eTOM goes automotive – what the automotive industry can learn from well-proven telecommunication business processes
The connected car is one of the most promising growth areas in the internet of things. Services and apps have to be available as they are on a PC or smartphone, but at the same time perfectly integrated in the automotive environment. In general the automotive world is a well-planned and structured, process oriented product delivery factory. On the other hand the mobile world lives from its fast growing and changing streams – today voice recognition is in vogue, tomorrow lifestyle offers regarding your digital footprint of the last 24 hours.
Especially automotive mobile business processes need to be defined for the masses of mobile online services to come.
In this respect, the Business Process Framework (eTOM) seems to be suitable for adaptation to automotive needs. The eTOM approach is based on the fact that telecommunication and IT companies often need to exchange data to provide customers services throughout the entire process chain. To ensure high service quality, all companies involved must share the same notions of quality in relation to the promised performance characteristics. A prerequisite is therefore the transparency of business processes across the companies involved.
eTOM thus defines the process structure with descriptions, linkages between different processes, identification of potential interfaces, inputs and outputs, as well as other key elements. An enterprise’s processes can be broken down into levels that expose increasing detail by using hierarchical decomposition.
The framework implies a three layer model, reflecting major focuses within typical enterprises[1]:
1. Strategy, Infrastructure and Product
- covering planning and lifecycle management
2. Operations
- covering the core of operational management
3. Enterprise Management
- covering corporate or business support management
These three aspects are challenged by a matrix view to serve the customer, create value for the OEM and be served by an intelligent and effective IT infrastructure.
Fig.1: eTOM Bus architecture. For full resolution click here.
To apply the eTOM approach to the connected car world with its mobile services, we first have a closer look at the commonalities between the telecom and the automotive industries objectives.
- Flexibility: High performance IT infrastructure providing information, products and services
- Time-to-Market: Fast integration of new services, content providers and end devices by using standards
- Micro Payment: Fully automated processes to cut down process costs
- Scalability: Rapid response to short term campaigns with up to 100 times higher access rates
- Market: State-of-the-art offering of market and brand specific connected car services via a generic architecture
These aspects lead us to a three layer IT infrastructure, derived from the eTOM model to the connected car world of an OEM.
The end users connected world most commonly comprises of smartphones, tablets, internet browsers and as a new device the headunit of a car. To provide an end user consistency across all OEM touch points the first layer of an OEM IT is defined as Interaction Support System (ISS). The ISS layer services the end user by providing multiple access interfaces to the OEM platform. Beside the touch point function, customers are able to register, administrate and download apps from the enterprise app store. The internet-savvy generation Y feels quite comfortable with this. But looking at the best agers, having not grown up with any connectivity gadget, the ISS also supports a call centre option, fulfilling the best agers` demands. Also third party customers like content providers or international dealers serving local markets have their own portal access, to manage the offered services via the OEMs mobile platform.
Fig. 2: eTOM Applications architecture. For full resolution click here.
The next layer called “Business Support System” is the heart of the connected car platform. Within this layer a lot of supporting processes are hosted. From the product catalogue which contains all platform products with descriptions and specifications through pricing to terms & conditions. A dedicated variant management preselects the products, according to the customer’s hardware (end device). To select a product, the customer has to register first within the customer and contract management module. Is he registered and has selected a service product he now is able to use the service. Usage is supported by the order management module. This module handles the customers` demand starting from request and check of availability, through licence of usage to fulfilment and rating. The complexity is very much the same as of a telecommunication provider offering different contracts to its end users, with different packages like time based, volume based or flat rate packages. All serving the purpose to just talk to another customer. The order management module provides the billing and revenue management module with the customers’ rate card executed in a defined time frame (monthly). In addition to the revenue management other modules like account receivables, enterprise resource planning and data warehouse could be added.
The third layer is called the Operation Support System (OSS). This layer is responsible for identity and security management as well as for the orchestration of content providers and customer orders via BSS. In addition to the revenue and rating modules, the mediation module supports the billing process. All internal content from the OEM or external content is connected and handled by the service and 3rd party gateway.
The complexity within the transition of the eTOM model to an OEM mobility platform model cannot be provided from a single software product available in the market. To provide full OEM specific functionality several vendor products have to be integrated. There are prime vendors of each single module, but the challenge, even for the telecommunications industry, is an adequate and cost efficient integration with the objective of an eTOM solution for the automotive connected car industry. There are also specialised software components for standard demands, but the challenge remains integrating them into one telematics platform solution.
Management Summary
Future mobility requires mobility providers to establish new business models and cross-industry cooperation networks. This implies the need for new operational processes and new IT-systems – like eTOM.
Within this approach it is necessary to get beyond classical IT systems and software vendors to deliver innovative business models. As a consequence the objective is to bring pre-defined IT solutions into a long-term business process.
The eTOM approach will provide an integrated platform to manage both, commercial (CRM, ordering, billing, etc.) and technical (service authorization, federation, aggregation) processes for mobility providers for all different Eco-System partners. The ISS/BSS/OSS layer model enables delivery on-premises, as a managed service as well as a cloud-based platform.
About the authors:
Hanno Schellenberg holds the responsibility for i-Mobiloty at NTT DATA. He started his career as consultant for the first adaptive traffic control systems in Europe. After several stations in classical IT consulting and automotive electronics, today he bundles telematics, automotive and future trends NTT DATA’s i-Mobility business. NTT DATA defines this as the intelligent mobility within future ecosystems.
Christof Kleinhenz oversees the Connected Car strategy at NTT DATA. In this position he develops strategies and processes to meet the requirements resulting from the integratzion of the vehicle in the connected world. Before he assumed his current position in 2013, Kleinhenz was strategy and management consultant for a numerous enterprises in the automotive industry.
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