Sales CRM for Telecommunications in the Telecommunications ecosystem

Sales CRM for Telecommunications is a critical application in the telecommunications industry, serving as the central orchestration layer for order management. It acts as a central hub connecting various systems across the telecom operator's landscape:

• Customer-facing channels: Mobile apps, web portals, and sales representatives.
• Supporting systems: Product catalogs, inventory systems, and service qualification platforms.
• Fulfillment systems: Field service management and network activation platforms.

Sales CRM for Telecommunications leverages TeleManagement Forum (TMF) industry standards to manage telecommunications orders across both selling and fulfillment phases while integrating with multiple upstream and downstream systems.

Foundation components

Sales CRM for Telecommunications is built on the following core data entities that underpin the entire order management process:

• Account: Customer account information and organizational hierarchy.
• Contact: Customer contact details and relationships.
• Location/Site: Service delivery locations and site information.
• Product Model: Product specifications and definitions created using the Product-Service-Resource (PSR) framework.
• Sold Product: Customer's purchased products and entitlements
• Install base item: Customer's product configuration.
• Entitlements: Entitlements associated with the sold products.
• Contracts: Customer contract including account details and specific assets covered.

These foundational elements provide the essential data structures that support all operations, from lead management through service activation. The Sales CRM for Telecommunications functional architecture operates across two distinct phases: the Selling Phase and the Fulfillment Phase.

Selling phase

During this phase, Sales CRM for Telecommunications integrates with digital apps, self-care portals, account managers, product catalogs, and service feasibility systems.

Fulfillment phase

After order submission, the next phase is the fulfillment process:

• Order Distribution: Decomposition into service orders and work orders.
• Service Order Management: Tracking through activation lifecycle.
• Activation Handoff: Submission to provisioning systems.

During this phase, Sales CRM for Telecommunications coordinates with Field Service Management for Telecommunication, external inventory systems, and network activation platforms.

TeleManagement Forum (TMF) Open APIs

The Sales CRM for Telecommunications leverages TeleManagement Forum (TMF) Open APIs throughout its architecture, ensuring standards-based integration with third-party systems. Key API integrations include:

• Product catalog management API: Manage product catalog information from external systems. See .
• Product inventory API: For ServiceNow applications or external CRM / CPQ submitting orders. See .
• Service catalog API: For synching technical specifications with other network domain specific provisioning catalogs. See .
• Service order API: Use when a customer order is handled by another application and Sales CRM for Telecommunications acts as a service order manager. Also use when the marketplace owner handles decomposition and orchestration and sends the order to Sales CRM for Telecommunications for fulfillment. See .
• Technical service qualification API: Checks availability of resources and services before an order is submitted for fufillment. See .
• Quote management API: Based on the TMF 648 API. See .

Non-TMF APIs