TM Forum recognizes the world’s leading companies for innovations that accelerate digital business transformation
PARSIPPANY, NJ—March 18, 2019 — TM Forum, the industry association driving digital transformation through collaboration, today announced the finalists for the TM Forum Excellence Awards 2019. 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 2019 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 2019. As ever, the quality of the competition this year was incredibly high,” said Nik Willetts, CEO, TM Forum. “With 5G fast approaching and pressure to digitally transform intensifying, it’s great to see these organizations pave the way for change and transformation. We’re excited and proud to work alongside these TM Forum members to deliver new and innovative solutions that will shape the industry in years to come.”
The 2019 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.
- A1 Telekom / BearingPoint//Beyond – Re-imagining OSS
- Bharti Airtel – Airtel New Digital acquisition process
- Detecon/Concentra /The GC Index – Digital transformation ecosystem
- Deutsche Telekom – ONEapp – primary communication and engagement channel in DT EU
- Royal KPN/Vlocity/Salesforce – KPN transformation into a digital telco
- Salesforce/TELUS – TELUS cloud-based business transformation
IT transformation award
This award recognizes the communications, digital infrastructure or media service provider which 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 which can respond quickly to changing business requirements and inspire new capabilities and products.
- BT/Torry Harris Business Solutions – API farm and a federated model
- China Mobile/Huawei – Artificial intelligent on mid-end enabling 5G O&M
- China Telecom – BSS 3.0 – Next generation BSS system
- Deutsche Telekom – HAL – Harmonized API layer for DT European digital unification
- Infosys/Telstra – High performance software engineering led large scale IT transformation & digitisation
- Saudi Telecom – Agile business support systems transformation
Operational transformation and agility award
This award recognizes the company which has made an outstanding and innovative contribution to improving the business and operational agility of their customers (measured in terms of improved time-to-market; ability to rapidly respond to market demand or opportunity, etc.).
- Amdocs – Bringing automation and transparency into the B2B sales-to-order process
- MYCOM OSI – MYCOM OSI assurance cloud™
- Netcracker – Ground breaking approach enables tier 1 operator to deliver high value cloud business services
- Nexign – Nexign transforms MegaFon’s billing system
- NWSWorks – Real-time inventory based service assurance automation system for simplified operations and management of telecom networks
- Openet – Openet’s Evolved Charging System
Network transformation award
This award recognizes the communications or digital infrastructure service provider which has made the greatest strides in transforming their legacy network from being primarily static, closed, and hardware based infrastructure to a flexible, highly virtualized, cloud ready, software driven and open network, which is dynamic, using latest innovative and disruptive technologies and can respond quickly to the demands of a data-intensive digital business.
- Telstra – NaaS, opening the network for business!
- Verizon – Network systems network transformation
- Windstream Communications/Ciena – Leveraging intelligent automation to deliver a more agile and dynamic managed SD-WAN service
Digital service innovator of the year
This award is made to the company or organization which has made the most significant and innovative contribution to advancing the digital revolution in society with a new product or service.
- China Telecom – Digital capability openness & operation system (DCOOS)
- China Unicom – Customizable real-time scene data service – fuelling the industrial internet
- Orange – Orange Money, a digital revolution in Africa that allows private individuals money exchange
- Reliance Jio Infocomm – Digital KYC: Innovation for customer acquisition
- Sigma Systems – Create-Sell-Deliver for Digital Service Innovation
Open digital ecosystem platform of the year
The digital business revolution is driving the growth of complex business-to-business (B2B) relationships trading across a complex value fabric of relationships. To support such digital ecosystems, sophisticated platforms for digital business are emerging. This award is given to the company who is shaping the market and in particular, driving open approaches to digital ecosystems.
- China Mobile/Asiainfo – Integrated operation platform boosts open digital ecosystem
- China Unicom– China Unicom’s digital ecosystem platform
- Orange – Orange Plug&Pay, a fast and easy way to set up partnerships across the whole Orange footprint
- TELUS – Championing platform thinking to transform the 100-year-old telco
Disruptive innovation award
This award is made to a start-up or new business venture which has truly innovated and caused disruption in the industry. The winning company would have launched a new product or service that has delivered a measurable benefit for business users or customers and has completely disrupted or caused innovation in the existing marketplace.
- Etiya / Fizz – Virtual Service Provider (network, OSS, and BSS), went from concept to launch in 10 months
- MarketsandMarkets – Knowledge Store
- MTN Group – Mowali: A pan-African mobile money interoperability switch delivered by MTN and Orange
- Visible – Visible is creating a new category of phone service
- Zeetta Networks – NetOS Rapide – Network slicing and network splicing for temporary or “pop-up” networks
- Zeotap – Fuel for growth
Outstanding customer centricity award
This award recognizes the company who has made an outstanding and innovative contribution to significantly improving customer centricity and their customer experience, whether through use of advanced analytics, new products/services or other concepts which have dramatically improved customer service, experience or satisfaction. Applicants must provide evidence of the improvement achieved.
- Bharti Airtel – Automating customer care using natural language processing
- Etiya / Fizz – New Fizz Mobile brand goes from concept to complete digital customer experience in 10 months
- Netcracker – Using agile-based digital BSS to deliver omnichannel customer experiences across all lines of business
- Salesforce – Customer-centric platform of intelligent engagement
- T-Mobile/Ericsson – Delivering customer experience at T-Mobile with Ericsson expert analytics
- Whale Cloud/China Telecom – China Telecom new retail-Digital transformation for telecom boutique
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.
- Pierre Bonin, Videotron
- Andre Kriger , Telefonica
- Anthony Rodrigo, Axiata
- Cody Sanford, T-Mobile USA
- Shi Zhen Sun, China Unicom
- Eugene Yeo Kok Wee, MyRepublic
CTO of the year award
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, promoted technological change company wide and would have been innovative in their approach.
- Giovanni Chiarelli, MTN South Africa
- Anthony Goonetilleke, Amdocs
- Catherine Michel, Sigma Systems
- Loukas Tzitzis, Nexign
Future digital leader award
This award recognizes the extraordinary achievements of an upcoming leader in the digital transformation space. The winner will be an individual who has pioneered significant technology innovation and/or disruption within their company. The individual will have inspired others and been at the forefront of innovation and helped their company use technology to its full protentional as a key driver of business value.
- Shawn Mandel, TELUS
- Sunny Nirala, Celcom Axiata Berhad
- Ye Ouyang, Asiainfo
- Andrea Reichstein, Galileo Software
- Caroline Roy, Fizz
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). There will be two awards in this category, one for service providers and the other for suppliers.
- China Telecom/AsiaInfo/BONC – China Unicom Open API practices based on TIANGONG private cloud architecture
- Deutsche Telekom – HAL – Harmonized API layer used for DT European digital unification
- DGIT – Telflow built on TM Forum APIs
- Netcracker – Participation in TM Forum’s Open API initiative to gain unparalleled transformation results
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 2019 Excellence Awards during the Excellence Award Gala during Digital Transformation World on May 13, 2019 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.
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