<p>Copyright TM Forum 2006-2008<br/></p><p><br/></p><p><b>Overview</b><br/></p><p>The definition of a product is an item that satisfies a market's want or need.  Product / Service Catalog Management is the ability to create and maintain products that can be sold to customers in the target market.  More specifically, it is the ability to explicitly model the structure of a product, then create and centrally manage the instances (or "catalog") of products based upon that structure. Products are not always discreet, single items. A product can be a number of components associated together and sold as a single purchasable entity.  Therefore the product may be comprised of multiple components, tangible or intangible, such as services, features, devices, etc, that are "assembled" together to form a single sellable entity.  Some of the components within a product will be enabled by shared / common / reusable services (e.g., location finder).  Some of the components within a product will be enabled by shared / common / reusable resources (e.g., network exchange). These underlying services and resources may be managed by different parts of the organization.<br/></p><p>The Product Management organization is typically responsible for managing the Product / Service Catalogue through the assembly and update of products utilizing available components.<br/></p><p><br/></p><p><b>Functionality</b><br/></p><p>Key application functions of Product / Service Catalog Management are thus:<br/></p><p><ul><li>Contain the complete data model for the product structure entities and the relationships that govern the behavior of a product and its underlying components</li><br/></p><p><li>Create and maintain product instances based on the common product structure, to form the centralized product catalog</li><br/></p><p><li>Create and maintain the different components that can comprise a product</li><br/></p><p><li>Create and maintain the parent / child / peer relationships between components to formulate the complete product instance</li><br/></p><p><li>Reuse components in different product instances</li><br/></p><p><li>Create and maintain the logical representation of services</li><br/></p><p><li>Create and maintain the relationships between components and their underlying services and resources</li><br/></p><p><li>Provide the complete master view of the product instances to external functions / applications / etc</li><br/></p><p><li>End-to-end Product Data Management, which includes the activities and tools to manage and retain data on all products for a given enterprise.  While a data repository is key to supporting these activities, collaboration workspaces are also generally in use in this area as well.  These tend to be highly configurable information repositories, and are also generally supported by role based workflow engines. Navigation and search capabilities are prevalent in this area as well.  The functional groupings here may include (but will not be limited to):</li><br/></p><p><li>Product detailed specifications</li><br/></p><p><li>Product Bill of Materials (BOM)</li><br/></p><p><li>Contractual information</li><br/></p><p><li>Product historical information</li><br/></p><p><li>Document management</li><br/></p><p><li>Configuration management</li><br/></p><p><li>Engineering change management</li><br/></p><p><li>Interoperability and data integration with Product Catalog</li><br/></p><p></ul><br/></p><p>Typical Product Management applications may contain the following functions:<br/></p><p><ul><li>Products and services offered</li><br/></p><p><li>Product business hierarchy</li><br/></p><p><li>Commercial product hierarchy</li><br/></p><p><li>Rules relating to offers including pre-requisites and embellishment options, relationships with other offers and parameters</li><br/></p><p><li>Product/customer profile mapping</li><br/></p><p><li>Availability Rules</li><br/></p><p><li>Product / Service validity period</li><br/></p><p><li>Lifecycle of a product/ offer including its projected replacement date</li><br/></p><p><li>Service levels available.</li><br/></p><p></ul><br/></p><p>The financial catalog typically contains:<br/></p><p><ul><li>Rating attributes</li><br/></p><p><li>Tariff information</li><br/></p><p><li>Settlement information</li><br/></p><p><li>Service level information</li><br/></p><p><li>Billing and settlement attributes</li><br/></p><p><li>Tax rules (not customer specific)</li><br/></p><p><li>One time charges</li><br/></p><p><li>Recurring charges</li><br/></p><p><li>Settlement rules</li><br/></p><p><li>Discount information</li><br/></p><p><li>Contractual matters relating to offer (e.g. revenue sharing arrangements, service level agreements)</li><br/></p><p><li>Product Cost </li><br/></p><p><li>The Technical catalogue typically contains: Provisioning Information necessary to build the workflow to provision the services e.g. sequence in which service should be provisioned.</li><br/></p><p></ul><br/></p><p>The Physical catalogue typically contains: Physical equipment to be provided as part of an offering<br/></p><p><br/></p><p>The Product entity catalogue typically defines the relationship of a product / service to another product / service for the purpose of locating the products across the distributed databases. E.g. includes parent / child relationship of the hierarchy using a common reference ID for each of the product catalog locations.<br/></p><p><br/></p><p>Application services that should be available from the Product / Service Catalog Management capability of Product Management include the following:<br/></p><p><br/></p><p><b>Supported Contracts</b><br/></p><p><i>(Note: In this context the term Service is being used as an application service (i.e. API) and not the SID definition of Service as it pertains to telecommunications.)</i><br/></p><p><br/></p><p><ul><li>Get product offering/component effective duration: Retrieves product effective date information from the catalog based on input unique ID or other search criteria for product offering or product component.</li><br/></p><p><li>Get product offering/component sales availability duration: Retrieves product sales availability date information from the catalog based on input unique ID or other search criteria for product offering or product component.</li><br/></p><p><li>Get product offering/component characteristics: Retrieves product characteristic content information from the catalog based on input unique ID or other search criteria for product offering or product component, in addition to criteria to identify a characteristic.</li><br/></p><p><li>Get product offering/component characteristic duration: Retrieves product offering/component characteristic duration information from the catalog based on input unique ID or other search criteria for product offering or product component, in addition to criteria to identify a characteristic.</li><br/></p><p><li>Get product offering/component characteristic version: Retrieves product offering/component characteristic version information based on input unique ID or other search criteria for product offering or product component. Can be applied against prior or future versions of product offering/component characteristics.</li><br/></p><p><li>Get product offering/component pricing:  Retrieves product offering/component pricing information based on input unique ID or other search criteria for product offering or product component.</li><br/></p><p><li>Get product offering/component costing: Retrieves product offering/component cost information based on input unique ID or other search criteria for product offering or product component.</li><br/></p><p><li>Get product offering/component description: Retrieves product offering/component descriptive information based on input unique ID or other search criteria for product offering or product component.</li><br/></p><p><li>Get product offering/component structure: Retrieves product offering/component structural information (such as related/child product offering/components) based on input unique ID or other search criteria for product offering or product component.</li><br/></p><p><li>Get entities where product/component used: Retrieves other entities within the catalog (i.e. Tariffs, Discounts) based on input unique ID or other search criteria for product offering or product component.</li><br/></p><p><li>Get master product offering/component ID: Retrieves product catalog master ID based on input unique related ID or other search criteria for product offering or product component. This service is used to maintain product offering/component synchronization between other systems.</li><br/></p><p><li>Get campaigns which relate to product offering/component offering: Retrieves Campaigns within the catalog based on input unique ID or other search criteria for product offering or product component.</li><br/></p><p><li>Get discounts which relate to product offering/component offering: Retrieves Discounts within the catalog based on input unique ID or other search criteria for product offering or product component.</li><br/></p><p><li>Check operational compatibility (between product offering/component):  Determines whether two product offering/components are compatible from an operational standpoint, based on input of multiple input unique IDs or other search criteria for product offerings or product components.</li><br/></p><p><li>Check customer compatibility (between product offerings/components and customer): Determines whether a customer and a product offering/component are compatible based on input of input unique ID or other search criteria for product offerings or product components and customer attributes.</li><br/></p><p><li>Get product offering/component SLA: Retrieves Service Level Agreement from the catalog based on input unique ID or other search criteria for product offering or product component.</li><br/></p><p><li>Get product offering/component BOM: Retrieves Bill of Materials list from the catalog based on input unique ID or other search criteria for product offering or product component.</li><br/></p><p><li>Get available product offering/component contracts: Retrieves associated Contracts from the catalog based on input unique ID or other search criteria for product offering or product component.</li><br/></p><p></ul><br/></p>