My API Story: Delivering customer-centric, AI-driven solutions

“Open APIs are central to achieving Etiya's primary goal: To provide a seamless omnichannel customer journey.” - Şerafettin Acir, Director of Product Management & Architecture at Etiya

Tell us about yourself and your job

I work as the Director of Product Management & Architecture in Etiya. I have 22 years of experience in the Telco business support system domain (BSS) with development, analysis, solution architecture and management roles. I was involved in several TM Forum Catalyst projects and contributed to the Forum’s Information Framework (SID), Open APIs and publications.

My team includes product managers, analysts and solution architects. We manage our BSS product roadmap and deliver new product features. Etiya BSS was born using the SID and Business Process Framework (eTOM) standards and evolves using extension methodologies of those. From the very beginning, we signed up to the TM Forum Open Digital Architecture (ODA) and Open API manifestos. We aim to develop digital BSS for communications service providers (CSPs) that is fully agile, microservice based and interoperable to meet future business demands.

Why do you believe in TM Forum’s Open API program?

Etiya firmly believes and invests in the Open API program because it represents a critical step towards industry-wide standardization and interoperability. These are two key elements necessary for the future of digital services. The program promotes a collaborative ecosystem, fostering agility and innovation.

The Open APIs are maintained by an active community of experts from different vendors and operators who have encountered firsthand the challenges in the telecommunications sector. So, these APIs are created with the aim of solving real-world problems and are widely adopted across the industry, ensuring their relevance and utility. This program facilitates knowledge sharing within the community, and helps developers more easily solve challenges in a rather complex environment.

The program provides benefits to vendors/developers, customers and end-users. Using Open APIs accelerates time-to-market by simplifying integrations and reducing development time. They enable a seamless exchange of information between different systems, leading to operational efficiency and improved customer experience.

In essence, TM Forum’s Open API program aligns perfectly with Etiya’s vision of achieving agility, exceeding customer expectations, and remaining at the forefront of digital transformation. We believe it's an invaluable asset in our mission to deliver customer-centric, AI-driven solutions.

What Open APIs are most valuable to your company?

TMF620 Product Catalog Management

TMF622 Product Ordering Management

TMF629 Customer Management

TMF632 Party Management

TMF637 Product Inventory Management

TMF663 Shopping Cart Management

TMF679 Product Offering Qualification Management

Why did you choose to highlight those APIs?

The Open APIs we've selected are central to achieving Etiya's primary goal: To provide a seamless omnichannel customer journey. These APIs encapsulate the digital transformation of customers’ shopping experience by enabling access to product catalogs and eligible offers. They will facilitate the implementation of shopping processes from various external channels, thereby opening opportunities for new partnerships and business models aimed at increasing revenue.

These APIs are integral in enhancing various facets of our operations and customer interactions. They support everything from the customer shopping experience to product qualification, inventory management, and relationship nurturing. This enhancement directly feeds into our ability to deliver a superior, frictionless omnichannel customer experience that transcends the norms of industry practices.

The implementation of these APIs resonates directly with Etiya’s vision of fulfilling global operator needs and surpassing their expectations. We achieve this through agile, innovative, easily integrated, flexible, and affordable product offerings that align with evolving market trends and customer preferences.

How do you use those APIs?

Etiya utilizes TM Forum's Open APIs to facilitate seamless integration across various systems and processes, enhancing efficiency and customer experience. The APIs serve as essential building blocks in our digital transformation projects, acting as the bridge between the frontend and backend systems. They enable access to product catalogs, shopping processes, and eligible offers, which aids in delivering a personalized customer experience. They also assist in decoupling technical capabilities from channel applications, providing flexibility and adaptability in our operations.

The APIs further contribute to developing new partnerships and business models by enabling shopping processes from various external channels. Ultimately, these APIs allow Etiya to stay aligned with its vision of agility, innovation, and exceeding customer expectations.

How have you benefited from using those APIs

The implementation of TM Forum's Open APIs has been transformative for Etiya, delivering a range of benefits. Primarily, they have substantially shortened the length of our integrations, and accelerated deployment, enabling rapid digital transformation. This acceleration, in turn, has allowed our clients to deliver innovations to the market more quickly, with shorter production times, which is a direct advantage enabled by the Open APIs.

Another substantial advantage is the communication between our own and our clients’ architectural and development teams. The entity models and patterns that are part of the API standards serve as a roadmap, aligning the efforts of our architecture and development divisions. This results in improved collaboration, operational efficiency, and an overall boost in any digital transformation, especially the ones with many stakeholders.

Where do you use them?

We use these APIs in six of our clients in North America, Europe, and the Middle East.

Have you used them in conjunction with any other APIs?

In our deployments, we have seamlessly incorporated these Open APIs with the following APIs to deliver comprehensive business functionality.

• TMF621 Trouble Ticket Management: Displays customer tickets on our frontends.
• TMF639 Resource Inventory Management: Reserves, allocates, or releases resources associated with product ordering flows such as phone numbers, SIM cards, and more.
• TMF641 Service Order Management: Used by our TMF 622 Product Ordering Management API to handle the service order created by our platform.
• TMF644 Privacy Management: Manages consents of the individuals who use our BSS platform.
• TMF652 Resource Order Management: Creates resource orders during order fulfillment processes.
• TMF666 Account Management: Manages billing account related operations during shopping flows and subsequent post-activation interactions.
• TMF671 Promotion Management: Integrates voucher management and personal campaign offerings during the shopping process.
• TMF676 Payment Method Management: Handles online and preauthorized payments.
• TMF680 Recommendation Management: Integrates to our shopping flow and customer self-care frontends to make personalized offers to the customers.
• TMF720 Digital Identity Management: Manages identities of individuals who use our BSS platform, as an employee, customer, end user or representative.