 recorded for future planning and an analysis of resource effectiveness in completing an allocated task. 30. Financial management: These applications are used to manage the cost of telecommunication services. Cost of service is managed with evolution or change in service with telecom financial management application. Financial management deals with service inventory, contract inventory, and cost con- trol. Service and contract inventory needs to be reconciled against the invoice to ensure that the services subscribed by the customer are invoiced correctly. It is essential that financial management generate savings from billing error identification and correction. Validating the accuracy of service charges includes investigating service charge amounts for contractual accuracy and confirming service charges are covered in financial management. Finance management is an enterprise level activity. Hence it is common to integrate telecom finance management application with the enterprise finance man- agement application. Fundamentals of EMS, NMS and OSS/BSS 31. HR management: Human resource management applications are used at the enterprise level and not restricted to telecom. Human resources departments that are not automated lack the flexibility to adjust quickly to changing busi- ness or regulatory requirements and usually have higher operational costs compared to HR departments that used software solutions for administrating salaries, benefits, recruiting, and performance management. HR solutions usually streamline payroll processing. Some of the solutions have modules that handle hiring, can do employee performance analysis, and facilitate effective communication. Automation and the smart use of software tools can go a long way toward simplifying administrative tasks and control- ling costs. 32. Knowledge management: There are solutions currently available for automat- ing this enterprise level process. The knowledge management applications help telecom organizations to systematically collect, manage, and execute 