A very important issue here of course is the security of the whole solution, not only at the level of access to the system – which can be protected by certificates, tokens or other strong authentication methods, but also at the level of data synchronization between internal sys­tems and portal which usually resides in the DMZ area. Business Process Management systems with an under­lying layer of Business Integration components are very helpful in deal­ing with this problem. Alternatively dedicated data synchronization “plug-ins” for particular systems can be used.
Another question arise concern­ing functionality of the system itself. Must-have features are related to account browsing, electronic bill presentment and payment, trouble ticketing and service management – which in combination with the busi­ness process management environ­ment provides an automated tool for self provisioning of services by end-users. Such functionality signifi­cantly reduces the time required to enable new services providing actu­ally faster time-to-market for the oper­ators. Another nice feature – which is often a deciding factor when select­ing self-service solution vendor, is the analytical capabilities of the solution. Simple reports showing account costs, the most expensive calls etc. are already standard features in most of the solutions. The real advantage comes with the ability to analyze spending and propose changes to services in order to cut costs or to report in context of user defined cost center hierarchy (for business custom­ers) – especially if such a hierarchy can be freely defined outside regular bill­able accounts in the billing systems.
Functionality is one thing – but for most of the CIOs another important issue comes with the system’s archi­tecture. Self Service systems often are “The Business Card” of the operator – so adaptabilty of the solution, cus­tomization of look & feel and integra­tion with the operator’s external web portals, often managed by Content Managemet Systems, are the ‘must haves’ for such systems. Luckily tech­nology comes in handy in such cases. Java Server Faces, released recently by SUN, allows to create industry sup­ported Model-View-Controller based architecture with the usage of XML and XSLT transformations it allows even operator himself to modify look&feel of the applications. Finally compliance with Portlet technology allows to seamlessly integrate the Self Service solution with J2EE compliant Portal server – at the same time taking care about single-sing-on and other security issues.

Knowledge about facilities is an essential requirement for management. A typical network infrastructure consists of hundreds of thousands of network elements composing a complex web of connections and relations. More importantly, the network is constantly evolving and changing due to expansion, failures and optimizations. It’s a living organism that can’t have a day off even for maintenance. The main goal of an OSS system is to provide mechanisms for managing this organism, providing functionalities which allow operators design services, delivering them to the customers and assuring their quality. Additionally, OSS systems help maintain the network, optimizing connections and exchanging information between external networks or suppliers. All of these tasks are performed according to well defined processes or procedures. Unfortunately, each operator has their own specific characteristics and organization. Lack of standard OSS processes and procedures makes the implementation of any business process management system a complex and expensive task. The standardized approach for defining all management processes to be carried out by Telco operators have been proposed by TeleManagement Forum in the Enhanced Telecom Operations Map (eTOM). Thanks to eTOM, all interested parties can communicate in the same language. TM Forums eTOM describes management processes by dividing them into a number of areas in the four layers (customers, services, resources, suppliers) and at several levels of details.

It provides several mechanisms and tools which enable process automation at different levels. Each typical, common task can be defined at the highest level as an automatic process. Finally, Process Management provides a scripting mechanism to define actions even at the atomic level and use them in high level processes as automatic tasks. OSS Process Management comes with a large number of preconfigured workflows based on ITIL best practices. It also contains automation patterns operating on a predefined data model based on SID. A Know- How Database integrated with the Process Management system provides additional added value and Web GUI enables the possibility of configuring dashboards or panels for use by external partners. Seamless integration of all the components of the Comarch solution with 3rd party software, through OSS/J interfaces, delivers an OSS system which enables Service Assurance to be controlled from one convergent application. In conclusion, every day we have to deal with new emerging services with steadily increasing service complexity. This situation introduces new requirements for Operations Support Systems. Only tools that are service and process oriented with highly automated incident and problem management are able to help an operator manage this live environment of resources, services, customers and partners.

A major financial services company cut down the steps necessary to ser­vice a customer by 50% and reduced the staff required to perform such services by 30% while at the same time reducing the processing time 5 times and increasing customer satis­faction by over 30%. Such a success was of course achieved by combin­ing several factors – of which the introduction of BPM was the driving force. An automated process flow­ing through the entire enterprise enables users to focus on their specific area of expertise without worrying about the complete process – thus increasing productivity of the staff. Additional benefits can be realized through the monitoring and control of these processes.

Most of the avail­able systems on the market have built in automatic alerting and escalation mechanisms ensuring the attention of group managers is raised if the execu­tion of certain tasks within the process is not meeting the SLA conditions – e.g. when a VIP customer waits for a claim solution for more than 72 hrs. The reporting capabilities of the IT system represent a very significant opportunity. Based on the information from the system, managers can verify process optimization and if necessary redesign it. Such functionality also comes in handy whenever there’s a need to observe a certain trend in the company – e.g. a rapidly increasing number of claims from a certain cus­tomer or a variation from the standard reaction of CSR’s and customers due to a changing environment (prices, quality etc.). Without monitoring and reporting capabilities, such observa­tions would be very difficult and often appear too late for an appropriate reaction.

Billing errors may have to do with failed communications  between programs. When different operations are spread throughout different programs they leave more space for errors. If all financial operations are included within the same  software application  this space is strongly limited. In addition all operations are divided up into modules in which only trusted indiviudals may be able to access certain modules. This means the customer service representative will not be able to access asset tracking without the proper clearance that is established by upper management or the person in charge of granting permissions. By having telecom oss biling software many companies are able to to go above and beyond to fix their errors so that they don’t lose a customer, such as having to offer a credit to their account.

Costs are reduced by being able to  control  production transport  and marketing costs. ERP software is powerful support also for various management activities. This IT solution allows employees to access the warehouse data in real time. This helps with  research and decision making. System users knows actual costs of the daily activities and can perform  activity based costing functions.

In addition, ERP software automates the business processes and speeding up the whole manufacturing cycle. It is designed to support resource planning in the key planning process. Implementation of Enterprise Resource Planning system also provides better finance reports, superior supply chain management and vendor management. It  allows the company to keep better track of their  products and the whole manufacturing cycle.