r area. If it is, she should be able to order it online and schedule an installation appointment. This should then kick off an order for customer premises equipment and service provisioning - potentially without a customer care agent ever being involved. Figure 16 looks at these benefits and where they fit into an IIC's business and value chain. Customer Intimacy and Supply Chain Efficiencies Intelligence Market Reach Extranets Business intelligence from Internet channel audiences Electronic transactions customer interactions Web portals, content Overlapping data and systems aggregators, exchanges, etc. Suppliers and Supplier Business Customer Partners Networks Channels Customers Internal Communications Virtual Corporation "Networked in" telecommuters Customer Delight and mobile employees Customer support through Tight integration of outsourced self service functions Ease of "Electronic Customer Care" Operational Efficiencies transactions Knowledge and Development Web-enabled administrative Increased information and Intranet-based knowledge and HR systems new ranges of options management Web-enabled performance Higher levels of customer Employee development management satisfaction Figure 16. Web Portal Benefits: Redefining the Value Chain The Ultimate Guide to Building and Delivering OSS/BSS The easy part is identifying a Web portal's potential benefits. The tough part is developing a strategy for designing, deploying and utilizing a portal. For IICs to truly leverage the Internet's capabilities, they must first understand the types and level of transactions they can achieve. Web portal transactions fall into two groups: inter-carrier or trading partner transactions, i.e. business- to-business (B2B) wholesale, and transactions between service providers and end customers, i.e. business-to-business retail and business-to-consumer (B2C). Figure 17 provides an overview of the linkage between a Wertal and the OSS platform. Customer/User Admin Customer/User Order Management Entry and Status Service Provisioning Supply 