TM Forum recognizes the world’s leading companies for innovations that accelerate digital business transformation

PARSIPPANY, NJ—March 26, 2018 — TM Forum, the industry association driving digital transformation through collaboration, today announced the finalists for the TM Forum Excellence Awards 2018. The Excellence Awards program honors the world’s leading companies for their innovative achievements spanning digital transformation, business and IT agility, customer centricity, cross-industry partnering and collaboration, and product and service innovation. 

TM Forum’s 2018 Excellence Awards attracted nominations from leading communications service providers, suppliers and vendors from around the world. An annual program in its twelfth year, the Excellence Awards highlight companies that demonstrate commitment to the evolution of the industry through digital transformation, adoption and suite of best practices and standards that TM Forum delivers through its Collaboration Community.

“Congratulations to the finalists of the TM Forum Excellence Awards 2018. As ever, the quality of the competition this year was incredibly high,” said Nik Willetts, CEO, TM Forum. “As the pressure to digitally transform mounts, these organizations are at the forefront of our industry and are accelerating digital transformation across diverse ecosystems, delivering groundbreaking solutions through collaboration and open innovation. The leadership of these members continue to cement TM Forum’s critical role in navigating the ever-changing digital ecosystem landscape.”

The 2018 Excellence Awards Finalists are:

Business Transformation Award

This award recognizes the communications, digital infrastructure or media service provider that has made the greatest strides in transforming its business operation to a low cost, agile and customer-centric model.

• Salesforce / T-Mobile USA – T-Mobile USA Business Transformation with Salesforce
• China Unicom – Intelligent Precision Marketing Platform based on Cloud Computing
• Ericsson / Entel – Entel Digital Transformation
• China Mobile / Huawei – Delivering an agile, cost effective, and differentiated China Mobile IoT experience
• Reliance Jio Infocomm – Agile OSS for World’s largest Mobile Data Network

IT Transformation Award

This award recognizes the communications, digital infrastructure or media service provider that has made the greatest strides in transforming their IT function from being a reactive, inflexible organization to being a pro-active, flexible and integral part of the business, able to respond quickly to changing business requirements and inspire new capabilities and products.

• China Unicom – IT Digital Transformation Practice of China Unicom
• Bharti Airtel – Butterfly: End to End Digital Transformation
• Infosys / Telstra – GetHelp – Integrated digital solution for Telstra nbn™ Consumer Assurance customers
• O2 / Accenture / CloudSense – O2 CloudSense Upgrade
• BOCO Inter-Telecom – BOCO NFV OSS-iFOCUS brighten your network future

Operational Transformation and Agility Award

This award recognizes the company thathas made an outstanding and innovative contribution to improving the business and operational agility of its customers (measured in terms of improved time-to-market; ability to rapidly respond to market demand or opportunity, etc.)

• Vlocity – Achieving Rapid, Real-World Results through Digital Transformation
• UXP Systems – Enables Cable and Wireless’ FlowID with Unprecedented Business Agility
• AsiaInfo – AISwareCRM Enabling Operation and Agility Excellence for Global Largest Postal Enterprise
• DGIT Systems – Transforming to Catalog Driven Operations Powered by TM Forum Open APIs
• MYCOM OSI – MYCOM OSI cloud-native assurance and automation solution (MYCOM OSI Experience Assurance and Analytics™ (EAA))
• BOCO Inter-Telecom / China Unicom – APEX: the AI engine helps China Unicom to gain 50 million 4G subscribers in 2017
• Netcracker – Supporting the Trillion Dollar Global Financial Transaction Backbone

Digital Service Innovator of the Year

This award is made to the company or organization that has made the most significant and innovative contribution to advancing the digital revolution in society with a new product or service.

• Telekom Malaysia Berhad – Smart Home Energy Monitoring System
• Orange – “My Orange”: free mobile selfcare application for smartphone users to manage their installed offers, enpowered thanks to TM Forum APIs
• China Mobile – Credit-Digital Telco Big Data Credit Assessment Services
• TELUS – TELUS Network as a Service

Open Digital Ecosystem Platform of the Year

The digital business revolution is driving the growth of business-to-business (B2B) relationships trading across a complex value fabric of relationships. To support these digital ecosystems, sophisticated platforms for digital business are emerging. This award is given to the company that is shaping the market and in particular, driving open approaches to digital ecosystems.

• Orange – TM Forum Open APIs Hub by Orange
• Netcracker – Driving a Groundbreaking Virtualization Program Across Europe
• Inspur – Quality Chain, An Open Digital Ecosystem Powered by Inspur Blockchain Platform
• China Unicom – Intelligent Data Centre Operating System and Capability-Opened Platform
• Amdocs / Telstra – Amdocs and Telstra Pave the Way Toward the Softwarization of Networks

Disruptive Innovation Award

This is awarded to a start-up or new business venture which has truly innovated and caused disruption in the industry. The winning company will have launched a new product or service that has delivered a measurable benefit for business users or customers.

• triPica – Cross industry digital BSS leveraging TM Forum data model and Open APIs
• Zeepabyte – Zeepabyte drains your data swamps to unleash faster Business Intelligence to a Greener Enterprise
• Atilze Digital –  Atilze Sensor Hub
• Brytlyt – Helping Telcos get the most from their data

Outstanding Customer Centricity Award

This award recognizes the company that has made an outstanding and innovative contribution to significantly improving customer centricity and their customer experience.  Finalist will have used advanced analytics, new products/services or other concepts to have dramatically improved customer service, experience or satisfaction. Applicants must provide evidence of the improvement achieved.

• UXP Systems – UXP Systems Supercharges Liberty Global’s Digital Business Capabilities
• Saudi Telecom Company –  STC offered Enterprise customers a differentiated experience and earned leadership of the local IT market
• Salesforce – Customer-Centric Platform of Engagement
• Netcracker – Redefining Customer Experience for Digital Enterprises
• mtel / Amdocs – Delivering unified customer experience and commerce

Open API Award

This award recognizes the company which has successfully adopted the widest number of relevant TM Forum Open APIs into their product(s), which has led to increased business agility and operation agility of their customers (measured in terms of improved time-to-market; ability to rapidly respond to market demand or opportunity and ability to work with and onboard third parties easily etc).

• BearingPoint – API-enabled Digital Platform Solutions – Delivering business agility to evolve from efficiency to innovation
• DGIT Systems –  Telflow Built on TM Forum APIs
• Openet – Using Open APIs to enable best of breed Digital Business Platforms
• Vlocity – Achieving Rapid, Real-World Results with Open APIs
• ZTEsoft – ZSmart Solution Supports Orange Group API Program

CIO of the Year Award

This award is given to a CIO/CTIO (or equivalent), or other board-level IT executive. The winner will be an individual who has led a significant IT transformation of their business which is delivering tangible results. The individual will have constantly demonstrated superior leadership skills, promoted IT transformation company-wide and would have been innovative in their approach.

• Shankar Arumugavelu, Verizon
• Alpna J. Doshi, Philips Electronics Nederland B.V.
• Dr. Jian Fan, China Unicom
• John Gillam, BT Global Services
• Harmeen Mehta, Bharti Airtel
• Cody Sanford, T-Mobile USA
• Eugene Yeo Kok Wee, MyRepublic Group

CTO of the Year

This award is given to a CTO/CTIO (or equivalent), or other board-level technology executive. The winner will be an individual who has led a significant network transformation of their business which is delivering tangible results. The individual will have constantly demonstrated superior leadership skills and innovation in their approach, and promoted technological change company-wide..

• Catherine Michel, Sigma Systems
• Dr. Ibrahim Gedeon, TELUS
• Giovanni Chiarelli, MTN South Africa
• Dr. Enrique Blanco Nadales, Telefónica, S.A.

The Excellence Award recipients are determined by an independent and impartial judging panel comprised of leading industry and subject matter experts. Each entry is reviewed by the panel in detail, initially identifying the finalists in each category, and then through analysis and debate, voting on the winners in each category.

TM Forum will announce the winners of the 2018 Excellence Awards during the VIP Gala Dinner during Digital Transformation World on May 14, 2018 in Nice, France.

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About TM Forum

TM Forum is an association of over 850-member companies’ customers across 180 countries. We drive collaboration and collective problem-solving to maximize the business success of communication and digital service providers and their ecosystem of suppliers around the world. Today, our focus is on supporting members as they navigate their unique digital transformation journeys, providing practical and proven assets and tools to accelerate execution and platforms to facilitate collaborative problem solving and innovation. Learn more at www.tmforum.org.

Press Contacts

Aisling Roberts
CCgroup PR
E: [email protected]
T: +44 203 824 9201

Rebecca Huft
Awards Program Manager
E: [email protected]
T: +1 973-944-5100, Ext. 5296