ply and service delivery to customer self-help. eCommerce : A term for transactional business conducted over the Internet. eCRM (eCustomer Relationship Management): Generally refers to any Web- enabled customer support functions. Can include customer self-help, but also includes Web-based tools customer care representatives utilize to assist customers. eOSS: A concept or environment where many IICs OSS platforms are integrated together to form a hierarchical, tight-knit trading community. The Ultimate Guide to Building and Delivering OSS/BSS eTailers: The host of companies that use the Internet to sell goods and services traditionally offered in a retail environment, such as health care items, toys, books, clothes and music. Electronic Bill Presentment and Payment (EBPP): The technology set and practice of making a customer's billing information available online and allowing the customer to pay bills electronically. Electronic bonding: A term typically applied to the processes or technologies IICs use to interconnect with other IICs. Electronic stapling: The process IICs sometimes use to give the impression of a convergent service offering. Often used as a step toward convergence, electronic stapling involves printing billing information about different services and derived from different systems, on the same bill. Element managers: Software components, often embedded in network equipment, responsible for managing and allowing access to that equipment's functions and capabilities. End office: A local switching center, generally providing local loops to end users. Enterprise Data Model: A model an IIC would develop to define all of the individual data elements involved in its OSS platform. The goal of this model is to provide a center of reference for data elements as different applications, processes and data enter and exit the OSS environment. Enterprise Java Bean (EJB): EJB is a component architecture for development and deployment of component-based business applications. The EJB server-side model simplifies t