Global analytic software firm FICO was part of a team that won the Outstanding Business Impact Catalyst award from the industry association TM Forum, for a project aimed at assessing an applicant’s credit risk or the likelihood that a service application is fraudulent. The project team — BT, Deutsche Telekom, Hrvatski Telekom, Orange, Amdocs, Bulb Technologies, FICO and IBM — developed a business assurance digital marketplace using artificial intelligence and machine learning, and demonstrated that it could contribute to at least 1% improvement in the overall bottom line revenue for CSPs. The award was presented at Digital Transformation World in Nice. 

More information: https://www.tmforum.org/open-ai-business-assurance-market-place/

The Business Assurance Catalyst, one of several proof-of-concept projects organised by TM Forum, demonstrated how digital service providers can apply AI, machine learning and API-based revenue assurance, credit management and fraud management to effectively protect digital business. The project involved: 

• Helping operators to enable digital operations and integrate systems for more holistic business assurance.
• Applying AI – specifically machine learning – for business assurance to enable business decisions based on consumer and device data.
• Creating an open API-driven business assurance marketplace to help communications service providers (CSPs) pick the right partners and adopt new technologies. 

“The Business Assurance Catalyst is really important to our industry,” said Andreas Manolis, head of Strategy & Risk, Group Business Assurance at BT. “As new products and services are delivered over IoT, 5G and the SDN, there will be a multiplier of devices on our network. We need to be more aware — and more advanced — in terms of the analytics that we provide over those platforms. We need the advanced intelligence of AI, machine learning, and solutions that our people can consume to be able to analyse those multiple-layer solutions that are coming our way. It’s all about making sure our business is assured and we deliver brilliant customer service.”

“FICO is seen as a pioneer in AI and machine learning, particularly in the area of streamlining customer onboarding journeys and fraud detection,” said Anat Hoida, who runs FICO’s telecommunications practice in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. “For this project, we were proud to be on a team of industry leaders to create a powerhouse solution that shows the value AI and machine learning can bring to the industry.”

Catalysts are proof-of-concept projects developed collaboratively by TM Forum members. These projects bring together companies large and small to create innovative solutions to common challenges demonstrating how this can be achieved by leveraging key TM Forum best practices and standards. Many innovative and thought-provoking proof-of-concept projects turned prototypes have been created by the Catalyst program. More than 145 different companies and hundreds of individuals made up the 32 teams that participated in Catalyst’s showcase at Digital Transformation World.