Figure A.09 - Commitment Overview

Managing value creation in a value fabric is much more complex than it used to be with the traditional value creation chain. <br/>A key entity to establish governance processes on the cooperation between parties on a value fabric is Commitment, derived from BusinessInteraction which reflects the mutual agreement between two party roles about services, products, resources or some other kind of deliverable that has to be provided by the party playing the role of a Commitment fulfiller to the party, playing the role of a Commitment procurer.<br/><b>Example 1:</b><br/>The enterprise plans to launch a new product to the market that requires new capabilities of its billing infrastructure. Because the implementation of such infrastructure capabilities is not the core competence of the enterprise it is decided to get this capability realized by a supplier. Because the key business objectives of the enterprise is to save costs rather than to fasten time market to maximize gross margin, a tender process will be initiated to find a supplier providing the lowest price. For this supplier/buyer relationship the business objectives of the supplier are not relevant – the governance process for the supply process will be established by agreeing tightly measured Commitments with the supplier, regarding functionality and quality of the capabilities together with Commitment to deliver these capabilities according to the overall schedule.<br/><b>Example 2:</b><br/>The enterprise plans to launch a set of “communication services in a cloud” to the SoHo market. Because the enterprise is to capable to provide a web mail service of high quality and availability in time and provide such as service is not the core business of the enterprise, it is decided to look for a partner for re-selling an email service, operated as managed service by the partner, to be integrated in the set of cloud services, the enterprise offers to the end customer. For such a partner relationship it is essential to assess the business objectives of potential partners to ensure a reliable and sustainable partnership. Such a partner must share same business objectives like providing high quality services with a fast time to market (to avoiding the partner being a time-to-market bottle neck for future extensions of the service). At the same time the partner must not have conflicting business objectives, like provide the same service to the same market segment on its own. If the partner is targeting another market segment like large business customers, the partnership agreement might include that the partner markets the cloud to this market segment. Again, the mutual agreement between the enterprise and the partner is reflected by Commitments. In such kinds of partnership, the enterprise might play the role of a Commitment fulfiller for some Commitments and at the same time play the role of a Commitment procurer for others. These Commitments are defined to establish a governance to ensure that the common business objectives of both partners are achieved in this partnership and to ensure adoption of Commitments in case of changing business objectives.<br/><b>Example 3:</b><br/>The enterprise plans to source out IT (infrastructure) capabilities – e.g. services for network planning – to a supplier, who operates these services as managed services. The services, which are required to be provided by the supplier, are specified from a functional perspective as business services and KPIs are defined, to measure the required SLAs. The enterprise initiates a tender process, to find a cost-efficient supplier, who is capable to extend these business services for future requirements. Providing the services with the agreed service level is ensured by defining Commitments accordingly and to establish a governance model based on these.<br/>How Commitments are defined as business entities and how the involved roles are associated to Commitments is shown in Figure below.<br/>