Fulfillment at the heart of dynamic orchestration
The difference between satisfaction and dissatisfaction often hinges on the fulfillment process, and as the network evolves with 5G and becomes cloud native fulfillment must suddenly be imbued with the ability to orchestrate across different domains and communicate with multi-party systems.
18 Nov 2020
Fulfillment at the heart of dynamic orchestration
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It is not unreasonable to think of fulfillment as a standalone process. Fulfillment is the specific action executed to take a product or service from inventory and put it into the hands of the customer. It is fulfilling the customer’s need and completing the transaction. What could be more straightforward?
This view of fulfillment would be reasonable, but it would be wrong.
Unlike the cheese from “The Farmer in the Dell,” fulfillment does not stand alone. It doesn’t just fulfill customer needs; it completes the intent of all the processes leading up to the customer making the decision to buy (outreach, customer intelligence, targeted marketing, online portals and product catalogs) and it sets up all the processes that come after to assure customer satisfaction and quality. It also updates all the upstream and downstream processes such as inventory, billing and customer profiles. In other words, fulfillment is the main cog in the wheels of both the digital buying experience and the brick-and-mortar retail experience.
It is also key to the customer experience—for better or worse. Except for instances where customers feel they were given bad or incomplete information (deception) about a product or service during the sales process – which really gets their goat – they tend otherwise to be most dissatisfied with slow service (making them wait to be served) and not getting products delivered on time as promised. So, the difference between satisfaction and dissatisfaction often hinges on the fulfillment process. Fulfillment accuracy, in the eyes of the customer, is also responsible for maintaining an optimal time to revenue.
Increasingly fulfillment and assurance are being intertwined and becoming part of the larger service and network orchestration process, or dynamic orchestration – ensuring the agreed intent of the customer service is maintained over its lifecycle. As the network evolves with 5G and becomes cloud native or at least interconnects with cloud-native networks, and services become more ecosystem-centric, fulfillment must suddenly be imbued with the ability to orchestrate across different domains and communicate with multi-party systems.
This means fulfillment and the overarching orchestration process will become increasingly dependent on modernized or re-imagined operations support systems (OSS) supported by open APIs. Jason Rutherford, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Oracle Communications and Applications, said recently that by adopting the TM Forum Open Digital Architecture and Open APIs across the Oracle Communications applications portfolio, the company can provide operators with the business and IT agility necessary to compete in fast-changing markets
Together, a modernized OSS and Open APIs must be able to support traditional as well as next-generation networks and solutions. They also must enable service orchestration, including the fulfillment of traditional services and next-generation cloud-based services, and support the bundling of services from partners while orchestrating the end-to-end customer request across their own and partner systems. That is a tall order for an industry that has yet to flawlessly execute such action within its own domain.
With end-to-end services that might span multiple domains, one of those domains will be the customer premises, a common configuration in early multi-access edge computing (MEC) deployments. But to build and orchestrate services at the edge, operators need to understand the network edge needs of enterprises in different vertical industries.
The graphic below shows what enterprise verticals various CSPs hope to target.
This view of fulfillment would be reasonable, but it would be wrong.
Unlike the cheese from “The Farmer in the Dell,” fulfillment does not stand alone. It doesn’t just fulfill customer needs; it completes the intent of all the processes leading up to the customer making the decision to buy (outreach, customer intelligence, targeted marketing, online portals and product catalogs) and it sets up all the processes that come after to assure customer satisfaction and quality. It also updates all the upstream and downstream processes such as inventory, billing and customer profiles. In other words, fulfillment is the main cog in the wheels of both the digital buying experience and the brick-and-mortar retail experience.
It is also key to the customer experience—for better or worse. Except for instances where customers feel they were given bad or incomplete information (deception) about a product or service during the sales process – which really gets their goat – they tend otherwise to be most dissatisfied with slow service (making them wait to be served) and not getting products delivered on time as promised. So, the difference between satisfaction and dissatisfaction often hinges on the fulfillment process. Fulfillment accuracy, in the eyes of the customer, is also responsible for maintaining an optimal time to revenue.
The challenge to successful fulfillment is that the networks and services it supports are becoming increasingly intelligent, and the systems it interacts with up and down stream are increasingly intelligence-based, meaning they are relying on greater volumes of more disparate data at higher and higher speeds with which to make decisions and take actions.
Increasingly fulfillment and assurance are being intertwined and becoming part of the larger service and network orchestration process, or dynamic orchestration – ensuring the agreed intent of the customer service is maintained over its lifecycle. As the network evolves with 5G and becomes cloud native or at least interconnects with cloud-native networks, and services become more ecosystem-centric, fulfillment must suddenly be imbued with the ability to orchestrate across different domains and communicate with multi-party systems.
This means fulfillment and the overarching orchestration process will become increasingly dependent on modernized or re-imagined operations support systems (OSS) supported by open APIs. Jason Rutherford, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Oracle Communications and Applications, said recently that by adopting the TM Forum Open Digital Architecture and Open APIs across the Oracle Communications applications portfolio, the company can provide operators with the business and IT agility necessary to compete in fast-changing markets
“By leveraging Open APIs as the glue to integrate with a variety of ICT solutions from industrial partners worldwide, Chunghwa Telecom is able to accelerate the development of an innovative and thriving 5G industry chain and ecosystem,” added Heychyi Young, Vice President, Chunghwa Telecom Labs.
Together, a modernized OSS and Open APIs must be able to support traditional as well as next-generation networks and solutions. They also must enable service orchestration, including the fulfillment of traditional services and next-generation cloud-based services, and support the bundling of services from partners while orchestrating the end-to-end customer request across their own and partner systems. That is a tall order for an industry that has yet to flawlessly execute such action within its own domain.
With end-to-end services that might span multiple domains, one of those domains will be the customer premises, a common configuration in early multi-access edge computing (MEC) deployments. But to build and orchestrate services at the edge, operators need to understand the network edge needs of enterprises in different vertical industries.
“5G opens up a lot of possibilities,” said Leonard Sheahan, Senior Director of Product Marketing at Oracle Communications Applications, “Opportunities previously not possible or non-viable may now become eminently feasible. For service providers to offer compelling 5G / MEC based communications solutions to such industry verticals, they need a deep industry expertise and relationships in order to develop differentiated propositions with industry specific appeal, a subject explored in ‘The Aviator’, a recent TMF catalyst.”
The graphic below shows what enterprise verticals various CSPs hope to target.
CSPs are unlikely to be successful if they simply offer generic enterprise services to these customers. Each vertical may have unique requirements and some enterprises within each vertical may have very specific needs. As can be seen above, some service providers may elect to address a given industry with a fully verticalized solution by partnering with, or acquiring, industry players to complete the solution proposition. However, to be relevant for all industries, service providers need to tailor their network propositions to the industry vertical needs even as those requirements are only still emerging in some cases. This requires a dynamic approach to fulfillment and orchestration in general – one that can accommodate a wide variety of network capabilities based on geographic coverage, bandwidth, quality of service, etc.
With this in place, the service provider may then elect to expose the appropriate degree of configurability to their enterprise customers in each vertical industry confident they can quickly deploy the desired network capability.
An open architecture with open APIs is essential to orchestrating industry vertical applications and underlying network capability in ways that result in a compelling, differentiated and quality customer experience. Moreover, service providers need to deliver such applications and services from higher up in the value chain to avoid being boxed out of the lion’s share of revenue from industry verticals. Take for example how revenue sharing might play out in the case of edge computing services:
With this in place, the service provider may then elect to expose the appropriate degree of configurability to their enterprise customers in each vertical industry confident they can quickly deploy the desired network capability.
An open architecture with open APIs is essential to orchestrating industry vertical applications and underlying network capability in ways that result in a compelling, differentiated and quality customer experience. Moreover, service providers need to deliver such applications and services from higher up in the value chain to avoid being boxed out of the lion’s share of revenue from industry verticals. Take for example how revenue sharing might play out in the case of edge computing services:
As one can see, the money is not in the network. It is in the apps and services.
To realize this, service providers need a modernized OSS/BSS, an open digital architecture, Open APIs, a dynamic orchestration platform, and a new ecosystem mindset to deliver on all the potential unleashed by 5G.
To realize this, service providers need a modernized OSS/BSS, an open digital architecture, Open APIs, a dynamic orchestration platform, and a new ecosystem mindset to deliver on all the potential unleashed by 5G.
