DTW24-Ignite: TM Forum unveils Excellence Award winners

TM Forum presented Excellence Awards in six categories Tuesday to close the first day of DTW24-Ignite in Copenhagen. The winners were selected from more than 200 submissions from 69 companies.

This year’s competition drew many high-quality and diverse entries, making the selection of winners difficult for the 35 independent industry experts who judged the contest. Indeed, in addition to naming six winners, they selected two other entries for high commendation. To choose the winners, judges first narrowed the field to 39 finalists in three rounds of judging.

“This year, TM Forum’s Excellence Awards honor exceptional initiatives driving efficiency, profitability and growth. As members embrace composable IT, Open Digital Architecture (ODA), AI, Customer Experience and autonomous networks the entries have been more competitive than ever, making them a challenge to judge,” said Camille Mendler, Chief Analyst at Omdia and Head External Judge.

And the winners are…

Excellence in ODA Implementation: Bell Canada

Customer 360 with ODA

Bell Canada, one of six finalists in this category, is using the Open Digital Architecture and Open APIs, plus learnings from the TM Forum Catalyst Program, to address challenges related to the integration of legacy systems and customer data in its B2B business. Bell Canada has been working with Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Google Cloud to create an AI-enabled, cloud-native runtime environment that is compliant with the ODA reference Canvas. The company is also using 12 Open APIs, becoming the first company to put the Customer360 Management Open API into production and an early adopter of the AI for API Management Open API.

In less than two years, Bell Canada’s ODA transformation has delivered a connected customer experience and reduced its order fallout ratio by nearly 20%. In addition, customer adoption of self-service tools has grown substantially, and agent productivity has increased by 30%.

Excellence in Customer Experience: Netcracker & Virgin Media O2

A unified 360-degree customer view across channels, resulting in increased NPS

UK-based Virgin Media O2 and Netcracker have been recognized for their ambitious digital transformation initiative to unify multiple businesses under one modernized BSS platform. O2 and Netcracker used 19 Open APIs to deliver the project within one year, reducing time to market for new services and creating a unified 360-degree view of the customer across all channels. As a result, O2 has realized an increase in net promoter score (NPS).

Excellence in Innovation for People & Planet: China Mobile and Huawei

A green network and ocean care to create a clean, safe environment and well-being for the people of Jiangsu

Judges selected China Mobile and Huawei's “Green Network and Ocean Care” project for its pioneering efforts to integrate 5G, AI and marine IoT technologies, demonstrating impactful benefits for marine workers, the environment and broader societal goals. The solution, which was built using TM Forum’s AIOps Framework and Ecosystem Open APIs, has created a connected system for ship protection, clean oceans, and enhanced well-being for fishermen and marine workers.

Excellence in Autonomous Networks: Telstra

Knowledge graph and telco ontology innovation

As part of its ongoing digital transformation, Australia’s Telstra has developed an in-house knowledge graph to redefine service management through autonomous network operations. A knowledge graph connects structured and unstructured data to improve how intelligence can be applied to it. This helps in making predictions and decisions about how the network behaves. In this case, Telstra’s knowledge graph changes how the company models networks and service operations, eliminating reliance on static workflows.

Telstra’s solution is fully built on TM Forum’s Network-as-a-Service (NaaS) and ODA, and serves as the foundation for the company’s journey towards a Level 5 autonomous networks. As defined by TM Forum, Level 5 networks rely on almost no human interaction.

Excellence in AI Innovation: Nokia and China Mobile

GenAI for autonomous network operations

China Mobile and Nokia have been honored for their generative AI (GenAI) solution in autonomous network operations. The team is leveraging the LangChain framework, an open source framework for building applications based on large language models (LLMs), together with TM Forum’s Autonomous Network Operations and Business Process Framework to localize knowledge centers for diverse use cases.

By embedding AI into redesigned processes and business functions, China Mobile is accelerating, de-risking and reducing the costs of applying AI. The solution is also helping the company reduce OpEx and drive growth.

Excellence in Network Monetization: etisalat by e& and Novatiq

Data-driven insights enhancing customer experience and driving growth through internal and external monetization

etisalat by e&, a service provider operating in the United Arab Emirates, partnered with Novatiq to introduce a pioneering Privacy-Centric Data Monetization solution using TM Forum’s Data Governance Framework. The initiative leverages data and AI to unlock new revenue streams, highlighting an innovative use of network capabilities to derive data-driven insights. Another benefit of the solution is significantly enhanced customer experience.

Honorable mention

Because TM Forum received so many high-quality entries this year, judges selected the following entries for Highly Commended recognition:

Excellence in Customer Experience: Ericsson & Celcomdigi

Innovative, predictive and proactive approach to service differentiation

Malaysia’s CelcomDigi deployed Ericsson’s Customer Experience Insights, which has been developed using TM Forum’s Customer Experience Maturity Model. The solution correlates feedback from CelcomDigi’s subscribers with both network and non-network data to uncover major factors driving customer satisfaction.

Excellence in Autonomous Networks: IOH (Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison) & Huawei

IOH autonomous transformation

IOH, an Indonesian telecommunications operator, collaborated with Huawei on its autonomous operations transformation. IOH has used TM Forum’s Autonomous Operation Maturity Model (AOMM) to develop a new digital operation framework that supports all its operations and maintenance scenarios, resulting in improved availability and customer experience.

“These awards recognize the success of members in collaborating to deliver stand-out products and services through the application of new technologies and TM Forum frameworks and standards,” said TM Forum CEO Nik Willetts. “The winning entries exemplify the work of our members in tackling some of the industry’s most pressing challenges and provide a prescription for growth by demonstrating real-world impact.”

View the complete list of this year’s finalists