Forum has developed many standards in its long history, which have been co-created by members for its members to use freely. However, it is sometimes hard for communications service providers (CSPs) to grasp how a static concept like a standard can be translated into creating new business models and opportunities working with an ecosystem.

This is what the Catalyst, Ecosystems: From opportunity to capability – A playbook approach for CSPs, wanted to address. It set out to showcase the role TM Forum’s Business Architecture Capabilities can play in defining new business models and ecosystem roles for CSPs. As Mr. Mohammad A. Aljlayl, General Manager, Business Architecture at stc, comments, “The goal is to develop a series of blueprints that map the key business capabilities of the Forum’s assets so that Forum members can accelerate the definition and deployment of new services in a digital ecosystem. This linking of business capabilities and new services must be the aim of all forward-thinking CSPs”.

Those assets include Frameworx elements and processes, as well as the Open Digital Architecture and CurateFX, developed by Trid3nt, which is a software as a service tool designed to help different stakeholders manage digital transformation and digital ecosystem projects. It is championed by stc, supported by participants CSG, IBM, Tata Consultancy Services, Tr3dent and ZIRA. Ehtisham Rao, Ecosystem Architect at stc, and leader of the Catalyst project says, “The idea is to keep it very simple and show a lot of the Forum’s assets and frameworks in different contexts."

Shifting ecosystems

The first part of the playbook is dedicated to visualizing and defining what a digital ecosystem is with a high level look at the opportunity. The second part concerns testing the ‘value hypotheses’ of the opportunity: Rao explains, “In the early days, it was just about exchanges or marketplaces. Now we're talking about distinct characteristics. They are not linear or strategic partnerships but independent contributors where one dominant party provides some kind of a platform on which many parties converge to create value. This generates compound growth rather than the linear growth of traditional partnerships.”

He says, “For example, CSPs could look at being an outside-in facilitator or one of the players, but successful ecosystems are not built by acquiring companies or a firm becoming a supplier to a CSP or a CSP becoming a supplier to them. Successful platform-based business models are co-created as ways of reaching markets faster and serving broader needs.”

He adds, “The ‘broader need’ part is important. Nobody knows what customers want anymore because it changes so fast, which means no single organization can serve a customer base. Success depends on having a diverse set of services coming into the platform that can be combined in different ways by the customers. It’s that being able to combine that will win and sometimes it is winner takes all in a market.”

Focus on the how

The third part of the playbook helps CSPs identify the capabilities they need for various opportunities. Put another way, it’s about breaking the opportunity down into the enabling capabilities. Rao explains, “There is considerable focus on the how, but that was because we wanted to cover the use a lot of TM Forum’s standards around ecosystem capabilities so it is wide ranging.”

He continues, “Business architecture is one of the hot areas even for the big operators in the telecom industry right now – it's right, front and center – but we expect the playbook to be especially useful as a reference guide to many smaller CSPs that cannot afford an army of enterprise architects. They need practitioners to have simpler guides and more practical tools to help them put TM Forum assets into practice, and to know how to go about it with fewer resources. “It is not intended to be a cast in stone architecture, just how to use the standards together in different scenarios to achieve specific, model-based business outcomes.”

Template for success

For the team’s video demonstration in the Catalyst Digital Showcase, it created a template for putting the book to practical use. It is now in the process of collecting diverse case studies of some major ecosystems. The plan is to have, in video form at least, collaborative tear-downs exercises of those ecosystems to understand what capabilities are required in which role by October and the next Catalyst Digital Showcase. The team itself learned a big lesson as it progressed the project. Rao says, “Although we wanted to look beyond the traditional approaches, we started out doing something called value streams which we realized are typical of a traditional linear business architecture, but we progressed to growth loops because growth has to be your guide here.

“That’s part of what you need, to keep an open mind then you’ll discover a lot of things rather than just sticking to a plan because realizing the plan is all about adjusting.”