 as completed to customer management modules. The provisioning system plays a critical role in fulfillment of service. The pro- visioning process in itself is quite complex where the activities would be across different kinds of networks and can involve a variety of tasks related to the service. For example, when a service is provisioned it might involve configuring elements Customer Service management catalog Billing Order Order Inventory management management Verification and validation Workforce Provisioning management system Figure 20.3 High level steps in order management. OSS/BSS Functions in ATM or FR for transport, RAS for access and some elements in a wireless network. The actual task to be performed in the element could include, but not limited to, configuring an application, setting up parameters for security, connec- tivity setup between elements, associating storage with server or application, and SO forth. The provisioning OSS (see Figure 20.4) can also handle configuring of network for dynamically oriented transactions like authentication, accounting, and authorization. To summarize, the provisioning system can do application provision- ing, service provisioning, resource/element/server provisioning, network provision- ing, storage provisioning, security provisioning, dynamic SLA-based provisioning, monitoring provisioning and any other setup activities that will be required to pro- vision a product package consisting of multiple or at least one service, which is described as an order. An operation support system will usually consist of multiple provisioning modules specialized for a specific activity. Provisioning with minimal or no manual intervention is a goal that most service providers try to achieve in their OSS to bring down the OPEX. The inventory management system supports and interacts with multiple mod- ules relevant to fulfillment by keeping track of all the physical and logical assets and allocating the assets to customers based on the services requested. Order man- ager interacts with