When managing the end-to-end service order lifecycle, you need help in fulfilling complex and bundled orders quickly and accurately. Wherever the order originates, whether by self service or a customer agent, service order management processes take each order and decompose them into a sequence of interdependent tasks and then orchestrates their completion across one or multiple fulfillment systems. Orders may involve both manual and automated tasks such as engineer site visits, equipment provisioning and configuration.

Orchestrate the more complex service scenarios

The demand for complex services continues to grow. Business customers want virtual private networks (VPNs) connected to multiple sites, with multiple routes, equipment types and specified service level agreements (SLAs). Consumers want multi-play services with close interdependencies such as high quality IPTV over broadband DSL. Service providers need to be able to deliver a wide range of services quickly and efficiently while coping with constant change and upgrade to the network itself.

In this environment, you need a software solution which decomposes each order and interacts directly with multiple systems as required to fulfill the order – from activation and configuration systems to workforce management systems for manual engineering tasks. Orchestration of the complete fulfillment process is essential to achieve the short activation times that customers expect. SLA management is crucial to track and report potential breaches before they occur.

Service Order Management and Active Inventory concepts are applicable to a variety of different OSS areas. We've classified and summarised the main OSS domains where these apply.