Technical description
The Business Process Framework – known widely as eTOM – shines as a widely deployed and accepted model and framework for business processes in the communications industry. As a key part of TM Forum's Solution Frameworks (NGOSS), the Business Process Framework represents the whole of a Service Provider/Operator's enterprise environment in a hierarchy of process elements that capture process detail at various levels. At the overall conceptual level, the framework can be viewed as having the following three major process areas:

• Strategy, Infrastructure and Product, covering planning and lifecycle management;
• Operations, covering the core of operational management;
• Enterprise Management, covering corporate or business support management.

The process structure in the framework uses hierarchical decomposition, so that the business processes of the enterprise are successively decomposed in a series of levels. Process descriptions, inputs and outputs, as well as other key elements are defined. The process modeling depicts process flows in a vertical 'swim-lane' approach, which drives end-to-end process and process flow-through among the customer and the supporting services, resources and supplier/partners.

The framework can be used as a tool for analyzing an organization’s existing processes and for developing new processes. Often, it helps to reveal instances in which different processes deliver the same business functionality, which helps to eliminate duplication and uncover gaps. That can expedite new process design and reduce variances. Using the framework, enteprises can assess the value, cost and performance of individual processes within their organizations.

The Buisness Process Framework has been incorporated into ITU-T Recommendation M.3050 and has been approved and published by the ITU-T as a new international standard.

The Link with ITIL
The itSMF ITIL (originally, the IT Infrastructure Library) and the Business Process Framework offer separate perspectives for defining business processes that can be used by enterprises. Though they have grown out of different backgrounds, enterprises increasingly see benefits in integrating the strengths of the two frameworks.

In the Information and Communications Services Industry, Service Providers/Operators are delivering more ICT services and they can make use of both approaches.  Other organizations are also seeing a need to bring their IT and Business aspects closer together. As such, they are integrating ITIL and the TM Forum's Business Process Framework.

TM Forum, together with the itSMF and the ITIL community have been working for some time to analyze and define an integrated framework that leverages both areas. This working party has delivered a recent report, TR143, which is a joint study by TM Forum and itSMF on integrating ITIL and eTOM. Building on that, the Business Process Framework has now embedded direct support for ITIL processes, and a Release 8.0 of the Business Process Framework (with this embedded ITIL support) is being readied for publication in the present.