Ms. Hey-Chyi Young, Vice Program Manager (NGOSS Program), accepting the Service Provider Best Practices Award at the 2009 Excellence Awards.

During Management World 2009 in Nice this past spring, one of the highlights of the opening keynote session was the presentation of the 2009 TM Forum Excellence Awards. TM Forum established the Excellence Awards program in 2007 to recognize the global leaders in operational excellence and acknowledge the contributions that continue to take this industry in new and innovative directions. This year, TM Forum recognized achievement in two categories – Best Practices-Supplier/System Integrator and Best Practices-Service Provider.

Chunghwa Telecom (CHT) was honored in the Service Provider category for its 5-year Solution Frameworks (NGOSS) program to improve the flexibility and agility of its OSS/BSS. In addition, CHT initiated a consolidation program – also based on the Solution Frameworks – to further reduce operational expenditures.

CHT’s programs have resulted in very substantial benefits including revenue acceleration from streamlined fulfillment and assurance processes for important services like FTTx and 3G/3.5G; CAPEX and OPEX savings by consolidating legacy BSS/OSS; and fast delivery of new services to the market.

“This award recognizes the story of how CHT gained great operational efficiency by the adoption of the Solution Frameworks,” says Dr. Yuan-Kuang Tu, President of Chunghwa Telecom Laboratories (CHT-TL). CHT-TL is a professional R&D center in Taiwan, and 85 percent of the OSS/BSS systems (over 100) deployed at Chunghwa Telecom (CHT) were developed by CHT-TL. “The success of this has had a great influence on our future business strategy, and we will continue to use Solution Frameworks to embrace new business models, new services and new profits.”

Tu adds that receiving the award has had a profound impact not only on the technical direction of the company but also on its business opportunities. “With our continuous efforts to deploy the Solution Frameworks in the past three years, this great honor and recognition finally proves our leading OSS/BSS technique and achievement,” he says. “Internally, this award has greatly encouraged the members of CHT’s Solution Frameworks team, which evolved or renewed the online systems for fulfillment, assurance and billing of broadband, mobile, IPTV and more.”

Tu says overall industry reaction to CHT receiving the award has been extremely positive. “After getting this prestigious award, we received so many congratulations from service providers, equipment vendors and network solution partners worldwide,” he says. “Moreover, some of them – especially from China and countries in Southeast Asia – have shown great interest in learning more about how CHT is applying the Solution Frameworks to successfully transform and consolidate a large-scale OSS/BSS for operational efficiency and OPEX savings.”

Tu also adds that the cachet of winning an award from TM Forum is going a long way toward CHT’s reputation with its customers. “This is like a quality guarantee of the services we deliver,” he says. “Customers who have already subscribed to our services would feel more confident about their earlier choice and about upcoming services in the future.”

As far as suppliers and integrators are concerned, Tu says the Excellence Award recognition has helped validate CHT’s achievements in Solution Frameworks implementation, which will give them more incentive to implement these standards and solutions if they want to do business with the provider. “As we know, standardized interfaces are critical to a seamless integration between our in-house OSS/BSS and third-party systems from our suppliers and integrators,” he says. “In fact, most of our suppliers had already accumulated a lot of experience in adopting Solution Frameworks standards and solutions in the past.”

The award has also helped differentiate CHT from its competitors, he adds, and has highlighted the provider’s efforts in promoting OSS/BSS in the past as well as its ability to adapt to new services down the road. “Some service providers and vendors in Asia have since shown interest in working with CHT, so we will leverage this advantage in expanding our overseas market presence in the near future.”

Tu says that entering the 2009 TM Forum Excellence Awards was a natural choice for CHT due to the company’s long history with TM Forum and its active participation in Forum activities. The submission process also helped CHT get a closer view of its OSS/BSS across many different departments. “The strengths and weaknesses of our OSS/BSS transformation has been thoroughly evaluated, which helps us realize the value that has been brought to our business,” he says. “The process itself had already confirmed our way to the Solution Frameworks with our without winning the award in the end.”

Tu also states that the Excellence Award competition process provided CHT a unique opportunity to have its efforts reviewed by an impartial judging panel and for the industry as a whole to see what CHT has accomplished. “This was our shot to demonstrate our achievements in Solution Frameworks transformation to the international community,” he says. “And based on all of the benefits we have reaped as a result of participating in the Excellence Awards, we would definitely encourage all companies in the industry to participate in future such competitions.”