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  • 1.  how can TMF620 represent DistributionChannel-specific POP?

    Posted Jun 29, 2022 13:28
    Hi,
    The context is as follow:
    The CSP create Product Offerings (PO) and its resellers choose what PO they want to sell to their own customers. Reseller also decide the Product Offering Price (POP).

    According to SID, I should use the DistributionChannel entity to represent the reseller.
    but SID is unclear about what this entity is.
    GB922 (word document) says:
    An enterprise puts ProductOfferings into the marketplace by developing and maintaining a catalog of ProductOfferings across one or more (market) DistributionChannels...
    GB922 (excel document) says:
    A distribution channel is the organization or entity by which a product catalog is presented to a customer.​

    TM Forum said in the community:

    at some point (R 17.5) the DistributionChannel entity (in the Product Offering ABE) will be merged with the SalesChannel entity.

    Outside TM Forum, we often see this definition:

    A distribution channel is the path used to get a product from the manufacturer or creator to the end user


    I couldn't figure out how to model a reseller in SID so I opted for this approach: reseller = a Party with an associated Partyrole.
    This allows me to connect the POP to the reseller as shown in the diagram below.
    Is there a better way to model resellers in SID, I'd love to hear about it.

    but my biggest challenge with resellers is  how to the API will present reseller-specific price.

    Below is an example:
    LEFT: our PO, POP and resellers/partyrole
    RIGHT: representation from TMF620 API (to construct that representation, multiple calls are needed: get catalog->get category->get PO->get POPs).
    I don't see how the API will associate the POP with the reseller.
     "Get PO" returns 2 associated POPs, each POP is connected to a Place. But Place doesn't connect back to the reseller.
    What am I missing?




    Thank you!
    ​

    ------------------------------
    Kind regards,

    Matthieu Hattab
    Lyse Platform
    ------------------------------


  • 2.  RE: how can TMF620 represent DistributionChannel-specific POP?

    Posted Jun 30, 2022 11:23
    Wouldn't this be the Channel - existing relationship on product offering? If you wanted to have multiple prices on the same offering, you could extend the model to add channel also to product offering price, and filter at runtime.
    Hope it helps

    ------------------------------
    Jonathan Goldberg
    Amdocs Management Limited
    Any opinions and statements made by me on this forum are purely personal, and do not necessarily reflect the position of the TM Forum or my employer.
    ------------------------------



  • 3.  RE: how can TMF620 represent DistributionChannel-specific POP?

    Posted Jul 01, 2022 06:46
    Edited by Matthieu Hattab Jul 01, 2022 08:40
    Hi Jonathan,

    "Channel" (and its numerous variations) is another term whose definition varies across TMF assets (SID, API)
    but in the API doc, channel sub-resource has referredType = salesChannel and the API output examples (e.g. Online Channel) confirm that.
    GB994 is the guide dedicated to channels.
    Channel is defined as mediums used to interact with leads and customer to perform marketing/advertising, sales or care activities.

    I don't believe "channel" can work here. My intuition is that resellers should be modelled as Party with a party role. that party role could have the name "distibutionchannel" and/or have an association with the distibutionchannel business entity.

    One of ODA benefit is to better enable "B2B2X" where multiple parties play different roles, notably in selling product offerings.

    Another member suggested me to create as many PO as resellers so the PO could have one POP that the reseller define. That's technically feasible but it's not ideal to multiply the POs just because reseller have different prices.

    Should we extend the API and add a sub-ressource below the PlaceRef called RelatedParty? 
    Could I then query the POP and add a filter (reseller id) in this sub-sub ressource?

    ------------------------------
    Kind regards,

    Matthieu Hattab
    Lyse Platform
    ------------------------------

    Original Message


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