TM Forum launched a digital maturity tool designed to allow telecommunication operators to gauge their progress toward adoption of digital technologies.

The aptly named Digital Maturity Model (DMM) is touted as a guide for operators with an end-goal of digital transformation, which TM Forum said continues to stymie companies. The organization referenced a recent survey that showed 54 percent of executives admitted to unsuccessful past attempts at adopting digital platforms.

Digital transformation has been a long-time focus of the organization, which this week is hosting its TM Forum Live event in Nice, France. Nik Willets, who this week was appointed CEO of the TM Forum having served in a deputy CEO position since 2015, said the organization has been working on its latest project for the past six months.

“Digital transformation is happening, but it’s happening in silos, and we think it’s happening too slowly,” Willets said. “We think there is an opportunity here beyond just services. But, in order to thrive, companies need to become a different company than they have been traditionally in the past.”

The DMM takes into account five metrics companies can input into an application, which then spits out a maturity score. The metrics include the use of digital platforms to support customers, strategy, technology, operations, and a company’s internal culture.

Willets said the DMM improves on existing models in that the TM Forum provides greater clarity on traditional ranking scales, and digs more into how a company interacts with digital platforms, and in turn how those platforms are used to bolster operations.

“We see flaws with existing models in terms of there being mostly a focus at the top of the business and not flowing down,” Willets explained. “The tool is created as an application to survey all layers of the business. There is growing pressure for operators on commoditized services. Consumers expect more for less, and that requires a more fundamental change in how operations are handled.”

The TM Forum said the DMM has garnered endorsements from member partners BT, China Mobile, China Telecom, China Unicom, Orange, PCCW Global, Vodafone, Amdocs, BearingPoint, Deloitte, Detecon, Huawei, Tata Consultancy Services, and the GC Index.

Furthering its digital focus, TM Forum unveiled its cloud-based CurateFx platform targeted at facilitating collaboration on digital business models. The service is built on the organization's past work through its Frameworx, Partnering Toolkit, and more recent Open APIs initiative.

TM Forum claims CurateFx is being used by 28 of the 32 Catalyst projects at this week’s event.

The organization also announced a training and certification program for its Open API program, which launched last year. The initiative touts application programming interfaces developed with service providers and designed to offer a template for the creation and management of digital services like software-defined networking (SDN) and network functions virtualization (NFV).

TM Forum earlier this year announced work with MEF and multiple service providers to standardize Lifecycle Services Orchestration (LSO) APIs to orchestrate services across multiple networks.