Take The Cost and Risk Out of Procurement
To reduce costs and risks, service providers are standardizing the Frameworx procurement processes. TM Forum Frameworx is the key enabling technology for service providers who are rationalizing their IT architectures to support rapid service deployment and to drive down operational cost.
According to the recent Frameworx Adoption Survey results, 63 percent of service providers mandate Frameworx in relevant procurement activities while the use of TM Forum’s Frameworx Procurement templates has grown to 41 percent in 12 months. These statistics validate the importance of Frameworx Conformance Certification as service providers move to deliver next-generation services.
Frameworx RFx Templates standardize how service providers procure Frameworx-based solutions. By aligning the RFx templates with Frameworx Conformance Certification, service providers remove risk from the procurement process and suppliers significantly reduce the cost of responding to RFx requirements. TM Forum’s Frameworx Conformance Certification, a key to reducing inefficiency in the procurement process, provides an independent assessment of a product or solution’s conformance to Frameworx.
The family of procurement best practice guides and recommendations includes:
- Introduction to Frameworx RFx Support Templates
- Frameworx RFx Support Process and Templates
- RFx Guide for Transport Network Management-MTOSI/XML
Standards Procurement Council
The TM Forum Board has identified the rising cost of procurement as a major issue that impacts both service providers and suppliers. The Forum is initiating a best practices effort to identify opportunities to reduce the cost of the procurement process and to address those issues. You can listen to an interactive webinar with BT, France Telecom, Telcordia, and Oracle that explored high priority, common procurement issues.
TM Forum has formed the Standards Procurement Council, a group comprised of leading service providers and their suppliers that collaborates to establish best practices to improve efficiency across the procurement process. This council is the next stage of TM Forum’s overarching program to simplify standards-based procurement in communications.
“The research is clear, inefficiency in the procurement process is costing significant time and money for service providers and suppliers. The Standards Procurement Council will establish a clear understanding of business’ requirements and improve communications between service providers and suppliers. When linked to the benefits of Conformance Certification there is significant potential to reduce procurement timelines, assure alignment to business requirements and fundamentally optimize the ROI for all parties from the procurement process.”
- Gordon Rawling, Director of EMEA Marketing, Oracle
“What’s become clear through our research is that the cost of procurement is far too high, with estimates in the range of $2 million for a major procurement exercise. This level of expense is not sustainable in a market where margins are under intense pressure. The Standards Procurement Council brings together service providers and suppliers to focus on the issues behind these costs in detail, and will deliver best practices to dramatically reduce this unproductive burden on our industry.”
- Martin Creaner, President and CEO, TM Forum
The initial members of the Standards Procurement Council include Deutsche Telekom, France Telecom, NetCracker, NSN, NTT, Oracle and Reliance Group. These members will work together within TM Forum to engage the industry to establish best practices for procurement, encourage adoption of standards-based solutions and accelerate the realization of IT transparency, efficiency and agility in procurement.
Learn more about TM Forum Procurement Best Practices
Get Started with Frameworx Procurement
- Download Frameworx Procurement templates
- Training: Frameworx-based RFx Support
- Training and Certification: Personal Frameworx Knowledge Certification
Find out more about Frameworx support in products and by suppliers Business Benefits
- Reduce procurement costs
- Reduce integration costs
- Reduce risks
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