 grouping supports the FAB processes. In general, the operations support and readiness processes are concerned with activities that are "more" OSS for Telecom Networks asynchronous than those in FAB. These processes are less concerned with individ- ual customers and services while being more concerned with groups. They reflect a need in some enterprises to divide their processes between customer-facing oper- ations and real-time FAB operations. In addition, other operations processes which act as a "second line" in carrying out the operational tasks. Not all enterprises will choose to employ this split or to position the division in the same place. In applying the eTOM in particular scenarios, the operations support and readiness processes may be merged with the FAB processes for day-to-day operation. The separation remains acknowledged to reflect a real-world division that is present or emerging in many enterprises. Operations support and readiness processes can be important for e-business opportunities and for customer self-management. The benefits of some aspects of customer self-management are discussed in Chapter 6. 9.3.2 OPS Horizontal Process Groupings The OPS process area of the eTOM has four functional process groupings that sup- port the operations processes discussed above and manage operations to support customer, service, resource and supplier/partner interactions (see Figure 9.4). The TOM uses the ITU-T TMN logical business, service and network layers to organise Customer Operations Customer Relationship Management Service Management & Operations Resource Management & Operations (Application, Computing and Network) Supplier/Partner Relationship Management Figure 9.4 eTOM OPS functional process groupings. 9 Telemanagement Forum: TOM the core business processes. This facilitated mapping the management functions defined in TMN to the TOM processes. Since eTOM is an evolution of TOM, and since the TMN layering approach does not cease to be relevant simply because we have placed the service provider in a