n The Ultimate Guide to Building and Delivering OSS/BSS marketing are two primary areas for business intelligence. Business intelligence uses detailed information about the customer to tailor product packages, personalize the customer contact experience, and make pro-active, real-time trouble handling possible. Similarly, business intelligence can help an IIC determine up-sell and cross-sell opportunities based on customer and product profiling. Clearly, there are many ways for an IIC to apply its OSS packages to create competitive differentiation. Regardless of the approach, the method for achieving competitive differentiation is dependent on the following three factors: - Selecting the right OSS solutions - Aligning business processes and OSS configuration - Integrating the OSS The real trick is creativity. It is an IIC's understanding of its OSS infrastructure - what it can do and what it needs to do - that will allow the IIC to be creative in using its OSS platform to stand out. As we will discuss in Chapters 5 and 6, it is an OSS's adaptability and how well it integrates with other systems that will dictate how well the IIC can apply the methods of differentiation we have discussed. In Chapter 6, we will discuss the numerous ways to approach application and process integration with competitive differentiation as the goal. DEVELOPING AN IMPLEMENTATION STRATEGY 4.1 The Build VS. Buy Decision An IIC may be faced with the decision of whether to buy or build its OSS platform. In general, the market for OSS packages has grown in terms of functionality and interoperability. With many options available, there is little justification for an IIC to build its OSS platform from scratch. It may make economic sense for certain application areas in rare cases where an IIC might have some unique products or network technologies that off-the-shelf packages do not support. In some cases, an IIC may elect to build certain elements of the OSS to achieve competitive differentiation based on unique requirements. For IICs that are