der Entry Basics 1.3 Service Validation Guiding the customer to the right services makes a service validation process absolutely necessary. It would be foolish to sell services to a customer only to find later that the customer's location cannot support them. In an integrated environment, once a customer's location is determined, the The Ultimate Guide to Building and Delivering OSS/BSS order entry/CRM/SFA system must communicate with other systems that handle network inventory and configuration to determine what services the location can support. For example, let's say a residential customer wants to order cable modem service for his home office. Before the cable provider can approve the order, it must check its network inventory to make sure the customer's neighborhood has been upgraded to a two-way cable plant that can support the service. Another example of service validation would be if a customer asked for a vanity 800-number. Naturally, the IIC would have to verify that the requested number is available before promising it to the customer. From a business services perspective, a customer could inquire about frame-relay service as a replacement for leased lines. The IIC would have to validate that the customer's location has frame relay access before proceeding with an order. Order validation is especially important to DSL providers, since DSL services are prone to network condition and distance limitations. DSL wholesalers often build what are called "loop pre-qualification" databases. These databases capture all of the information about the condition of local loops in a given geographic area. Through a Web-based interface, or by integrating the order entry system, an IIC can access such a database to validate that the local loop serving a specific customer location can support DSL service. This raises the issue of communications among trading partners. Quite often, IICs do not own or control the facilities that ultimately serve their customers. In such cases, they must integrate their ordering process wit