Service quality management solutions
To support your business objectives
Deliver optimal service quality and experience
to drive world-class customer satisfaction.
Highlights
Rapidly assess the impact of events
on availability and performance,
using real-time dashboards that
correlate business and technology
service indicators
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Traditionally, telecommunications
Using existing tools, providers are chal-
providers evaluate service using
lenged to rapidly and cost-effectively
metrics about the underlying network
resolve all the different service prob-
infrastructure to derive an indication
lems that can arise. Implementing
of the overall health of each revenue-
piecemeal solutions can help in the
generating service they deliver. But
short run. But as new services emerge,
as technologies mature, the types of
point solutions soon become costly and
Offer SLAs to manage internal,
customer and third-party service
quality as you uncover root causes
of quality issues throughout the
service path
available services rise sharply.
unwieldy. And even if providers have
Manage the customer experience
insightfully, using detailed analysis
of the experiences individual
subscribers have while using
your service
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Deliver value throughout the
enterprise by sharing important
service quality and customer
information with multiple lines
of business

Leverage modular architecture
to address urgent service quality
management needs immediately,
while building a business case for
future enhancements
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tools to measure performance, availBecause today’s services are highly
ability and quality of the network and
complex, and run over virtual network
its services, most still lack an under-
paths, they are no longer closely tied
standing of each subscriber’s actual
to individual pieces of infrastructure
service experience.
hardware. As a result, providers need
a different approach and a different
That’s where a service quality manage-
set of tools to understand service
ment solution from IBM can help. An
quality and the customer experience.
end-to-end, integrated approach, the
So, providers not only have to incorpo-
service quality management solu-
rate new technologies to launch new
tion is designed to address the broad
services — they must employ new tech-
range of telecommunications providers’
niques to measure the distinct metrics
requirements for managing both service
of each.
quality and the customer experience.
This modular, automated solution is
built on a common platform that incor-
Tivoli service quality management solution functional architecture
porates broad information from network,
service, IT, transactional and opera-
ds and reports
Dashboar
tional data sources. You can implement
SLA and service
performance
management
the solution’s three components —
Real-time
service status
monitoring
real-time service status monitoring,
service level agreement (SLA) and
Customer
experience
management
service performance management,
and customer experience manage-
Off-the-shelf
service models
ment — separately or in combination,
depending on your budget and needs.
Incorporating performance metrics,
alarms, test results and system statistics, the service quality management
Open, flexible
interfaces for
integration with
third-party OSS
Historical, real-time and
predictive service analytics
Prioritization
and root-cause
analysis
solution from IBM helps your efforts to
Value-added
integration with
broad Tivoli Service
Management portfolio
assure optimal availability, health and
quality of service — across devices,
networks, regions and customers.
Use the solution to:
Broad network, service, IT, transactional and operational data source support
Tivoli service quality management solution uses your network data to model network services and present
the results in real-time, historical and customer-centric dashboards.
• View combined business and technology service
indicators to quickly determine the impact of
Monitor and manage service status
business support systems that define
events on availability and performance.
in real time
a particular service. It then displays
Rather than manually piecing together
information through business and oper-
out the service path, while helping your efforts
information from multiple components
ational dashboards tailored to specific
to maintain aggregate service levels and SLAs.
to evaluate a business service, you
organizational roles.
• Discover root causes of quality issues through-
• Get a detailed understanding of the individual
can use real-time service status moni-
subscriber experience combined with broader
toring technology to quickly assess
The solution automatically monitors,
service quality trends.
the impact of events on performance
collects and analyzes events and
or availability. Built on technology from
dependencies from virtually any legacy
• Share service quality and customer information
across multiple business units.
®
the IBM Tivoli
Netcool®
service quality
or next-generation IBM or third-party
family, the real-time service status
application, system or tool. So you can
address initial needs cost-effectively, then
monitoring component pulls information
proactively manage voice, video, data
expand as your requirements evolve.
from a broad array of resources and
• Invest in modular architecture to help you
2
and other services, as well as businessrelated assets that track transactions,
revenue or operational indicators. Use
this component to help you:
• Take proactive action based on real-time indicators about the status of network services.
• Drive service management efficiencies across
the enterprise using dashboards, prioritization
and monitoring capabilities.
• Reveal a better understanding of the complex
relationships between business services and
supporting technology.
• Customize dashboards by user to include any
mix of views, such as scorecards, process
workflow diagrams, custom gauges, charts and
graphs, or geographic and location maps.
No matter where information is stored,
real-time service status monitoring technology can turn technical details into
actionable intelligence. As you discover,
detect changes and update the full
range (Layers 1-7) of your service
model, you can drive efficiency and
accuracy throughout your business.
Distinguish your business from competitors
by delivering superior service
To attract and retain high-value
customers, you must be able to differentiate your offerings based on quality.
Yet the quality of services delivered
to customers depends on a broad
set of underpinning services, such as
The real-time service navigator capabilities combine a browser-style navigation tool with spreadsheet-style
data presentation. Users access an instant view of key data metrics and the expand-and-collapse feature
enables representation of complete, complex models in a single window.
network bearer, customer care, third-
third-party SLAs. It also uses cross-
party content and others. To accurately
functional modeling of services drawn
measure end-customer quality and
from multiple data sources to deliver
isolate problems, you must first be able
complex key quality indicators (KQIs).
to assess and manage the quality of
each underlying service.
As your infrastructure reports against
agreed-upon thresholds, it warns
Rather than depend on labor-intensive
appropriate personnel if threshold
data collection and error analysis
breaches are imminent. It can help
of old reports, the SLA and service
your efforts to support promises
performance management component
of high-quality service delivery by
automatically discovers and analyzes
comprehensively managing internal,
the key causes of quality issues as
external and third-party SLAs written
they occur throughout your service
against your quality targets. For
path. Using capabilities from the Tivoli
example, operations can more effec-
Netcool service quality family, this
tively manage the quality of services
technology highlights key performance
delivered over fixed, wireless and IP
indicators (KPIs) about service quality
networks in the critical early stages of
and trends by comparing current and
rollouts. And management can enforce
historical quality levels with estab-
SLAs with your third-party video-on-
lished targets for internal, external and
demand service provider for Internet
3
Protocol television (IP-TV) service. Use
the solution to:
The service quality management solution in action
Network Operations Center (NOC) engineers notice a service alarm, but they can’t determine the
• Rapidly identify the source of each service
impact or the affected customers using ordinary alarm screens. The service manager, however, has
issue through powerful root-cause analysis with
a real-time service status display that pinpoints an issue on Short Message Service (SMS) where
impact analysis and explosive drill-down capa-
the Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) tunnel was carrying a content provider’s link to the SMS
bilities to the network element counter level.
Center (SMSC).
• Prioritize day-to-day operations — including
problem resolution — based on internal SLAs,
Because red SMS and SMS share-tracking service lights indicate a significant problem, the service
enterprise SLAs, third-party SLAs or other busi-
manager informs the SMS product manager, who alerts marketing. Throughout the event, dash-
ness priorities.
boards let customer and account teams track service availability and quality, and keep managers
informed with up-to-date status reports.
Understand the individual subscriber
experience in context with broader
The service manager analyzes the impact. First, he checks corporate accounts. Three major enter-
service quality trends
prise customers with SLAs show a warning status. An online bank client offers the SMS service as
Getting an accurate, detailed under-
a paid-for option, and its contract requires that senior management be informed within the hour. The
standing of an individual’s service
service manager immediately contacts the bank’s management and the corporate account manager.
experience can be difficult — except
when users make the effort to complain.
Next, the service manager checks the impact on the customer experience. The IP network is resilient,
With the service quality management
so the MPLS path is being restored rapidly. However, the network-wide event clearly caused many
solution from IBM, you can get an
customers to lose service, so the service manager:
outside-in look from the customer’s
perspective and get to know your
• Contacts the customer care manager so he can prepare a response for customers.
customers like never before.
• Raises a ticket (automatically populated with data) to record the issue and the affected customers.
• Runs a report so the billing department can initiate contractual refunds.
The customer experience management component provides a detailed
After the MPLS path restores itself, customer impacts are detected and service metrics are collected,
analysis of each individual subscriber’s
the light for the SMS service returns to yellow. It will not turn green until metrics and transaction
experience, correlated back to broader
reports confirm that there is no further service impact or customer experience degradation.
service quality trends that affect multiple
business processes. Using capabilities
from the Tivoli Netcool service quality
family, this component monitors individual subscriber transactions with
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service quality aggregated by service,
quickly identify the specific issues a
The solution supports multiple orga-
location, time, subscriber group and
subscriber is experiencing when he
nizational roles and lines of business,
device. Through intelligent, multidi-
calls to report video delays. Then, they
including customer care, network and
mensional analytics, it can help you
can determine whether it’s a unique
service operations, account manage-
understand customer behaviors across
problem that needs to be escalated —
ment, marketing and management.
these dimensions as a way to pinpoint
or, whether it’s already being addressed
Role-based interfaces integrate service
problems and proactively manage the
as part of a broader service quality
quality data with these business
customer relationship.
issue. The result? It can enable you to
processes in a meaningful, actionable
provide more effective responses to
way. For example, the solution can help:
Consider modern packet-based services
customers — and help you attract and
which are quite robust, with consistent
retain clients who will settle for nothing
rates of packet drops and errors. These
less than uncompromised excellence.
• Market and product managers generate more
targeted offers for new products and services
using information about service uptake, service
services, however, are vulnerable to
sudden timing delays. Traditional metrics
Integrate service quality data with business
at Customer Premises Equipment (CPE)
processes across your organization
interfaces — usually collected over
Service quality is a broad-reaching
impacting issues, share critical network
15-minute intervals — will lose these
factor that affects not only customers,
information with customer care and invest
short-period errors in the larger periods
but also your own business welfare.
for the largest quality payback.
of normal behavior. Such metrics also do
With the service quality management
not identify which services are impacted.
solution from IBM, dynamic monitoring
and robust reporting tools give you
revenue and cost of delivery.
• Network operations prioritize customer-
• Enterprise sales offer SLAs to key corporate
users, based on accurate network data.
• Customer care respond to customers with better
While Internet browsing and e-mail can
access to rich data that can help you
tolerate a relatively high packet failure
decide which actions to take and when,
rate, Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP)
based on revenue-impacting perfor-
customer retention and organizational perfor-
telephony cannot. So monitoring the
mance metrics.
mance to improve business performance.
information about outages and repairs.
• Senior managers leverage information about
user traffic for real indications of service
interruption, such as session aborts,
For example, based on the relative
Address your most pressing needs first
provides a much better indication of the
importance of different customers
and expand as your requirements grow
user experience than you can obtain
to your business, you can prioritize
The service quality management
through traditional metrics.
the business impact of current and
solution from IBM offers a modular
future service impairments for specific
approach built on a unified, integrated
Using customer experience manage-
customer segments. Then, establish
platform that provides a variety of
ment technology can help your
business processes that take these
ways to help you execute your service
customer care representatives to
factors into account.
5
quality management initiative. Built on
to the individual customer, contact your
open, scalable architecture, the solu-
IBM representative or IBM Business
tion includes multiple off-the-shelf,
Partner, or visit ibm.com/tivoli/
service-specific components that are
solutions/service-quality-mgmt-tele/
preconfigured to ease introduction into
your portfolio — time after time. These
About Tivoli software from IBM
include extensive service models for
Tivoli software provides a set of offer-
IP-TV, VoIP, IP Virtual Private Network
ings and capabilities in support of
(IP-VPN), BlackBerry, General Packet
IBM Service Management, a scal-
Radio Service (GPRS) and i-mode.
able, modular approach used to
deliver more efficient and effective
With the solution’s extensive function-
services to your business. Helping
ality and depth of intelligence, it can
meet the needs of any size business,
help you rapidly identify and resolve
Tivoli software enables you to deliver
problems to keep customers happy
service excellence in support of your
and drive profitability and growth. By
business objectives through integra-
understanding the interrelated metrics
tion and automation of processes,
of technologies, revenue-generating
workflows and tasks. The security-rich,
services and your internal business
open standards–based Tivoli service
processes, you can achieve vastly
management platform is complemented
different outcomes — like prioritization
by proactive operational management
of network issues based on impact,
solutions that provide end-to-end visi-
more appropriately managed commu-
bility and control. It is also backed by
nications and an overall boost in your
world-class IBM Services, IBM Support
standards for proactive customer care.
and an active ecosystem of IBM
© Copyright IBM Corporation 2007
IBM Corporation
Software Group
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U.S.A.
Produced in the United States of America
December 2007
All Rights Reserved
IBM, the IBM logo, Netcool and Tivoli are
trademarks of International Business Machines
Corporation in the United States, other countries
or both.
Other company, product and service names may
be trademarks or service marks of others.
Disclaimer: The customer is responsible for
ensuring compliance with legal requirements.
It is the customer’s sole responsibility to obtain
advice of competent legal counsel as to the
identification and interpretation of any relevant laws
and regulatory requirements that may affect the
customer’s business and any actions the reader
may have to take to comply with such laws. IBM
does not provide legal advice or represent or
warrant that its services or products will ensure
that the customer is in compliance with any law
or regulation.
Business Partners. Tivoli customers and
For more information
business partners can also leverage
For more information about how your
each other’s best practices by partici-
organization can use the service quality
pating in independently run IBM Tivoli
management solution from IBM to make
User Groups around the world — visit
a dramatic leap forward in assuring top-
www.tivoli-ug.org
notch service quality from the network
TIS14012-USEN-00