M The telecom business can be looked at from different angles. Let us first refer to the consid- erable work of the TeleManagement Forum (TM Forum) www.tmforum.org, a non-profit global organization that provides leadership, strategic guidance and practical solutions to improve the management and operation of information and communications services. Among about 400 member companies are incumbent and new-entrant service providers, computing and network equipment suppliers, software solution suppliers and customers of communications services. The TM Forum provides management tools for smoothly running the operational work towards profitability in a company. The telecom operations are structured into maps with interfaces towards end user and network. One of the goals is a management methodology - a system of principles and procedures applied to the operation of telecom networks. Roughly the TM overall view development started with ITU-T Recommendation M.3000 in 1985 with its four-layer structure according to Figure 4.4. The concept presented was called the Telecommunications Network, TMN (for further studies see for example Understanding Telecommunications, Book 1, chapter 8 on network management). The TM Forum developed the four-layer TMN structure into a more detailed map during 1995-98, which was called the telecom operations map (TOM). The TOM horizontals correspond with the TMN layers. TOM is a reference map of an idealized organization. In TOM the end-user operational interface is denoted 'FAB': Understanding Changing Telecommunications - Building a Successful Telecom Business Business management Service management Network management Element management Figure 4.4 The TM Forum four-layer structure Customer Customer interface management process Order Problem Customer QoS Sales Invoicing handling handling management and collections Customer care processes Service planning and Service Service problem Service quality Rating and development configuration management management discounting Service development and opera