My API Story: Digital infrastructure transformation with Open APIs

Tell us about yourself and your job?

I am passionate about driving digital transformation and business innovation through technology, with a focus on data to enable AI while maintaining high cyber resilience standards. With over 25 years of experience in insurance, investments, retail banking, and digital infrastructure, I now focus on transitioning from legacy to modern open architecture platforms to help our business scale and adapt with ease.

Why do you believe in TM Forum’s Open API program?

We believe in TM Forum’s Open API program because it empowers rapid innovation, facilitates deep business and technology integrations, and is a key differentiator in realizing Colt’s vision of becoming the digital infrastructure company of choice for leading businesses.

Previously, we adopted various industry standards for customer APIs. However, none achieved the widespread industry adoption of TM Forum’s Open APIs, which are not only embraced by leading CSPs, but by ISVs and SIs as well. TM Forum’s Open APIs are at the heart of zero-touch interoperability, enabling “extraordinary connections” with customers, suppliers, and partners in a global ecosystem.

What TM Forum Open APIs are most valuable to your company?

TM Forum’s Open APIs are integral to Colt’s strategic API journey. We have integrated several into our technology ecosystem and plan to adopt more, also exposing them to third parties, via the Colt API platform.

The most valuable APIs for our company at the moment are:

• TMF639 – Resource Inventory Management
• TMF621 – Trouble Ticket Management
• TMF655 – Change Management
• TMF685 – Resource Pool Management

Why did you choose to highlight these APIs?

At Colt, we are currently undergoing a major digital transformation program. In parallel, we are modernizing our digital channels, to provide best-in-class experience for our customers and internal users. The APIs mentioned above are key enablers for both focus areas. We believe that successful implementation of these APIs will pave the way for adopting more Open APIs and exposing them to third parties via the Colt API platform.

How do you use these APIs?

TMF639 (Resource Inventory Management) API empowers us to deliver enhanced customer experiences by providing automated number provisioning and management through APIs.

TMF621 (Trouble Ticket Management) allows our customers and partners to create tickets to report service problems; triggering Colt’s service assurance processes, resulting in faster resolution. The API also automates ticket creation in our fault monitoring platform, leading to proactive network monitoring.

TMF655 (Change Management) notifies customers of upcoming changes, such as scheduled maintenance, ensuring affected customers are informed of any impacts.

Using TMF685 (Resource Pool Management) allows us to integrate our resource inventory system with product vendors, who use Number (VLAN, VLAN Range/ IPSec) data as the basis for reservation of the entities from the resource pool.

How have you benefited from using these APIs?

Open API-driven automated processes have led to faster service delivery and proactive service monitoring for Colt customers, resulting in quicker revenue realization and enhanced customer experience.

Using TMF639, Colt can now handle customer requests for new numbers 24x7, leading to an exponential increase in API traffic, adding to our revenue. Customers also benefit from real-time tracking of order status and available resources through these APIs.

TMF655 has improved efficiency for our customers, by automating change request notifications, replacing the previous manual, time-consuming email process. This standardized template for change notifications streamlines the process for both Colt and its customers.

API-driven automation has freed resources from manual customer service tasks. We aim to shift more customers from portal-based to API-based ordering. Trouble Ticketing APIs have eliminated the need for manual ticket entry into Colt’s IT systems, allowing teams to focus on problem resolution.

Have you used them in conjunction with any other APIs?

We have used TM Forum APIs in conjunction with other APIs to enrich data. For example, we enhance service inventory data with customer premise addresses and correlate customer-facing information in our CRM system with network-facing information in legacy provisioning systems.