subject: How Oss/bss Is Key To Remaining In The Telecommunications Sector [print this page] Business support systems and operations support systems, also known as telecom billing solution, refer to information technology processes used to accomplish telecommunications service. The former refers to those portions of this business which deal with customers while the latter deals with the network itself. To try and keep up with the ever changing telecommunications environment, one must analyze and manage these systems to provide the demands of an impatient and creative consumer base.
There are few places on earth that are not part of a global communications system we refer to as telecommunications. There are cables on the ocean floor stretched between continents, satellites in space, and towers traverse the wilderness and are mainstays in our cities, usually along our transportation infrastructure. Most of us take this service for granted, giving little thought to the complexity of managing a service that is global and personal.
It is a constant challenge to determine the right balance of focus between the two necessary parts of the industry. With the incredible cost of upgrading infrastructure, there is an overwhelming tendency to focus on the people and service part. This is, of course, an unsustainable process for any telecom billing solution provider who wants to keep up with the competition.
This predominance of people related interest is understandable given the precarious nature of service industries where customer service reputation is critical due to intense competition. What has to be clearly understood is that the operations portion of business is the true lifeblood. Without it, there is nothing to market, no new application to provide and therefore no new business. Instead of feeling uncomfortable about expenditures on the hands on part of business, it needs to be humanized as an asset to the customer.
There have been a number of successful campaigns that made the hard work of laying cable and checking reception very popular. These have usually used clever or humorous simplifications of actual hard work and manpower required to keep the idea that spending money on the actual product is good for the consumer. The trick is to keep the focus on the customer by using the development of new technologies, the expansion of physical parts of the system and the computer technology to control it as a means to show how much service is being provided.
In this complicated industry, management must essentially run two businesses at the same time. They have to keep the hardware working, expanding and changing, while at the same time managing the service provision side of business. Computers are obviously critical to this field and they have been using them for nearly half a century. But now, first level computers are not enough.
The solution is to orchestrate a series of computer programs to be able to drill down through data to find that important inquiry that is on the table. The business has been entering data into computers for nearly half a century. These first level computers have an enormous quantity of data, but it is nearly impossible to extract the exact threads of data needed for a single decision. A computer program to drive the first level computers to surrender the data in packets of information is key.
