f the processes with the business is required for IICs in a dynamic and ever-changing business environment. Optimized processes can also contribute to the bottom line, expediting service delivery, improving data integrity and reconciliation, and reducing redundancy and manual effort. Process capabilities such as near real-time The Ultimate Guide to Building and Delivering OSS/BSS flow-through from provisioning to billing to the financial stream can impact financial performance directly. By tracking newly activated or disconnected accounts, late payments and delinquencies for productive accounts receivable, companies often experience improved financial results. Furthermore, when performance metrics are implemented, they can improve accountability and results, enabling stronger controls for dealing with trading partners and vendors. CONFIGURATION AND PROCESS To a large extent, it is the business process that determines the efficiency with which a service is provisioned, troubles are handled and customers are managed. Contemporary OSS packages are designed to provide flexibility in how business processes are configured, often creating great variety among several IIC implementations of the same application. A major concern is that implementing poor processes could cripple the most effective software package. Additionally, some IICs simply do not understand the importance of disciplined processes and can run into some unforeseen problems as a result., From a network perspective, for example, without rigorous processes in place, an IIC will quickly discover that it has no idea what circuits are assigned to which customers. Without disciplined inventory processes in place, an IIC won't know if it has all the capacity it needs, or what specific capabilities it can leverage. Systems can track circuits, but they are only as good as the processes that drive data input and output activities. Without detailed and agreed upon business processes in place, it is difficult, if not impossible, to implement and track in-process met