<p>Copyright TM Forum 2006<br/></p><p><br/></p><p><b>Overview</b><br/></p><p>In the next generation telecom scenario, collaboration is the key to successful delivery of value added services and retention of customers. The telecom operators form horizontal and vertical revenue sharing relationships with players like other telecom operators, content providers, and regulatory bodies.<br/></p><p><br/></p><p>Most of the service providers now bring in a lot of products from partners to add to their service portfolio, so that customers can choose from a wide array to their preference and benefit.  The service providers can also form channel partners through which they can offer their products to other markets where they don't have any direct access. As the market is getting polarized to service providers and customer owners, partnerships are going to be the key. Virtual world is opening up with increasing operations of players like MVNO's, extending services or products from other parties to their customers leveraging their brand power and customer access. Hence horizontal and vertical value chain integration is going to be a vital part of the consolidation and convergence strategy of any service provider. In the online content and commerce world, the length of value chain could go on to include content providers, brokers, intermediaries, network operators, payment processing entities, banks and so on. Revenue from the end customer needs to be shared among these value chain entities based on pre-defined agreements. Sometimes the revenue settlement process has to be done in real-time so that final transaction can be validated and output delivered to the end customer.<br/></p><p><br/></p><p><b>Functionality</b><br/></p><p>A partner management application mainly does functions like<br/></p><p><ul><li>Partner definition and hierarchy management</li><br/></p><p><li>Pre-defined revenue sharing agreements and variation rules</li><br/></p><p><li>Agreement definition for each service, product, channel or location</li><br/></p><p><li>Direct and indirect settlement</li><br/></p><p><li>Real-time settlement</li><br/></p><p><li>Drill down reconciliation at summary and detailed levels</li><br/></p><p><li>Partner event processing and revenue share accounting</li><br/></p><p><li>Partner payment handling</li><br/></p><p></ul><br/></p><p><b>Supported Contracts</b><br/></p><p><i>To Be Added</i><br/></p>