By News Room, TM ForumMay, 2017

TM Forum today announced the launch of its Digital Maturity Model (DMM)
– a new tool that allows communications service providers (CSPs) to assess
their digital maturity and plan their digital transformation across their entire
organization. The model has already been endorsed by leading CSPs
including BT, China Mobile, China Telecom, China Unicom, Orange, PCCW
Global and Vodafone as well as management consultancies and suppliers
including Amdocs, BearingPoint, Deloitte, Detecon, Huawei, Tata
Consultancy Services and The GC Index.

As core services become commoditized, CSPs are desperately searching for

new digital services and revenues in order to grow. To realize the
opportunity, CSPs must completely transform traditional business and
operating models, cultures and infrastructures. Without a coherent view of
their destination, starting point and pathway, building and executing a
successful digital transformation strategy is challenging, time consuming and
prone to failure. In fact, in a recent survey conducted by TM Forum, 54
percent of CSPs revealed that their previous attempts at transformation had
been unsuccessful, highlighting the urgent need for a robust methodology to
help leaders guide and manage change on an enterprise-wide basis.
In collaboration with the world’s leading CSPs, management consultancies
and suppliers, TM Forum identified the need for an industry-agreed Digital
Maturity Model, metrics and methodology to meet this challenge. By
bringing together and crowdsourcing expertise and models from across the
global communications industry, TM Forum has created a ‘living’ maturity
model and set of metrics that will evolve with the industry and help
companies measure their true digital maturity.

Holistic transformation
“In order to survive and thrive in the digital market, service providers are
embarking on complex and demanding digital transformation journeys,” said
Nik Willetts, CEO, TM Forum. “To be successful, these transformation
programs require much more than embracing new technologies or ways to
interact with our customers – they demand strong leadership and holistic
transformation of the entire business, fundamentally redefining how the
business operates. The launch of the Digital Maturity Model is an example of
our transformation mantra and showcases how TM Forum is taking our
members on the journey, providing the tools, guidance and expertise to drive
successful digital transformation. TM Forum would like to recognize all of the
members that have contributed, especially Deloitte for leading the
collaboration and project management and Huawei for initiating the concept
and resourcing the project.”
TM Forum’s DMM considers maturity across five key dimensions, each
containing an extensive set of sub-dimensions, questions and metrics to
assess digital maturity across the business. Accessed through an easy-to-use
App, TM Forum members can assess their digital maturity across every
department and rapidly identify areas for action unique to their businesses.
The dimensions and definitions for the model are:

 Customer – Providing an experience where customers view the

organization as their digital partner using their preferred channels of
interaction to control their connected future online and offline
 Strategy – Focuses on how the business operates or transforms to
increase its competitive advantage through digital initiatives which are
embedded within the overall business strategy
 Technology – Underpins the success of digital strategy by helping to
create, process, store, secure and exchange data to meet the needs of
customers at low cost and low overheads
 Operations – Executing and evolving processes and tasks by utilizing
digital technologies to drive strategic management and enhance business
efficiency and effectiveness
 Culture, People and Organization – Defining and developing an
organizational culture with governance and talent processes to support
progress along the digital maturity curve and the flexibility to achieve
growth and innovation objectives

By asking stakeholders across an entire organization to assess the company’s

maturity in each of these areas, CSPs can identify where improvement is
needed and where investment priorities lie. The model has the flexibility to
account for differences in CSPs’ visions, strategies and business imperatives,
and can be applied to help develop a roadmap to guide their digital
transformation journey.

“Successful digital transformation requires the direct involvement and

support of the CEO for a process that’s going to impact the whole
organization,” said David Pleasance, Chairman, TM Forum. “Through the
exceptional collaborative work of many TM Forum members, the Digital
Maturity Model allows service providers to assess all dimensions and
departments of their organization through a structured approach that is
unique to them. Without industry-agreed best practices and guidelines, real
transformation becomes all the more challenging.”
Additional details about TM Forum’s Digital Maturity model can be found
at www.tmforum.org/dmm.

What CSPs say

 “Using the collaborative power of TM Forum, and working with a number
of our fellow members, BT has helped develop an industry standard
Digital Maturity Model. This model enables organizations to assess their
current digital capability and identify areas where they have deficiencies
that will enable them to prepare for their own digital transformation
journey.” (George Glass, Chief Systems Architect, BT)
 “The digital transformation of the industry is already coming. TM Forum’s
Digital Maturity Model will be very helpful to tell CSPs where we are and
how we are on this way. Then we can make the right decisions and right
measures on our way forward.” (Wang Ye, Vice Director of OSS
Department, China Mobile Group)
 “The industry is ever transforming. We are happy to endorse TM Forum’s
Digital Maturity Model as this model will bring tremendous benefits to
the industry in helping operators to set up proper benchmarking to assess
 their digital maturity level through different dimensions in terms of
strategy, customer, operations, technology and culture.” (Wang Guirong,
Director of Planning and Standardization Division, Corporate IT
Department, China Telecom Group)
 “China Unicom has been on the way of digital translation in the areas of
network, business, services, IT Architecture, Culture and HR in recent
years. Along with the era of 5G and IoT, China Unicom will accelerate its
transformation journey to support Digital Operations Transformation.
We are happy to see TM Forum, as a leading industry association,
proposing the Digital Maturity Model [DMM] based on long-term
collaboration with industry players and believe that the DMM will
provide the benchmarking guidance for the industry and help the industry
transform. We will continue to work with TM Forum closely on the DMM
and contribute to the industry together.” (Liu Haizhou, Director of IT
Planning Division, IT Department, China Unicom Group)
 “In Orange, we are proud and happy to contribute to the definition of the
TM Forum Digital Maturity Model within our business and IT excellence
initiatives. We expect to use this tool to assess and benchmark our digital
maturity in our various operations. The whole industry will benefit from
it.” (Laurent LeBoucher, VP APIs & Digital Ecosystems, Orange)
 “Vodafone sees great value in the work being done through TM Forum on
Digital Transformation. The Digital Maturity Model builds on the
common vocabulary already provided through Frameworx and we see it
as a valuable resource to guide member companies through their Digital
Transformation.” (Lester Thomas, Chief IT Systems Architect, Vodafone)