Operations Support Systems (also called Operational Support Systems or OSS) are computer systems used by telecommunications service providers. The term OSS most frequently describes "network systems" dealing with the telecom network itself, supporting processes such as maintaining network inventory, provisioning services, configuring network components, and managing faults. The complementary term Business Support Systems or BSS is a newer term and typically refers to "business systems" dealing with customers, supporting processes such as taking orders, processing bills, and collecting payments. The two systems together are often abbreviated BSS/OSS or simply B/OSS.
The term OSS was historically used to include both network and business systems. It is still sometimes used in this sense, which can cause some confusion. When used in this way, the term OSS may be seen as inclusive of BSS. For more detail about the use of other terms such as "network management", see the section on architecture below.
OSS architecture
A lot of the work on OSS has been centred on defining its architecture. Put simply, there are four key elements of OSS:
- Processes
- the sequence of events
- Data
- the information that is acted upon
- Applications
- the components that implement processes to manage data
- Technology
- how we implement the applications
During the 1990's, new OSS architecture definitions was done by the ITU-T in its TMN model. This established a 4-layer model of TMN applicable within an OSS:
- Business Management Level (BML)
- Service Management Level (SML)
- Network Management Level (NML)
- Element Management Level (EML)
Business Support Systems (BSS) are the components that a telephone operator or telco uses to run its business operations. The term BSS is no longer limited to telephone operators offering mobile to fixed and cable services but also can apply to service providers in all sectors such as utility providers.
Typical types of activities that count as part of BSS are taking a customer’s order, managing customer data, managing order data, billing, rating, and offering B2B and B2C services. Business Support Systems are linked to Operational Support Systems (OSS) in the enhanced Telecom Operations Map (eTOM) that maps processes into the functional areas of Fulfilment, Assurance and Billing where Assurance is typically covered by OSS platform. 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 4 main areas:
- Product Management
- Customer Management
- Revenue Management
- Fulfillment Management
- Product Management:
Product management supports 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 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.
- Fulfillment Management:
Fulfillment Management as part of assurance is normally associated with Operational Support Systems though Business Support Systems are often the business driver for Fulfillment Management and order provisioning.
TeleManagement Forum
Most recently the TM Forum (TMF) has developed a communications domain model that provides the basis for clarifying the distinction between OSS and BSS systems. As shown in the figure the BSS supports the more Customer Facing domains. Whereas the OSS supports the traditional Resource and Resource Facing Service domains.
In NGOSS, applications provide access to system capability, which can generally be categorized as either BSS or OSS. The capability offered by an application through its deployed components can be further categorized as shown in the figure. Business activities such as Fulfillment, Assurance & Billing will necessarily utilize BSS and OSS applications capability from each of the domains to support end-to-end process flows.
For example, problem handling activities (part of Assurance) inside a Service Provider define the interaction between the Customer, Product, Service, Resource and Supplier/Partner entities to resolve the reported incident/problem. As such, problem management applications are required to provide access to Customer, Product, Service, Resource and Supplier/Partner information in support of the problem handling activities that occur throughout the problem management process lifecycle.
