ORDER MANAGEMENT Once an order of any kind is captured and validated, the order management process is triggered. This process consists of several parts, including order decomposition, workflow management, "assign and design" and communication with trading partners. Figure 2 provides an overview of these components, how they relate and the roles they play in fulfilling service orders. Order Decomposition Orders can be complex, requiring a series of tasks assigned among many systems and the people to deliver a requested set of services. For example, a customer may order both voice and data services simultaneously. The IIC might maintain separate operations for voice and data, perhaps due to a recent acquisition, but has combined its customer relationship management processes in order to present a single point of contact to the customer. The order must then be broken down and addressed to each side of the organization, and generally, further "decomposed" into dependent tasks and sub-tasks. Chapter 2 - A Detailed Look at OSS Orders Order Management Application Provisioning Workforce Management "Decomposes" orders into Schedule and assign manual work Maintain provisioning plans specific work tasks tasks to appropriate technicians "Design and Assign" services Notify workflow when tasks are Track network configuration complete and synch with inventory Workflow Interconnect Gateway Manager Send and/or receive works tasks or orders to partners, wholesale customers, suppliers Inventory "Database of record" for Assigns work tasks to systems network assets or groups Billing Network Monitors and manages due dates, jeopardy situations, Manages customer Activation accounts task dependencies Workflow activates Communications with Manages updates among systems, network elements to e.g. notifying CRM when order is billing when order is fulfilled activate services as in jeopardy laid out in provisioning Bills for services Figure 2. Order Management and Workflow Even for a relatively simple plain old telephone service (POTS) order f