Business Process Framework (eTOM)
The Business Process Framework (eTOM) is a critical component of the Open Digital Framework, TM Forum’s blueprint for enabling successful business transformation. It is a comprehensive, industry-agreed, multi-layered view of the key business processes required to run an efficient, effective, and agile digital enterprise.[1]
The development of business process standardization for telecom service providers started with the founding of the TM Forum in 1988. The initial goal was to facilitate the creation of 'interoperable network management products'. The first approved standard was the 'OSI/NM Forum Protocol Specification,' an extension of OSI protocols developed in the late 1970s. The direct development towards the Business Process Framework (eTOM), as Brenner (2007) explained, was "the Telecom Operation Map (TOM) was first published in 2001. The goal of TOM was the creation of an industry-owned framework of business processes, including the definition of common enterprise-independent terminology for service management. It was also supposed to serve as a basis for discussing the scope of information management necessary for the execution of the processes. The result of this latter effort has meanwhile spawned its own TMF document family, the Shared Information and Data Model (SID). The Telecom Operation Map (TOM) was extended in 2001 to eTOM, an acronym for Enhanced Telecom Operations Map. The process model eTOm was renamed "Enhanced Telecom Operations Map (eTOM)," and in 2013 to "Business Process Framework (eTOM)." There have been many versions of eTOM. Version 14 was published in May 2014. It also has been developed into a component of NGOSS, which has been renamed Frameworx.[2]