London. Now again the trouble ticket manager can use the work force management module to assign the ticket to a professional from an operations team in London. This way the trouble ticket manager can track the ticket from creation to closure. Inventory management: Cost saving in telecom space can only be achieved when the available inventory is properly utilized. The inventory needs to be properly allocated and deallocated for offering the service. Inventory data if not managed is really complex. For example, inventory will include a wide variety of network elements like switches, hubs, servers, trunks, cards, racks, shelves with different capacity, address range, access points, and SO on. The inventory would be placed at different locations and the quantity of each of Fundamentals of EMS, NMS and OSS/BSS these elements may be different at each of the locations. Again some of these elements may be faulty and some of the working elements might be already in use, booked for a specific provisioning, being fixed, and under maintenance leading to a different status at a given point of time. When the provisioning module needs resources based on parameters like status, location, capacity, and SO on, a decision is made on the most appropriate resources to be used. This information is provided by an inven- tory management module. The inventory data can also include details on serial number, warranty dates, item cost, date the element was assigned, and even the maintenance cost. All inventory information is logically grouped in the inventory management module. This makes it easy to view and gener- ate reports on the inventory. Capacity planning can be performed based on inventory data and new inventory can be procured as per need before an outage occurs. Inventory affects the CAPEX and OPEX directly and hence inventory reports are of much importance to senior management. Procuring inventory from a new vendor usually goes through a rigorous vendor analysis followed by legal agreements for license including maintenance and s