Company: Sigma Systems
Product Title: Catalog v7.1
Frameworx Version: 18.5
Assessment Completion Date: May 2019
Detailed Certification Report: Frameworx 18.5 Final Certification Report for Sigma Systems Catalog v7.1 v1.1 SID

General Overview

This document provides details of Sigma Systems’ self-assessment and TM Forum’s Conformance Assessment of Sigma Catalog v7.1 product, against the following Frameworx components:

• Information Framework (SID) version 18.5

The assessment was based on a review of:

• The methodology approach to process modeling against the TM Forum’s Information Framework Release 18.5 according to the specific processes submitted in scope for the Assessment.

For more information on Sigma Catalog v7.1 and Sigma Systems, please contact: Drew Jordan Senior Director, Products, Innovation Lab Sigma Systems E-mail: [email protected] For any additional information on this Frameworx Conformance Certification Report, please contact TM Forum at: [email protected].

Product Functionality/Capability Overview

Sigma Catalog v7.1 – Product Overview

Critical to the ability of communication service providers (CSPs), media and high‐tech companies to operate successfully and profitably in an increasingly competitive and convergent marketplace is the capability to introduce and manage effectively a portfolio of products that are relevant to customers, released at the most opportune time, and done so at a low cost. The Sigma Catalog solution is designed specifically to manage the end‐to‐end processes and product data relevant to the product development, product launch, and in‐life product management activities of an organization. In so doing, Sigma Catalog enables true product management transformation. Sigma Catalog provides organizations with the essential components of a full product lifecycle management (PLM) framework and product data management (PDM) capability. Sigma Catalog is an automated, packaged solution that asserts centralized business control over the product management process by forming the product management platform at the heart of the enterprise. Sigma Catalog synchronizes the product management process and corresponding data into a single, automated, error‐resilient stream through:

• A centralized product and service catalog, providing master data management (MDM) for products and services that are controlled and reusable throughout their lifecycle.
• Best‐practice PLM, with products and services managed through a defined, repeatable, and measurable process.
• Seamless, automated integration, because Sigma Catalog knows the product ecosystem across the applications and has an open, standards‐ and service oriented architecture (SOA)‐ based integration framework, enabling inter‐operation with different platforms and applications.
• Sophisticated reporting and analytics through the Sigma Catalog reporting system for the review and tracking of products and services throughout the lifecycle.
• A 360‐degree view and single‐point‐of‐truth for products, with a global system of record for all product information, reducing inconsistencies across the enterprise.
• Multi‐purpose configuration and build capability delivered by the set of workspaces and tools needed to perform both core component build in the factory, namely in IT and engineering, as well as product packaging and offer creation by marketing, including product managers and business users.

The Sigma Catalog product suite provides the core components necessary to centralize, configure, integrate and maintain the product and service portfolio across the enterprise. At the heart of the solution is the central product and service catalog, which brings together into a single master all of the commercial and technical elements that define the reusable product and service building blocks and resulting offers.

Sigma Catalog Solution

The Sigma Catalog user interface provides a single point‐of‐entry and single point‐of‐access to the master product and service data, through which users can perform all the activities necessary to manage the full catalog of product offerings and underlying services, including the creation, modification, reuse, launch, maintenance, and retirement of products and services. The open, standards‐ and SOA‐based Sigma Catalog integration framework provides the necessary infrastructure to interface product and service data to BSS and OSS systems in an automated and efficient fashion, including order‐capture, CRM, billing, order‐management, mediation, and provisioning systems, online portals, and more. Key features of the Sigma Catalog suite include:

• Collaboration environment for both business and IT users
• Cross‐function, role‐based user definitions and security:
• Multi‐dimensional, role‐based management access to the functions and catalogs in the application
• End‐to‐end PLM process and activities:
• Project definition and tracking
• Configurable and automated workflow
• Tasks lists with impact and notification reporting to manage the change process tightly
• Centralized MDM for the product and service catalog:
  • Componentized data model for offers, products, services, devices, pricing, target system rules, and processes
  • Simple and complex product and service structures
  • Definition of commercial and technical aspects of product and service components
  • Convergent / N‐play, cross‐product‐line bundles
  • Sharing of product components across different product and market categories
  • Cloning and modification of product structures or individual entities to enable rapid product modeling
  • Business and technical modeling of product offers and underlying component specifications
  • Highly configurable capability for defining rating attributes for charges and discounts, to support attribute‐based, tiered, threshold, and flat rating and discounting, variable across product lines
  • Channel‐, market‐, and customer‐specific price lists to manage the reuse of products across target markets through different offers
• Enterprise and business‐to‐business (B2B) products, contracts and service‐level agreements (SLAs) can be constructed from reusable assets in the product catalog
• Support for E2E, order‐to‐install and fulfillment processes
• Fully inter‐operable inbound/outbound integration framework, including a SOA‐web‐services‐based integration framework and application connector sets to expedite integration configuration between Sigma Catalog and target applications
• Comprehensive reporting and business intelligence capabilities, including native reporting and search functions plus a product‐performance analytics framework

About Sigma Systems

Sigma Systems is an award-winning solutions provider and a valued partner to over 80 of the world’s leading service providers in 40 countries. Every day, our high-demanding customers put our people and our software to work to launch new digital products and deliver a frictionless omnichannel product-selling experience to more than 350 million globally.

We are the global leader in catalog-driven software solutions for communications, media and high-tech companies. With over 20 years of serving the world’s leading CSPs, the company’s portfolio spans enterprise-wide Catalog, Configure Price Quote (CPQ), Order Management, Provisioning, Insights and Portfolio Inventory products, and offers a core set of services including professional services, cloud services, and managed services.

Today, with offices in North and South America, Europe and the Asia-Pacific region, Sigma Systems utilizes an agile approach to implementing its B/OSS products for its customers.

What the industry says

Over the years, we have been recognized in a number of areas. These are our market-leading solutions, our executive leadership and being an employer of choice in both Canada and the UK:

• Featured in the 2018 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Configure-Price-Quote Application Suites.
• Shortlisted for two awards at the 2019 TM Forum Excellence Awards.
• Winner in the ‘Innovation in Business Support Systems’ category at the 2018 Pipeline Innovation Awards.
• Winner in the Outstanding Digital Enablement Vendor of the Year’ category at the 2018 Leading Lights awards.
• Named one of Canada’s top 25 software companies by the Branham Group.
• Winner of the Mayor’s Challenge Award for Aging Population at the Global Smart City Summit in Liverpool.
• In 2019, Sigma Systems secured the Gold Standard in the category of Canada’s Best Managed Companies from Deloitte.
• Recently named among 30 Top Companies to Work For in Wales.
• Recognized as one of Greater Toronto’s Top Employers by The Globe and Mail.

Information Framework Conformance Scope

The following figure represents the Information Framework ABEs that were presented in scope for the conformance certification.

Level 2 process coverage for Sigma Catalog v7.1 Assessment

Sigma Catalog v7.1 Benefits

Communications, media and high‐tech companies gain significant benefits through the adoption of an enterprise‐wide, centralized, product‐management capability. An enterprise product‐management solution yields more highly competitive products with stronger profit margins and greater customer satisfaction. Sigma Catalog delivers these benefits, improving the bottom line through faster time‐to‐market and lower cost‐to‐market, enabling innovation and improving quality across PLM.

Time‐to‐Market Faster time‐to‐market means:

• Reduced design, build, test and launch time for products through component reuse
• A reduced volume of data required to assemble and establish new offerings in the architecture
• A first‐mover advantage
• Simplified and accelerated new product and service introduction through improved clarity around what to offer, which is critical in responding to competitors

Cost‐to‐Market Lower cost‐to‐market means:

• Reduced operational and delivery costs through fewer disparate data points to manage
• Reduced complexity of business processes
• Structured components that maximize compatibility with long‐term reference architecture

Innovation Enabling innovation provides:

• Increased ability to support complex propositions due to simpler set‐up from any channel
• Rapid monetization of data moving among people and systems through simplified definition of a unified product
• Improved customer satisfaction through better understanding of the product purchased
• Ability to compete with and support web‐application and cloud‐based solutions

Sigma Catalog v7.1 Products The Sigma Catalog product suite comprises the following components:

• Sigma Catalog Manager
• Sigma Catalog Workbench
• Sigma Catalog Integration Services Framework
• Sigma Catalog Workflow Designer

Sigma Catalog Solution Components

Sigma Catalog Manager and Sigma Catalog Workbench allow you to manage the central product and service catalog and the product‐management process. Together, these applications provide centralized read and write access to the Sigma Catalog solution components for both factory and marketing creation of products and services.

The Sigma Catalog Integration Services Framework (ISF) provides the service‐oriented architecture (SOA) framework for exposing and publishing product data from the centralized catalog into external applications.

The Sigma Catalog Workflow Designer is a visual tool for building workflows without coding. Sigma Catalog Workflow Designer supports custom workflows to enable the tailoring of Product Lifecycle Management workflows.

Sigma Catalog v7.1 Supported Installation Models

Sigma Catalog is deployed on dedicated servers that can be either Physical or Virtual. Virtual servers can be hosted in a data center or in the cloud.

Sigma Catalog is deployed on the Microsoft Windows platform and has a Multi-tiered architecture comprising presentation, application and data layers with secured access and physical separation between layers to provide a modular and scalable architecture.

Sigma security and permission architecture integrated with Active Directory or a SAML based IDP provider provides user authentication and authorization.

Sigma Catalog Installation Models

Report Misuse: Frameworx conformance is an important part of enabling the communications industry to maintain profitability as it migrates to new services and new business models. Gaining the conformance mark represents a significant investment by both suppliers and service providers. If you feel a company is misusing the conformance mark then please let us know at [email protected].

Disclaimer: TM Forum has conducted no independent testing of the solution for conformance with its frameworks or standards. Such testing has solely been conducted by the supplier or seller of the product and has been self-assessed by the supplier or seller for adherence to the TM Forum framework or standard in question. Accordingly, under no circumstances will TM Forum be liable for any direct or indirect damages or any costs or losses resulting from the use or reliance by any party of or upon such certification.