OSS deals with critical issues of operators

OSS deals with critical issues of operators:

•Order management systems allow operators to coordinate the process of configuring the network to deliver the services ordered by a customer.
•Provisioning systems allow operators to turn up (activate) services on the network/service infrastructure.
•Inventory systems allow operators to accurately track their network assets, and assign those assets to customers.
•Mediation systems allow operators to determine service usage.
•Rating systems allow operators to determine how much to bill based on the service usage for a particular customer.
•Network management systems allow operators to detect and isolate network failures, and quickly restore service.
•Service assurance systems allow operators to correlate network performance with service quality requirements, and appropriately communicate and compensate customers for any disruption.
•EAI systems allow operators to quickly integrate diverse support systems and network elements.

EAI : Enterprise Application Integration in Telco

EAI = electronic integration of support systems is required for an automated back-office in large-scale operations.

The role of EAI : is to simplify the integration headache by creating an open data exchange platform optimized for heterogeneous inter-process communication ("plug and play").
EAI is the software designed to support communication between software systems, including OSS

Rating Engine

The Role of Rating Engine

The role of the rating engine is to apply pricing rules to a given transaction, and route to the rated transaction to the appropriate billing/settlement system.

Rating steps:

(1)Determine
a.Connection date & time
b.Duration
c.Rate period for discounts

i.Time of day (TOD)
ii.Day of week (DOW), holidays
d.Rating increments
i.1, 6, 10, 30, 60 second increments
ii.Per packet, per byte
e.Jurisdiction
i.Regional, National, International
ii.May be used for rating, settlement, tax
(2)Rate table look-up using
a.Event date
b.Event type
c.Optionally
i.Rate table ID
ii.Rate period
iii.Jurisdiction
(3)Calculate event charge
(4)Calculate tax (optional)
(5)Store relevant information on the xDR

Steps to rate a call

(1)Determine charge points

a.Originating charge point
i.“A” number from the CDR (May be the originating cell site address)
ii.Originating charge point = country code + city code + exchange

b.Terminating charge point
i.“B” number from the CDR (May be the terminating cell site address)
ii.Terminating charge point = country code + city code + exchange

(2)Retrieve place names

a.Table: Charge point place names
b.Originating & terminating
c.Store on CDR

(3)Determine band
a.Fixed or Mobile
b.Terminating country
c.Terminating network
d.First 5 minutes etc

(4)Rate table look up using

a.Rate Table ID (optional)
i.Assuming rates specific to rate plans
b.Call date
c.Call type
d.Band
e.Rate period (optional)
i.May be a flat discount percentage applied

(5)Rate table look up may return

a.Flat price per event
b.Rate per increment
c.Rate per increment + discounts

Billing Process

Definition:Network data management (i.e., mediation) and rating are the key OSS elements that support the billing process.


Purpose of a Billing System:

•Meter and bill the services consumed by the customer
•Allow definition of different rates for services
•Allow easy management of customer accounts
•Maintain record of payments received

Billing Functionality:

Billing is more than just a means of collecting money. In a marketplace fueled by competition, Carriers are recognizing billing as a strategic weapon in the battle for new and retained business.

Various types of telecom billing includes

Wireless Billing
Convergent Billing
Interconnect Billing
IP Billing

Critical Billing requirements include

•Flexible rating capability for new services
•Multi-mode processing : real time, hot or batch
•Multi-party settlement capability
•Service convergent
•Unified accounting: postpay/ prepay/ nowpay
•Adaptability and ease of use
•Multi-territory and multi-role capabilities
•Carrier- grade performance
–Functional
–Scalable
–Useable
–Available

Key definitions

•Account: Any customer is represented in the billing system as an account. One account can have only one customer

•Plan: A plan is a bundle of services associated with the account

•Service / Product: Different billing vendors have different definitions for service…. check out the definition for specific package

•Billing cycle: A periodic cycle for which the customer is billed. E.g. from the 4th of a month to the 3rd of the next month. Can be weekly, monthly, bi monthly, quarterly

•Accounting cycle: A cycle for which the charges against an account are calculated (not billed)…typically monthly.

•Recurring Charge (RC): A predetermined charge associated with a product or service that is assessed on a regular interval i.e., monthly, quarterly, annually

Mediation Systems:

The role of mediation systems is to capture usage information from the network and service infrastructure, and distribute it to upstream billing, settlement, marketing and other BSSs.

Mediation processes the Call Detail Record (CDR), call, message, usage, traffic, ticket, event, xDR

Usage types can be

•Fixed to Fixed
•Fixed to Mobile
•Mobile to Fixed
•Mobile to Mobile
•Roaming
•Value Added Services (SMS, Call Forward, etc.)

Key activities in Mediation – Usage collection

•Polling / Data Collection
•Consolidator across network elements
•Standardize inputs to Biller
•Support for real time applications
•Drop non-billable usage
•Reformat, validate, number translations
•Direct usage between applications
•Insulate the biller from Network elements

The validation functions in mediation includes:

•Duplicate checks
•Drop calls
•Perform edits and translations
•Creating message legs
•Table look up and conversion (CLLI -> country code, city code, exchange)
•Assign a unique tag number to the event

Service Assurance Process

Definition:The "assurance" process embodies a range of OSSs designed to ensure that network .The role of network management OSSs is to provide network operators the critical performance and fault information required to ensure smooth network operation.

NMS[Network Management Systems]:Network management systems work by collecting events from the network, then quickly consolidates analyzes and distributes the relevant data to ensure fast resolution of problems.

Service Management OSS:
Service management OSSs reconciles network performance against service guarantees and/or customer-specific SLAs.


• Quality of Service (QoS) is defined in standard Service Descriptions as well as individually negotiated customer-negotiated SLAs

o Performance – latency (response time), error rates, throughput, dropped calls, blocking

o Service - downtime, order completion time, MTTR, MTBF, notice of failures

o Softer issues — billing articulation/accuracy, customer service, proactive AM

• Reporting

o Standard (predefined) and exception reports, including dashboards

o Performance of a service against an SLA Reports of any developing capacity problems

o Reports of customer usage patterns, etc.

o Performance reviews with the customer

o Responses to performance inquiries from the customer

• Credits to customers (rating)

• Charge-back to suppliers (rating)

• Utilization — network planning, blocking trends, etc.

Service management OSSs monitor network performance, reconciles against customer SLAs, and generates credits and other service-oriented reports for planning and customer care systems.

Service Assurance Today :

Key drivers


• Customer satisfaction – high expectations, low loyalty

• QoS as a competitive differentiator

• Revenue and profitability

• Competitiveness / differentiation

• Enterprise accounts



Key issues

• Network technology evolution

• IP networking

• Advances in end-user devices

• Complex service infrastructure



Goal: customer-centric assurance

• Rapidly identify root cause of customer complaints

• Total view of customer experience through real-time monitoring

• Monitor and report performance on a service or customer (enterprise) basis

• Expand scope to third-party suppliers

Detailed Service Assurance Work Flow:

1) Determine if there is a service problem
2) Determine if there is a network problem
3)Determine if it is related to existing trouble ticket
4)If needed create the new trouble ticket
5)Isolate, repair and fix the ticket
6)Close trouble ticket

Issues :
1)80% Calls are not network related like
     how do I use this?Provisioning Error?Any known Problem?
2)Proactive Reporting.
3)What network outage affect which services?
4)Third Party suppliers?

order management, provisioning and inventory players in market

OSS product vendors
•ADC (provisioning: wireline, cable)
•AI Metrics (order management, inventory and provisioning: wireline, next-gen, enterprise)
•Co-Manage (inventory, provisioning: data - ATM/FR/DSL/SONET/IP/IP-VPN) Cramer (provisioning, inventory, order management: mobile, voice, data)
•Eftia OSS Solutions (order management, provisioning, inventory: wireline, CLEC)
•Granite (provisioning and inventory: wireline, mobile, enterprise)
•Metasolv (order management, provisioning, inventory: wireline, wireless, data, isp)
•NetCracker (order management, provisioning, inventory: wireline, next-gen, data)
•Peregrine Systems (inventory management: wireline, next-gen)
•Sigma Systems (provisioning: cable)
•Telecordia: (order management, provisioning, inventory, dispatch: RBOC wireline)
•Visionael (inventory management: next-gen)

Others
•In-house developers
•ILEC/CLEC provisioning gateways (DSET, Nightfire, Quintessant, Wisor)
•Billing services vendors: Amdocs, Convergys, CSG, Infodirections
•Custom solutions (consultants/integrators)
•Legacy systems

Inventory Management OSS

The inventory management OSS keeps track of all the physical, logical and other network assets, as well as the assignment of those assets to customers.

Need for automated inventory management system:

•As communications networks evolve into more complex service platforms with layered technologies and multi-vendor systems, it is imperative to have a simple, flexible, and consistent way to manage and to maintain how networks are configured.
•Telecom operators must maintain configuration records and without integration, these records rapidly become unmanageable being a mixture of paper files, spread sheets or in-house localized databases.

Benefits include

•Increases the quality of the data in the system, and minimizes the administrative burden of re-keying data
•It achieves flow through provisioning by integrating with

oPre-Ordering processes.
oService Provisioning
oService Assurance

The Network Inventory and Design subsystem brings together several vital functions –

1.planning and development,
2.intelligent routing, and
3.inventory management

In Inventory system, a carrier stores all its information regarding the inventory (facilities and equipment) available on its network.

Determine whether or not the requested service can be supplied.

Answers questions such as:

•Is the proper equipment in place or must new equipment be installed?
•Are the proper facility circuits-the high-capacity circuits that provide backbone transport-already assigned, or do they need to be configured?

Inventory management includes both:

•Inventory creation: Inventory creation refers to creating new network resources in the inventory in accordance with network growth forecasts.
•The provisioning of customer services utilizes powerful network

oProvisioning of customer services.
oInventory algorithms to design and assign network components, ensuring rapid and accurate service delivery.

Network Inventory Management system does network maintenance and restoration to maintain the operational integrity of the network.

Network inventory manager provides you with wide variety of powerful tools to document almost every aspect of your network

Network Circuit Design:

•The circuit design module designs many different configurations of the network before finalizing on the optimum one based on the service provider's strengths and weaknesses.
•These networks can be displayed graphically with drill-down capabilities to equipment, including routers and ports.
•The user has the ability to manage capacity at the link/connection level, as well as the equipment level, in order to support the provisioning of traditional and converged networks.’

•Rules-based Design functionality promotes following capabilities:

oDefine Logical Network Systems–You can specify a collection of elements that can be combined and arranged to define logical network systems and the services enabled by the networks.
oDefine Logical Network Templates–These templates allow you to define and maintain rules governing the ordering, design and provisioning of various logical network systems.
oDesign Connections–You can design connections for data, voice and video.In addition Graphical Layout Record (GLR) supports the design of physical connections.

•Circuit design is more related to the service delivery part as it involves configuration and design for providing a service to the end customer.
•The network inventory provides the service assurance part as it takes care of the network data, fault management and recovery from disasters.

Inventory Management system functionality:

•Standard interfaces to integrate with order management, customer care and provisioning etc.
•Web enabled solutions.
•Real time discovery of network elements and fault management.
•Client/server distributed architecture
•Scalability—integrate with server group to reduce database traffic, allowing more users to work expeditiously
•Sophisticated but easy-to-track system of network views
•Network configuration data represented by maps, drawings, symbols, and icons
•Dynamic, interactive relationship with hierarchical browser display and graphics window display, thus providing up-to-date physical locations and specifications in text and graphics
•Easily accessible vendor information on all network objects
•Built-in library of maps, locations, floor drawings, and network object symbols
•Management of network design stages and role assignments

Service Fulfillment Process : OSS

The "fulfillment" process embodies a range of OSSs — including
order management,
inventory,
provisioning,
service activation.

Order Management :

The order management and provisioning processes is the key OSSs involved in configuring the network to deliver the service desired by the customer (i.e., fulfillment).

The aim of an order management system (OMS) is to order the service the customer requests, support changes when necessary, keep the customer informed with meaningful progress of their order, and track and manage to successful and on-time completion.

The process begins with an order or, in some cases, pre-sale activity. The process ends with a completed order, a delighted customer and sufficient information to build or update a customer account record in trouble/problem handling, performance reporting and billing processes and systems.

Benifits of Order Management :

Time-to-market for new services is minimized
Failed orders is reduced to zero
Time to deliver services is minimized
Labor-intensive manual processes are eliminated
Reliable service to customers

Features of Order Management :

Accepting orders
Pre-order activity
Integration with Inventory database
Integration with SLA to know whether the customer is eligible for the service ordered and also to estimate the price for the service.
Reserve available facilities to support the order.
Initiate service installation
Notifying the customer
Initiate billing process
Order plan development
Request customer deposit
Issue order and tracking order status
Integration with workflow management system to dispatch a technician to install a service
Web ordering
Data-driven Architecture
API Support
Workflow engine
Notification for new ticket assignments or escalations to appropriate personnel, individuals or teams
Multi Platform Support
Quote service price
Payment engine
Integration with CRM

Core Business processes in Order Management:

Accepting orders
Pre-order activity and Credit Check
Price estimates
Order plan development
Request customer deposit
Reserve number
Initiate service installation
Notifying the customer
Initiate billing process

Order Manager:

The order manager coordinates all aspects and processes related to fulfilling an order — including validation, service decomposition, inventory update, provisioning, billing and testing

Provisioning Process:

The provisioning OSS works with the order manager to activate the service within the corresponding network element(s).The provisioning OSS also handles configuring the network for dynamically-oriented transactions — such as authentication, accounting, authorization, roaming, etc.

OMS Detailed Business Processes[Generic]:
(1) validate the order whether it is completed or not
(1 A)Determine which services create the product offering/Product Bundling

(1 B)Determine key configuration/design attributes for the service

(1 C)Steps required to configure the service.

(2)For each service , check whether inventory is available and assign.

(3)If additional infrastructure is required schedule the installation via the WFMS[Work Force Management System] or any partner.

(4)Schedule any internal configuration CPE installation etc.

(5)Provisioning Commands to the network subsystems or the network elements.

(6)Update Inventory [Logical and Physical]

(7)Perform Testing

(8)Start Billing

(9)Update customer management ,service assurance.

Service Fulfillment flow:
•Sales process caters for the customer queries, for the various available services.

•Customer places the service order directly to the order management system or through sales process.

•Order management process hands over this order to Service Configuration process to activate the service.Customer related details are saved in the OMS, which can be used by the assurance and billing processes.

•Service Configuration system assigns this service request to Network Provisioning System , that in turn sends this request to its sub-process “Network Configuration and Routing” to actually configure the service at Network Element Level.

•Network Configuration and Routing system checks the validity and availability of the network data through Network Inventory Management sub-process and then configures the service on Network Element Management and network elements .

•After configuration of Service, Security sub-process checks for the network access on the configured elements .

•Network Configuration and Routing sub-process requests the Test Management sub-process to check the configured service . This test sub-process checks whether configured service is working or not . Test completion results are sent back to the Network Configuration and Routing sub-process .

•Network Configuration and routing sub-process sends the network completion status to the Network Provisioning process . If the Service is successfully configured, Network Inventory Management sub-process is updated with data used for assigning the service.

•Network provisioning system updates the Service Configuration process after assignment of service is completed .

•Service Provisioning process informs the Order Management about the result of Service Request . It also updates billing system to start the billing for the given customer.

•Sales process or Order Management system informs the Customer about the activation of service it has asked for.

OSS BSS Challenges

Challenging IT problems
Requirements are a constantly moving target
Legacy heritage
Cost tradeoffs difficult to quantify and predict
Difficult to get it right the first time
Multiple generations software and infrastructure
Theory (getting it right) doesn't align with pragmatics (good enough)

Importance of OSS/BSSs

Reason 1 — OSSs/BSSs enable operators to manage their customers

Manage the customer account :
Contact information — admin, technical, billing, ...
Track products purchased, contracts

Manage the sales process :
Correlate customer requirements with service offering
Service ordering
Service changes, termination, etc.

Manage the billing process :
Determine how much a customer owes
Invoicing, apply payments, adjustments
Manage customer expectations
Communication of service performance
Failure resolution
SLA credits
Delivery dates, downtime, and more ...

Reason 2 — OSSs/BSSs enable operators manage their service offerings
Defines technical, legal and contractual specifications of service (SLA, regulatory)
Catalogs services into product offerings
Pricing, promotions, discounts
Availability, eligibility

Facilitate quote generation
•Manage the order process
•Configures the network to deliver services purchased
•Determines the quality of service (QoS) actually delivered by network
•Reconciles the delivered QoS with customer expectation / contract (SLA)
•Provides business-oriented reports of resource capacity and utilization
•Facilitates resource planning

Reason 3 — OSSs/BSSs enable operators to manage their network
Ensures proper operations of equipment
•Installation
•Configuration
•Testing
•Inventory and assignment
•Maintenance
•Fault detection and resolution
•Security
•Usage collection
•Fraud detection
OSS becomes more critical to manage diversified services, support multiple network technologies and meeting customers’ expectations.

Role of Business Support System

Business support systems (BSS) are the components that a telephone operator or telco uses to run its business operations towards customer. BSS and OSS platforms are linked in the need to support various end to end services. Each area has its own data and service responsibilities.

Role of business support systems:

The role of business support systems in a service provider is to cover four main areas:

Product management
Customer management
Revenue management
Order management

Product management:
Product management supports product development, the sales and management of products, offers and bundles to businesses and mass-market customers. Product management regularly includes offering cross-product discounts, appropriate pricing and customer loyalty programmes.

Customer management:
Service providers require a single view of the customer and regularly need to support complex hierarchies across customer-facing applications (customer relationship management). Customer management also covers requirements for partner management and 24x7 web-based customer self-service. Customer management can also be thought of a full-fledge customer relationship management systems implemented to help customer care agents handle the customers in a better and informed manner.

Revenue management:
Revenue management is a BSS focus on billing, charging and settlement, that can handle any combination of OSS services, products and offers. BSS revenue management supports OSS order provisioning and often partner settlement.

Order management:
Order management as a beginning of assurance is normally associated with Operational Support Systems though Business Support Systems are often the business driver for fulfillment management and order provisioning.

BSS : Business Support System

The business support systems (BSS) domain encompasses the systems designed to support business processes including billing, CRM, marketing/sales support, partner management, and more.

It Handles business operations and is customer centric, done by operations team and they report to operations officers.

Customer Care and Billing — masters account, invoicing, payment processing, taxes, bill calc, rating, discounts, cycles (if any), adjustments, ERP interface, recurring charges, credit management.

Customer relationship management (CRM) — masters customer record, product catalog, order entry, contract, trouble management, SLA violations, service order, order status.

Sales force automation (SFA) — manage the sales process, product configuration, eligibility, custom contract negotiation, RFI/RFP processes, SLA negotiation, upsell

Decision support (DSS) — market analysis tools, pricing analysis, data warehouse

Fraud management-

Revenue Mangement-

Partner Relationship Managemnet-

Collection-

E Commerce-

Enterprise Information Portal -