The TM Forum business benchmarking programme enables service providers to compare their businesses to best-in-class providers from around the world. Benchmarking is crucial as service providers undergo operational transformations, writes Tonia Graham






Business metrics framework: The business benchmarking team has created a new business metrics framework to visualize the multitude of business metrics surrounding revenue and margin, customer experience, and operational efficiency. posters of this framework will be available at Management World Americas in Orlando, Florida, 8-10 December 2009The benchmarking programme gathers quantitative metrics ranging from tactical to business performance data and conducts qualitative service provider surveys and reports on topics of current interest. Service providers contribute data anonymously and in return receive analyses of their performance relative to industry peers. Suppliers use the studies to keep abreast of service provider issues and can commission reports in areas of specific interest

Business performance sample graphics: An at-a-glance view allows executives to see quickly how their performance compares to industry benchmarks, while correlations provide insights and identify interactions between performance areas. Results are presented graphically for ease of use. Examples of standard Business Benchmarking graphs are:.

Established four years ago, the TM Forum business benchmarking programme is a unique programme that provides accurate and relevant comparative data that can be used as a tool for effective business decision-making. Today, service providers are carefully scrutinising their businesses so they not only weather the current economic times, but also emerge in a stronger position. The business benchmarking programme enables them to assess business health, reveal business problems, and prioritise improvement initiatives. In addition, the results provide valuable insights to suppliers.

Over 150 service providers from 20 countries around the world participate in the programme, including Telus, Bell, Sprint, AT&T, Oi, BT, Belgacom, T-Mobile, MTS, StarHub, Reliance, Telstra, China Telecom and Telecom New Zealand.

Using benchmarking, service providers can take a holistic view of their processes, operations, and systems, and track their business performance compared to best-in-class peers worldwide. Since performance is assessed at business and service levels, the results provide detailed insights that are actionable.

According to Klaus Martiny, vice president operations and continuous improvement at T-Mobile International, “T-Mobile is convinced that benchmarking is needed to find out where we stand in terms of performance, quality, and success in a challenging market. The TM Forum initiative is a great opportunity to do it in a professional way. The results from the TM Forum benchmarking provide key information for our decision process and next steps in a highly competitive market.”

The business benchmarking programme manages and delivers metric-based benchmarking studies, surveys on qualitative aspects of performance, and business intelligence reports. Approximately 12 studies or surveys take place in a typical year. All service provider data is contributed anonymously through a secure portal to a secure database. Service provider participation in the benchmarking programme is free of charge to TM Forum members that contribute benchmarking data to the programme.

Quantitative business benchmarking studies

The business benchmarking programme offers a wide range of quantitative business benchmarking studies. These include business performance benchmarking for broadband, mobile, high-speed business, and converged services, as well as revenue management benchmarking for billing performance and revenue assurance.

Service providers participate actively in study planning to align study metrics with their needs and market trends. The TM Forum then gathers quantitative benchmarking data ranging from tactical operations data, such as a percentage of unbilled revenue, to business-level performance information such as time to activate an international IP VPN service. Since the surveys are performed in a secure environment and the results used by the service providers to manage their businesses, the data entered are accurate and the benchmarking results highly representative.

Service providers receive reports that analyse the data they and others have provided. In addition, members can analyse data and correlations and filter data without attribution by company size or region by using the business benchmarking web portal.

Benchmarking studies in progress are mobile services for high growth markets, broadband services, csp transformation, billing performance, and revenue assurance performance.

Specialised benchmarking studies

The business benchmarking programme also offers group benchmarking, sales performance, and custom studies for targeted needs.

Group benchmarking studies allow service providers having multiple affiliates to measure business performance across their entire group. Group benchmarking reports analyse how the group’s overall business is performing compared to the industry and how each of its business entities compares to the group’s performance.

TM Forum’s business benchmarking programme has joined forces with Ceveysystems to provide members the opportunity to benchmark their sales organisations. Ceveysystems’ international sales performance index is a fee-based benchmarking study designed for software and hardware suppliers as well as service providers whose sales teams have 13-1,000 people. A study is open from now until the end of October 2009, with results available to participants in December.

Custom studies can also be commissioned to address topics of interest to individual service providers or suppliers.

Qualitative studies

While business benchmarks focus on numbers, the program also provides qualitative secure surveys, special studies, and business intelligence reports that explore ideas.

Secure surveys gather qualitative information about critical operational and performance topics, such as how service providers do a specific function or address certain issues. The combination of secure surveys and business benchmarking studies is very powerful and provides best practice insight into performance. Recent secure surveys include:

· Revenue assurance maturity model: assessed maturity of service provider revenue assurance approaches and activities

· Communications service provider transformation: focused on transformation programme characteristics, provided comparative data for improving business effectiveness, and analysed the impact of current global economic conditions on transformation strategies

Insights business intelligence reports explore current industry issues from a service provider perspective. These reports are developed in collaboration with well-known industry analysts and provide a melding of big picture trends from the analysts with supporting detail from recent TM Forum business benchmarking studies.

“Winning in a Shrinking World: Seizing the Opportunities”, the latest Business Intelligence report, offers valuable insights from TM Forum and Analysys Mason on revenue growth by region and steps to assure successful completion of transformation initiatives. GTB

To learn more about the Business Benchmarking Program, please visit the TM Forum at www.tmforum.org/benchmarking or contact Tonia Graham at benchmarking@tmforum.org