Open APIs

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  • 1.  How to support dynamic negotiation between Consumer and Provider of products?

    Posted Jun 05, 2023 05:50

    Hi,

      How can aspects such agreements or price be dynamically negotiated between a Consumer and a Provider?  What are the concrete APIs to use?

      We are pushing for adoption of TM Forum Open APIs within a large project that addresses how Products linked to Data Services (services for accessing data or processing data) can be monetised.  But, in order to be successful, we need to make sure

      Product/Service/Resource Catalog Management APIs, Product/Service/Resource Ordering Management APIs and Agreement Management APIs are perfect for covering use cases where a Provider registers concrete Product Specifications and Product Offerings around them in a Catalog and a Consumer just query what Product Offerings exist, select one that suits its needs and issue a Product Order.

      But how to implement use cases where the Consumer wants to negotiate the "default" or "base" offering of a Provider?

      Can this negotiation be implemented by means of letting a Consumer to create a Product Offering (attaching the agreements it wishes to get supported) so the Provider can return the actual Product Offering it is ready to support (confirming the terms that the Consumer was requesting or fine-tuning certain of these terms)?

      Or were the Quote Management and/or the Product Offering Qualification APIs designed for that purpose?  If so ... can someone explain how the kind of negotiation between Consumer and Providers commented above would be implemented using these APIs?

      Any help would be largely appreaciated.

      Best regards,

      Juanjo Hierro

      CTO, FIWARE Foundation

       

      



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    Juanjo Hierro
    FIWARE
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  • 2.  RE: How to support dynamic negotiation between Consumer and Provider of products?

    TM Forum Member
    Posted Nov 15, 2023 01:43

    Hi Juanjo

    I would definitely not recommend giving consumers (customers) write access to product catalog, under any circumstances.

    For really large, high-value customers, you could consider creating dedicated offerings and pricing schemes. And you could use qualification rules to ensure that only the target customers will be exposed to such. However this is not scalable for lower-end customers.

    Probably the most appropriate way to represent dedicated pricing is to use ad-hoc pricing overrides that are negotiated as part of the agreement and quotation process for business/enterprise customers.

    Hope it helps



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    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.
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  • 3.  RE: How to support dynamic negotiation between Consumer and Provider of products?

    TM Forum Member
    Posted Nov 16, 2023 06:16

    I would submit Juanjo, that it is highly unlikely that a service provider would allow consumers to negotiate their own terms as far as products are concerned - except in formal (person-to-person) negotiation.

    The way to implement flexibility in choosing a product in an automated world would be to create a 'base' product with a large number of options, expose all the 'options' to the customer and they use TMF679 to determine the feasibility (applying preset rules) of the options which provides feedback on incompatibilities (if they exist) and/or guidance and pricing (again determined dynamically). Then when the order is placed - the same set of preset rules need to be re-applied for validation purposes before accepting the order. In this way it should be possible to present the flexibility of the product(s) capabilities without having to modify the product catalog.

    Of course this approach also means that the revenue management has the capability of applying dynamic pricing plans that are outside of formal catalog specifications.



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    Pieter Eksteen
    Ciena Corporation
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  • 4.  RE: How to support dynamic negotiation between Consumer and Provider of products?

    Posted Nov 16, 2023 10:23
    Edited by Sri-Jagadish (Jag) Baddukonda Nov 16, 2023 10:25

    The right API for Quote negotiation is 648 and there is 679 for Qualification / configuration. The configuration is based on the product modelling that you adopt with the rules etc. How much of a configurable Market Offer that you want to implement is upto to you. But the boundary of the negotiation should be within the rules defined in the Catalog. And during the negotiation is it usually the PO and PS that come into play. 

     The above mentioned APIs do not enable price overrides and they should not either as that is not the purpose of these APIs:-)

    And as Jonathan said, we need to be careful to whom to give complete CRUD access to create new Offerings. Price overrides and custom pricing is different and has been implemented - but that should not result in a new PO. 

    Hope this helps. 



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    Sri-Jagadish (Jag) Baddukonda
    Bell Canada
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