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.
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Basically it deals with the taking of orders, payment issues, and revenues. The role of business support systems in a service provider is to cover four main areas:
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
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 as full-fledged customer relationship management systems implemented to help customer care agents handle the customers in a better and more informed manner..
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.Billing is an integral function offered by BSS systems and is not under the purview of Operation Support Systems.
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.