the enterprise must focus on enabling and supporting the FAB processes. Hence the eTOM inte- grates FAB into the overall framework. In this chapter, we shall elucidate the com- ponents of FAB, which are: 1. fulfilment 2. assurance 3. billing 4. operations. 9 Telemanagement Forum: eTOM Customer Operations Operations Fulfilment Assurance Billing Support and Readiness Figure 9.3 eTOM OPS vertical process groupings. Fulfilment is responsible for providing customers with their requested products. It translates the customer's business or personal need into a solution which can be delivered using the specific products in the portfolio of the enterprise. This process informs the customers of the status of their purchase order and ensures timely delivery. Assurance is responsible for the execution of proactive and reactive maintenance activities to ensure that services provided to customers are continuously available and adhere to applicable SLAs. Assurance processes perform continuous resource status and performance monitoring to detect proactively possible failures. These processes collect and analyse performance data to identify potential problems and resolve them without impacting the customer. Assurance processes manage the SLAs and report service performance to the customer. Assurance processes absorb trouble reports from customers, keep customers informed of the status of reported problems and ensure restoration and repair. Billing is responsible for the production of timely and accurate bills, for providing pre-bill use information and billing to customers, for processing their payments and for performing payment collections. It also handles customer inquiries about bills, provides billing inquiry status and is responsible for resolving billing problems to the customer's satisfaction. This process also supports prepayment for services. In addition to these FAB process groupings, the OPS process area of the eTOM includes the fourth vertical process grouping of operations support and readiness - see Figure 9.3. This