What's the difference between a household and a small business?

This post was originally posted on the TM Forum Inform portal on 23 September 2015

Not so long ago retail telecommunications customers had a single telephone number for a single line tied to a residential address with a single product/service associated. As far as the service provider was concerned, the customer and the household were synonymous with the phone number.
But for a small or medium enterprise (SME), the setup was different. There could be multiple phone lines possibly going to multiple addresses, a PBX, and services like hunting groups and call pick-up as well as the more conventional phone services.
Things started to change when retail customers began using the phone line for Internet and email – using technology like DSL rather than the old dial-up modems – in addition to making and receiving phone calls. This slow shift wasn’t too difficult to deal with for the service providers and some even managed to get the two services on a single bill.

The era of the digital ecosystem

Jump ahead ten or so years to the era of the ‘digital ecosystem’, and we have homes that have fixed-line connections capable of delivering high-speed broadband services that are consumed as streaming video and cloud services, as well as the more traditional phone, Internet and email services. On top of that households may also have digital TV set-top box and multiple 4G devices including tablets and phones. Now the cracks in the service providers’ approach to dealing with the household as if it were a single phone number with a single customer begins to show, and in fact are much more like yawning chasms than cracks!
The problems of getting all these services on a single bill the customer is trivial compared to the other aspects of the evolution of the digital ecosystem. ‘Customer’ is no longer synonymous with a (single) phone number, and the users of the 4G and Internet-enabled devices want to be able to seamlessly move services from one device to another. This means that all the devices must be related and integrated in some way, but frankly that’s just a technical problem.

What is a lot more complex for the service provider is the realization that the customer paradigm has to change.

First of all, it is not easy to say who the retail customer is, and she/he certainly is no longer just a phone number. In a typical household, someone plays the role of the primary customer, the person responsible for buying and paying for the services – the CFO of the household, if you like. But there can be multiple customers, each paying one or more bills representing portions of shared services. For example, Dad may pay for the cable TV while the teenage kids pay for the sports channel adding to the complexity.
Secondly, there are also administrators in the household who choose and administer individual products and services, the home-sysadmin, if you like. But this role can change from person to person depending on the product, and often the end users or consumers of the services are allowed to different things depending on the policy set by the home security admin (for example, no Internet after bedtime or access to adult sites) and enforced by services such as smart firewalls and certification/classification policies.

How to manage multiple roles?

Nowadays there is very little difference between a household and an SME but few service providers acknowledge this, and even if they do, how can they manage it all?
I’ve tried to help several service providers tackle this problem. They thought it was all about family and the actual relationships between the members of the household – Who is the dad? Who is the mum? Who are the kids? But what about Auntie Jean and Granny, and what about the au pair? How do these people fit into the picture, and what happens when little Katie moves out to go to college or perhaps when Mum and Dad separate?

The relationships between the people making up the household are in reality about as relevant to a service provider as the departmental structure or the shareholders and members of the board of an SME or large enterprise. What service providers must realize is that these ‘real world’ relationships are irrelevant, or if they are relevant it is not the role of the customer relationship management (CRM) system to manage them; it’s the responsibility of the account manager.

Households are organizations and the roles within the household are as dynamic as in any business.  To manage this complexity, the service provider must:

1. Realize that the actual relationships between the parties are generally irrelevant except perhaps the roles of ‘responsible adult’ and ‘minor’;
2. Capture the functional roles such as Customer, Bill Payer and User and match these, where necessary, back to named (or even un-named) individuals; and
3. Record and deliver services in line with the involvement roles such as Chooser, Admin, Consumer that are set at the product level, more often than not by the parties within the household themselves.

The final step is perhaps perceived as the most complex, but in most multi-user products this is already handled by usernames and roles and things like single sign-on. All that needs to be done is to ensure that the customer service assurance and CRM systems have some kind of drill-through to the product so that any problems can be sorted out through a remote login.

Frameworx can help

The Frameworx Information Model (SID) already has all the structures defined that support these advanced concepts. Functional Roles are Party Roles that define the static roles played by individuals or people in relationship to a Customer Account. Involvement roles are also in the Information Model – an Involvement role can be played by a Party Role or a Resource Role, and Involvement Roles can be associated with Products, Services or Resources (customer premises equipment, for example) and these Involvement Roles can be linked to identities (usernames).
So what’s the difference between a household and a small business? The answer is not a lot. They are both complex organizations that need to be managed as such, but Frameworx is already configured to support this complexity.
- See more at: http://inform.tmforum.org/features-and-analysis/featured/2015/09/whats-the-difference-between-a-household-and-a-small-business/#sthash.QiESgSQ2.dpuf

Not so long ago retail telecommunications customers had a single telephone number for a single line tied to a residential address with a single product/service associated. As far as the service provider was concerned, the customer and the household were synonymous with the phone number.
But for a small or medium enterprise (SME), the setup was different. There could be multiple phone lines possibly going to multiple addresses, a PBX, and services like hunting groups and call pick-up as well as the more conventional phone services.
Things started to change when retail customers began using the phone line for Internet and email – using technology like DSL rather than the old dial-up modems – in addition to making and receiving phone calls. This slow shift wasn’t too difficult to deal with for the service providers and some even managed to get the two services on a single bill.

The era of the digital ecosystem

Jump ahead ten or so years to the era of the ‘digital ecosystem’, and we have homes that have fixed-line connections capable of delivering high-speed broadband services that are consumed as streaming video and cloud services, as well as the more traditional phone, Internet and email services. On top of that households may also have digital TV set-top box and multiple 4G devices including tablets and phones. Now the cracks in the service providers’ approach to dealing with the household as if it were a single phone number with a single customer begins to show, and in fact are much more like yawning chasms than cracks!
The problems of getting all these services on a single bill the customer is trivial compared to the other aspects of the evolution of the digital ecosystem. ‘Customer’ is no longer synonymous with a (single) phone number, and the users of the 4G and Internet-enabled devices want to be able to seamlessly move services from one device to another. This means that all the devices must be related and integrated in some way, but frankly that’s just a technical problem.

What is a lot more complex for the service provider is the realization that the customer paradigm has to change.

First of all, it is not easy to say who the retail customer is, and she/he certainly is no longer just a phone number. In a typical household, someone plays the role of the primary customer, the person responsible for buying and paying for the services – the CFO of the household, if you like. But there can be multiple customers, each paying one or more bills representing portions of shared services. For example, Dad may pay for the cable TV while the teenage kids pay for the sports channel adding to the complexity.
Secondly, there are also administrators in the household who choose and administer individual products and services, the home-sysadmin, if you like. But this role can change from person to person depending on the product, and often the end users or consumers of the services are allowed to different things depending on the policy set by the home security admin (for example, no Internet after bedtime or access to adult sites) and enforced by services such as smart firewalls and certification/classification policies.

How to manage multiple roles?

Nowadays there is very little difference between a household and an SME but few service providers acknowledge this, and even if they do, how can they manage it all?
I’ve tried to help several service providers tackle this problem. They thought it was all about family and the actual relationships between the members of the household – Who is the dad? Who is the mum? Who are the kids? But what about Auntie Jean and Granny, and what about the au pair? How do these people fit into the picture, and what happens when little Katie moves out to go to college or perhaps when Mum and Dad separate?

The relationships between the people making up the household are in reality about as relevant to a service provider as the departmental structure or the shareholders and members of the board of an SME or large enterprise. What service providers must realize is that these ‘real world’ relationships are irrelevant, or if they are relevant it is not the role of the customer relationship management (CRM) system to manage them; it’s the responsibility of the account manager.

Households are organizations and the roles within the household are as dynamic as in any business.  To manage this complexity, the service provider must:

1. Realize that the actual relationships between the parties are generally irrelevant except perhaps the roles of ‘responsible adult’ and ‘minor’;
2. Capture the functional roles such as Customer, Bill Payer and User and match these, where necessary, back to named (or even un-named) individuals; and
3. Record and deliver services in line with the involvement roles such as Chooser, Admin, Consumer that are set at the product level, more often than not by the parties within the household themselves.

The final step is perhaps perceived as the most complex, but in most multi-user products this is already handled by usernames and roles and things like single sign-on. All that needs to be done is to ensure that the customer service assurance and CRM systems have some kind of drill-through to the product so that any problems can be sorted out through a remote login.

Frameworx can help

The Frameworx Information Model (SID) already has all the structures defined that support these advanced concepts. Functional Roles are Party Roles that define the static roles played by individuals or people in relationship to a Customer Account. Involvement roles are also in the Information Model – an Involvement role can be played by a Party Role or a Resource Role, and Involvement Roles can be associated with Products, Services or Resources (customer premises equipment, for example) and these Involvement Roles can be linked to identities (usernames).
So what’s the difference between a household and a small business? The answer is not a lot. They are both complex organizations that need to be managed as such, but Frameworx is already configured to support this complexity.
- See more at: http://inform.tmforum.org/features-and-analysis/featured/2015/09/whats-the-difference-between-a-household-and-a-small-business/#sthash.QiESgSQ2.dpuf

Not so long ago retail telecommunications customers had a single telephone number for a single line tied to a residential address with a single product/service associated. As far as the service provider was concerned, the customer and the household were synonymous with the phone number.

But for a small or medium enterprise (SME), the setup was different. There could be multiple phone lines possibly going to multiple addresses, a PBX, and services like hunting groups and call pick-up as well as the more conventional phone services.

Things started to change when retail customers began using the phone line for Internet and email – using technology like DSL rather than the old dial-up modems – in addition to making and receiving phone calls. This slow shift wasn’t too difficult to deal with for the service providers and some even managed to get the two services on a single bill.

The era of the digital ecosystem

Jump ahead ten or so years to the era of the ‘digital ecosystem’, and we have homes that have fixed-line connections capable of delivering high-speed broadband services that are consumed as streaming video and cloud services, as well as the more traditional phone, Internet and email services. On top of that households may also have digital TV set-top box and multiple 4G devices including tablets and phones. Now the cracks in the service providers’ approach to dealing with the household as if it were a single phone number with a single customer begins to show, and in fact are much more like yawning chasms than cracks!

The problems of getting all these services on a single bill the customer is trivial compared to the other aspects of the evolution of the digital ecosystem. ‘Customer’ is no longer synonymous with a (single) phone number, and the users of the 4G and Internet-enabled devices want to be able to seamlessly move services from one device to another. This means that all the devices must be related and integrated in some way, but frankly that’s just a technical problem.

What is a lot more complex for the service provider is the realization that the customer paradigm has to change.

First of all, it is not easy to say who the retail customer is, and she/he certainly is no longer just a phone number. In a typical household, someone plays the role of the primary customer, the person responsible for buying and paying for the services – the CFO of the household, if you like. But there can be multiple customers, each paying one or more bills representing portions of shared services. For example, Dad may pay for the cable TV while the teenage kids pay for the sports channel adding to the complexity.

Secondly, there are also administrators in the household who choose and administer individual products and services, the home-sysadmin, if you like. But this role can change from person to person depending on the product, and often the end users or consumers of the services are allowed to different things depending on the policy set by the home security admin (for example, no Internet after bedtime or access to adult sites) and enforced by services such as smart firewalls and certification/classification policies.

How to manage multiple roles?

Nowadays there is very little difference between a household and an SME but few service providers acknowledge this, and even if they do, how can they manage it all?

I’ve tried to help several service providers tackle this problem. They thought it was all about family and the actual relationships between the members of the household – Who is the dad? Who is the mum? Who are the kids? But what about Auntie Jean and Granny, and what about the au pair? How do these people fit into the picture, and what happens when little Katie moves out to go to college or perhaps when Mum and Dad separate?

The relationships between the people making up the household are in reality about as relevant to a service provider as the departmental structure or the shareholders and members of the board of an SME or large enterprise. What service providers must realize is that these ‘real world’ relationships are irrelevant, or if they are relevant it is not the role of the customer relationship management (CRM) system to manage them; it’s the responsibility of the account manager.

Households are organizations and the roles within the household are as dynamic as in any business.  To manage this complexity, the service provider must:

1.  Realize that the actual relationships between the parties are generally irrelevant except perhaps the roles of ‘responsible adult’ and ‘minor’;
2. Capture the functional roles such as Customer, Bill Payer and User and match these, where necessary, back to named (or even un-named) individuals; and
3.  Record and deliver services in line with the involvement roles such as Chooser, Admin, Consumer that are set at the product level, more often than not by the parties within the household themselves.

The final step is perhaps perceived as the most complex, but in most multi-user products this is already handled by usernames and roles and things like single sign-on. All that needs to be done is to ensure that the customer service assurance and CRM systems have some kind of drill-through to the product so that any problems can be sorted out through a remote login.

Frameworx can help

The Frameworx Information Model (SID) already has all the structures defined that support these advanced concepts. Functional Roles are Party Roles that define the static roles played by individuals or people in relationship to a Customer Account. Involvement roles are also in the Information Model – an Involvement role can be played by a Party Role or a Resource Role, and Involvement Roles can be associated with Products, Services or Resources (customer premises equipment, for example) and these Involvement Roles can be linked to identities (usernames).

So what’s the difference between a household and a small business? The answer is not a lot. They are both complex organizations that need to be managed as such, but Frameworx is already configured to support this complexity.

Not so long ago retail telecommunications customers had a single telephone number for a single line tied to a residential address with a single product/service associated. As far as the service provider was concerned, the customer and the household were synonymous with the phone number.
But for a small or medium enterprise (SME), the setup was different. There could be multiple phone lines possibly going to multiple addresses, a PBX, and services like hunting groups and call pick-up as well as the more conventional phone services.
Things started to change when retail customers began using the phone line for Internet and email – using technology like DSL rather than the old dial-up modems – in addition to making and receiving phone calls. This slow shift wasn’t too difficult to deal with for the service providers and some even managed to get the two services on a single bill.

The era of the digital ecosystem

Jump ahead ten or so years to the era of the ‘digital ecosystem’, and we have homes that have fixed-line connections capable of delivering high-speed broadband services that are consumed as streaming video and cloud services, as well as the more traditional phone, Internet and email services. On top of that households may also have digital TV set-top box and multiple 4G devices including tablets and phones. Now the cracks in the service providers’ approach to dealing with the household as if it were a single phone number with a single customer begins to show, and in fact are much more like yawning chasms than cracks!
The problems of getting all these services on a single bill the customer is trivial compared to the other aspects of the evolution of the digital ecosystem. ‘Customer’ is no longer synonymous with a (single) phone number, and the users of the 4G and Internet-enabled devices want to be able to seamlessly move services from one device to another. This means that all the devices must be related and integrated in some way, but frankly that’s just a technical problem.

What is a lot more complex for the service provider is the realization that the customer paradigm has to change.

First of all, it is not easy to say who the retail customer is, and she/he certainly is no longer just a phone number. In a typical household, someone plays the role of the primary customer, the person responsible for buying and paying for the services – the CFO of the household, if you like. But there can be multiple customers, each paying one or more bills representing portions of shared services. For example, Dad may pay for the cable TV while the teenage kids pay for the sports channel adding to the complexity.
Secondly, there are also administrators in the household who choose and administer individual products and services, the home-sysadmin, if you like. But this role can change from person to person depending on the product, and often the end users or consumers of the services are allowed to different things depending on the policy set by the home security admin (for example, no Internet after bedtime or access to adult sites) and enforced by services such as smart firewalls and certification/classification policies.

How to manage multiple roles?

Nowadays there is very little difference between a household and an SME but few service providers acknowledge this, and even if they do, how can they manage it all?
I’ve tried to help several service providers tackle this problem. They thought it was all about family and the actual relationships between the members of the household – Who is the dad? Who is the mum? Who are the kids? But what about Auntie Jean and Granny, and what about the au pair? How do these people fit into the picture, and what happens when little Katie moves out to go to college or perhaps when Mum and Dad separate?

The relationships between the people making up the household are in reality about as relevant to a service provider as the departmental structure or the shareholders and members of the board of an SME or large enterprise. What service providers must realize is that these ‘real world’ relationships are irrelevant, or if they are relevant it is not the role of the customer relationship management (CRM) system to manage them; it’s the responsibility of the account manager.

Households are organizations and the roles within the household are as dynamic as in any business.  To manage this complexity, the service provider must:

1. Realize that the actual relationships between the parties are generally irrelevant except perhaps the roles of ‘responsible adult’ and ‘minor’;
2. Capture the functional roles such as Customer, Bill Payer and User and match these, where necessary, back to named (or even un-named) individuals; and
3. Record and deliver services in line with the involvement roles such as Chooser, Admin, Consumer that are set at the product level, more often than not by the parties within the household themselves.

The final step is perhaps perceived as the most complex, but in most multi-user products this is already handled by usernames and roles and things like single sign-on. All that needs to be done is to ensure that the customer service assurance and CRM systems have some kind of drill-through to the product so that any problems can be sorted out through a remote login.

Frameworx can help

The Frameworx Information Model (SID) already has all the structures defined that support these advanced concepts. Functional Roles are Party Roles that define the static roles played by individuals or people in relationship to a Customer Account. Involvement roles are also in the Information Model – an Involvement role can be played by a Party Role or a Resource Role, and Involvement Roles can be associated with Products, Services or Resources (customer premises equipment, for example) and these Involvement Roles can be linked to identities (usernames).
So what’s the difference between a household and a small business? The answer is not a lot. They are both complex organizations that need to be managed as such, but Frameworx is already configured to support this complexity.
- See more at: http://inform.tmforum.org/features-and-analysis/featured/2015/09/whats-the-difference-between-a-household-and-a-small-business/#sthash.QiESgSQ2.dpuf

Not so long ago retail telecommunications customers had a single telephone number for a single line tied to a residential address with a single product/service associated. As far as the service provider was concerned, the customer and the household were synonymous with the phone number.
But for a small or medium enterprise (SME), the setup was different. There could be multiple phone lines possibly going to multiple addresses, a PBX, and services like hunting groups and call pick-up as well as the more conventional phone services.
Things started to change when retail customers began using the phone line for Internet and email – using technology like DSL rather than the old dial-up modems – in addition to making and receiving phone calls. This slow shift wasn’t too difficult to deal with for the service providers and some even managed to get the two services on a single bill.

The era of the digital ecosystem

Jump ahead ten or so years to the era of the ‘digital ecosystem’, and we have homes that have fixed-line connections capable of delivering high-speed broadband services that are consumed as streaming video and cloud services, as well as the more traditional phone, Internet and email services. On top of that households may also have digital TV set-top box and multiple 4G devices including tablets and phones. Now the cracks in the service providers’ approach to dealing with the household as if it were a single phone number with a single customer begins to show, and in fact are much more like yawning chasms than cracks!
The problems of getting all these services on a single bill the customer is trivial compared to the other aspects of the evolution of the digital ecosystem. ‘Customer’ is no longer synonymous with a (single) phone number, and the users of the 4G and Internet-enabled devices want to be able to seamlessly move services from one device to another. This means that all the devices must be related and integrated in some way, but frankly that’s just a technical problem.

What is a lot more complex for the service provider is the realization that the customer paradigm has to change.

First of all, it is not easy to say who the retail customer is, and she/he certainly is no longer just a phone number. In a typical household, someone plays the role of the primary customer, the person responsible for buying and paying for the services – the CFO of the household, if you like. But there can be multiple customers, each paying one or more bills representing portions of shared services. For example, Dad may pay for the cable TV while the teenage kids pay for the sports channel adding to the complexity.
Secondly, there are also administrators in the household who choose and administer individual products and services, the home-sysadmin, if you like. But this role can change from person to person depending on the product, and often the end users or consumers of the services are allowed to different things depending on the policy set by the home security admin (for example, no Internet after bedtime or access to adult sites) and enforced by services such as smart firewalls and certification/classification policies.

How to manage multiple roles?

Nowadays there is very little difference between a household and an SME but few service providers acknowledge this, and even if they do, how can they manage it all?
I’ve tried to help several service providers tackle this problem. They thought it was all about family and the actual relationships between the members of the household – Who is the dad? Who is the mum? Who are the kids? But what about Auntie Jean and Granny, and what about the au pair? How do these people fit into the picture, and what happens when little Katie moves out to go to college or perhaps when Mum and Dad separate?

The relationships between the people making up the household are in reality about as relevant to a service provider as the departmental structure or the shareholders and members of the board of an SME or large enterprise. What service providers must realize is that these ‘real world’ relationships are irrelevant, or if they are relevant it is not the role of the customer relationship management (CRM) system to manage them; it’s the responsibility of the account manager.

Households are organizations and the roles within the household are as dynamic as in any business.  To manage this complexity, the service provider must:

1. Realize that the actual relationships between the parties are generally irrelevant except perhaps the roles of ‘responsible adult’ and ‘minor’;
2. Capture the functional roles such as Customer, Bill Payer and User and match these, where necessary, back to named (or even un-named) individuals; and
3. Record and deliver services in line with the involvement roles such as Chooser, Admin, Consumer that are set at the product level, more often than not by the parties within the household themselves.

The final step is perhaps perceived as the most complex, but in most multi-user products this is already handled by usernames and roles and things like single sign-on. All that needs to be done is to ensure that the customer service assurance and CRM systems have some kind of drill-through to the product so that any problems can be sorted out through a remote login.

Frameworx can help

The Frameworx Information Model (SID) already has all the structures defined that support these advanced concepts. Functional Roles are Party Roles that define the static roles played by individuals or people in relationship to a Customer Account. Involvement roles are also in the Information Model – an Involvement role can be played by a Party Role or a Resource Role, and Involvement Roles can be associated with Products, Services or Resources (customer premises equipment, for example) and these Involvement Roles can be linked to identities (usernames).
So what’s the difference between a household and a small business? The answer is not a lot. They are both complex organizations that need to be managed as such, but Frameworx is already configured to support this complexity.
- See more at: http://inform.tmforum.org/features-and-analysis/featured/2015/09/whats-the-difference-between-a-household-and-a-small-business/#sthash.QiESgSQ2.dpuf

Not so long ago retail telecommunications customers had a single telephone number for a single line tied to a residential address with a single product/service associated. As far as the service provider was concerned, the customer and the household were synonymous with the phone number.
But for a small or medium enterprise (SME), the setup was different. There could be multiple phone lines possibly going to multiple addresses, a PBX, and services like hunting groups and call pick-up as well as the more conventional phone services.
Things started to change when retail customers began using the phone line for Internet and email – using technology like DSL rather than the old dial-up modems – in addition to making and receiving phone calls. This slow shift wasn’t too difficult to deal with for the service providers and some even managed to get the two services on a single bill.

The era of the digital ecosystem

Jump ahead ten or so years to the era of the ‘digital ecosystem’, and we have homes that have fixed-line connections capable of delivering high-speed broadband services that are consumed as streaming video and cloud services, as well as the more traditional phone, Internet and email services. On top of that households may also have digital TV set-top box and multiple 4G devices including tablets and phones. Now the cracks in the service providers’ approach to dealing with the household as if it were a single phone number with a single customer begins to show, and in fact are much more like yawning chasms than cracks!
The problems of getting all these services on a single bill the customer is trivial compared to the other aspects of the evolution of the digital ecosystem. ‘Customer’ is no longer synonymous with a (single) phone number, and the users of the 4G and Internet-enabled devices want to be able to seamlessly move services from one device to another. This means that all the devices must be related and integrated in some way, but frankly that’s just a technical problem.

What is a lot more complex for the service provider is the realization that the customer paradigm has to change.

First of all, it is not easy to say who the retail customer is, and she/he certainly is no longer just a phone number. In a typical household, someone plays the role of the primary customer, the person responsible for buying and paying for the services – the CFO of the household, if you like. But there can be multiple customers, each paying one or more bills representing portions of shared services. For example, Dad may pay for the cable TV while the teenage kids pay for the sports channel adding to the complexity.
Secondly, there are also administrators in the household who choose and administer individual products and services, the home-sysadmin, if you like. But this role can change from person to person depending on the product, and often the end users or consumers of the services are allowed to different things depending on the policy set by the home security admin (for example, no Internet after bedtime or access to adult sites) and enforced by services such as smart firewalls and certification/classification policies.

How to manage multiple roles?

Nowadays there is very little difference between a household and an SME but few service providers acknowledge this, and even if they do, how can they manage it all?
I’ve tried to help several service providers tackle this problem. They thought it was all about family and the actual relationships between the members of the household – Who is the dad? Who is the mum? Who are the kids? But what about Auntie Jean and Granny, and what about the au pair? How do these people fit into the picture, and what happens when little Katie moves out to go to college or perhaps when Mum and Dad separate?

The relationships between the people making up the household are in reality about as relevant to a service provider as the departmental structure or the shareholders and members of the board of an SME or large enterprise. What service providers must realize is that these ‘real world’ relationships are irrelevant, or if they are relevant it is not the role of the customer relationship management (CRM) system to manage them; it’s the responsibility of the account manager.

Households are organizations and the roles within the household are as dynamic as in any business.  To manage this complexity, the service provider must:

1. Realize that the actual relationships between the parties are generally irrelevant except perhaps the roles of ‘responsible adult’ and ‘minor’;
2. Capture the functional roles such as Customer, Bill Payer and User and match these, where necessary, back to named (or even un-named) individuals; and
3. Record and deliver services in line with the involvement roles such as Chooser, Admin, Consumer that are set at the product level, more often than not by the parties within the household themselves.

The final step is perhaps perceived as the most complex, but in most multi-user products this is already handled by usernames and roles and things like single sign-on. All that needs to be done is to ensure that the customer service assurance and CRM systems have some kind of drill-through to the product so that any problems can be sorted out through a remote login.

Frameworx can help

The Frameworx Information Model (SID) already has all the structures defined that support these advanced concepts. Functional Roles are Party Roles that define the static roles played by individuals or people in relationship to a Customer Account. Involvement roles are also in the Information Model – an Involvement role can be played by a Party Role or a Resource Role, and Involvement Roles can be associated with Products, Services or Resources (customer premises equipment, for example) and these Involvement Roles can be linked to identities (usernames).
So what’s the difference between a household and a small business? The answer is not a lot. They are both complex organizations that need to be managed as such, but Frameworx is already configured to support this complexity.
- See more at: http://inform.tmforum.org/features-and-analysis/featured/2015/09/whats-the-difference-between-a-household-and-a-small-business/#sthash.QiESgSQ2.dpuf

Not so long ago retail telecommunications customers had a single telephone number for a single line tied to a residential address with a single product/service associated. As far as the service provider was concerned, the customer and the household were synonymous with the phone number.
But for a small or medium enterprise (SME), the setup was different. There could be multiple phone lines possibly going to multiple addresses, a PBX, and services like hunting groups and call pick-up as well as the more conventional phone services.
Things started to change when retail customers began using the phone line for Internet and email – using technology like DSL rather than the old dial-up modems – in addition to making and receiving phone calls. This slow shift wasn’t too difficult to deal with for the service providers and some even managed to get the two services on a single bill.

The era of the digital ecosystem

Jump ahead ten or so years to the era of the ‘digital ecosystem’, and we have homes that have fixed-line connections capable of delivering high-speed broadband services that are consumed as streaming video and cloud services, as well as the more traditional phone, Internet and email services. On top of that households may also have digital TV set-top box and multiple 4G devices including tablets and phones. Now the cracks in the service providers’ approach to dealing with the household as if it were a single phone number with a single customer begins to show, and in fact are much more like yawning chasms than cracks!
The problems of getting all these services on a single bill the customer is trivial compared to the other aspects of the evolution of the digital ecosystem. ‘Customer’ is no longer synonymous with a (single) phone number, and the users of the 4G and Internet-enabled devices want to be able to seamlessly move services from one device to another. This means that all the devices must be related and integrated in some way, but frankly that’s just a technical problem.

What is a lot more complex for the service provider is the realization that the customer paradigm has to change.

First of all, it is not easy to say who the retail customer is, and she/he certainly is no longer just a phone number. In a typical household, someone plays the role of the primary customer, the person responsible for buying and paying for the services – the CFO of the household, if you like. But there can be multiple customers, each paying one or more bills representing portions of shared services. For example, Dad may pay for the cable TV while the teenage kids pay for the sports channel adding to the complexity.
Secondly, there are also administrators in the household who choose and administer individual products and services, the home-sysadmin, if you like. But this role can change from person to person depending on the product, and often the end users or consumers of the services are allowed to different things depending on the policy set by the home security admin (for example, no Internet after bedtime or access to adult sites) and enforced by services such as smart firewalls and certification/classification policies.

How to manage multiple roles?

Nowadays there is very little difference between a household and an SME but few service providers acknowledge this, and even if they do, how can they manage it all?
I’ve tried to help several service providers tackle this problem. They thought it was all about family and the actual relationships between the members of the household – Who is the dad? Who is the mum? Who are the kids? But what about Auntie Jean and Granny, and what about the au pair? How do these people fit into the picture, and what happens when little Katie moves out to go to college or perhaps when Mum and Dad separate?

The relationships between the people making up the household are in reality about as relevant to a service provider as the departmental structure or the shareholders and members of the board of an SME or large enterprise. What service providers must realize is that these ‘real world’ relationships are irrelevant, or if they are relevant it is not the role of the customer relationship management (CRM) system to manage them; it’s the responsibility of the account manager.

Households are organizations and the roles within the household are as dynamic as in any business.  To manage this complexity, the service provider must:

1. Realize that the actual relationships between the parties are generally irrelevant except perhaps the roles of ‘responsible adult’ and ‘minor’;
2. Capture the functional roles such as Customer, Bill Payer and User and match these, where necessary, back to named (or even un-named) individuals; and
3. Record and deliver services in line with the involvement roles such as Chooser, Admin, Consumer that are set at the product level, more often than not by the parties within the household themselves.

The final step is perhaps perceived as the most complex, but in most multi-user products this is already handled by usernames and roles and things like single sign-on. All that needs to be done is to ensure that the customer service assurance and CRM systems have some kind of drill-through to the product so that any problems can be sorted out through a remote login.

Frameworx can help

The Frameworx Information Model (SID) already has all the structures defined that support these advanced concepts. Functional Roles are Party Roles that define the static roles played by individuals or people in relationship to a Customer Account. Involvement roles are also in the Information Model – an Involvement role can be played by a Party Role or a Resource Role, and Involvement Roles can be associated with Products, Services or Resources (customer premises equipment, for example) and these Involvement Roles can be linked to identities (usernames).
So what’s the difference between a household and a small business? The answer is not a lot. They are both complex organizations that need to be managed as such, but Frameworx is already configured to support this complexity.
- See more at: http://inform.tmforum.org/features-and-analysis/featured/2015/09/whats-the-difference-between-a-household-and-a-small-business/#sthash.QiESgSQ2.dpuf