An Incremental Approach to BSS/OSS Improvement

In today’s economic environment, a communications service provider’s ability to fund large end-to-end BSS/OSS system replacements is severely limited. Rather than a full-out systems replacement, many instead are trying a new “overlay” or incremental deployment model that targets step-change, methodical improvements in areas of strategic importance — at significantly lower cost and deployment risk.

The overlay model leverages the wide adoption of well-defined and discrete functional application modules that are based on component-based technologies such as Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) to drive return on investment (ROI) at each stage of the deployment process.

The overlay approach is rapidly gaining momentum in the marketplace.

Stratecast notes that in 2009, wireless service providers “will be very conservative regarding new network over-builds and more focused on managing and getting the most value out of existing infrastructure.” (Source: Stratecast Predictions 2009: The Year Ahead - and a Look Back, December 2008)

Commenting on this trend, Patrick Kelly of OSS Observer (Source: The impact of the recession on the telecommunication market and software investments, OSS Observer CEO Digest, November 2008) recently said, “On the operational front, the preferred approach will be to gravitate to smaller-sized software implementations that have less risk and shorter milestones. Any clearly profitable business activity, such as self-care projects that offload support away from call centers, will be funded.”

At first blush, the overlay approach might sound like older point solutions, the progenitor of stovepipe issues currently hampering the move to complex convergent services. Far from it: the overlay model rests on a two-part approach that unifies BSS/OSS operations and thereby eliminates a siloed environment, speeds accurate service fulfillment for even the most complex service bundles and drives cost out of the system while boosting profits. The two elements are:

• Service-oriented architecture to achieve a “unified” set of systems and processes that consume the product data, including quote, validation, order capture, service configuration, appointment scheduling and order tracking, among others.
• Product lifecycle management to drive methodically to a “single source of truth” for product data.

Adhering to Standards

To be effective at deploying incremental changes to a BSS environment while showing ROI, a service provider’s choice of architecture is critical. The architecture provides the structure and basis for an effective deployment strategy for the order-to-cash process. An effective architecture must utilize domain, architecture and technology standards that simplify integration, interconnection and use of a product data source within a heterogeneous and distributed IT applications environment.