TL 9000 comprises two handbooks.
The Requirements Handbook is based upon ISO 9001 and identifies extra requirements that apply to telecom industry suppliers. They're labelled H (for suppliers of hardware), S (for suppliers of Software), V (for suppliers of serVices) and C (common, for everyone). Since your organization supplies services, you would be expected to apply all the additional requirements labelled C and V, as well as the basic ISO 9001 requirements.
The Measurements Handbook identifies the measurements that organizations must collect, report and act upon. Conformance with both handbooks is mandated for Certification. The measurements are classified as Common (everyone reports these), Outage, Hardware, Software and Services and the tables A-1 and A-2 define precisely which measurements are applicable.
The Product Category Table A-1 identifies product categories. For your organization's services one or more of the categories in 7.2 Engineering Services probably applies. For example, if you supply Fixed and Mobile Network engineering services you would report against categories 7.2.1.1 and 7.2.1.2. If you do both software and hardware development you report in categories 7.2.2 and 7.2.3. It's not uncommon for organizations to report against several product categories.
Once you have identified the product categories that apply to you, use table A-2 to identify the measurements you must report and their normalization units, and use the relevant sections of the handbook to get the details on normalization – which can be not trivial: most organizations identify an individual or even a team to manage the measurements. For example, if you do hardware and software development your problem reporting will be on a per-contract basis. Some measurements, like this one, can appear rather crude, yet they're designed for an entire industry and represent the best that the QuEST Forum experts were able to come up with, often a compromise between what's ideal and what's practical in a complex industry: too much detail and there would be millions of product categories, too little and they're useless.
Make sure you go to the QuEST Forum website for the latest versions of tables A-1 and A-2 because they change from time to time. The website offers other resources that may help as well.
Check your plans with your Certification Body because the auditors will need to be satisfied that the applicable measurements are correctly identified and managed.
Most organizations find that, if they manage such measurements at all, they don't do it in a manner that's conformant with TL 9000. Change is usually necessary, and of course resisted. The benefit should be that the organization can compare its performance with others in the telecom industry, and become more competitive. Mileage varies of course. In some cases organizations find that their original measurements were misleading and that the TL 9000 measurements are more aligned with customer expectations, and more likely to help improve customer satisfaction. For example, On-Time Delivery is measured in terms of successful completion of contract with customer's agreement and not, as too often, completion in terms of throwing it on a truck and hoping it arrives in one piece (which might look better but really isn't).
Hope this helps,
Pat
