priorities and reassign work tasks automatically in order to keep an order from falling into jeopardy. A critical feature of an effective order management system is its ability to report on order completion times and jeopardy situations. An IIC can use this information to analyze, evaluate and, if necessary, adjust its business processes if it finds it is running into certain problems repeatedly. An operational business intelligence engine can also use this data, measuring it against operational metrics in real-time. 2.3 "Design and Assign" The order management process is closely associated with network inventory management and service provisioning. As mentioned earlier, reserving facilities and other network-related resources is part of the ordering process. As tasks are completed and orders are filled, network inventory elements must be updated to reflect changes in the network's configuration. An IIC must maintain as accurate and current a picture of its network as possible SO that orders are validated properly and available resources can be "assigned" to specific service orders. In some cases, engineering design work is required to fulfill an especially complex order that requires multiple network elements. For example, let's say a customer orders a new T-1 line for its data services. The IIC finds that Chapter 2 - A Detailed Look at OSS sufficient capacity, such as a T-3 facility circuit, already serves the customer's building, but that the existing circuit has not yet been configured in any specific fashion. A design task may then be assigned to a network design engineer who uses an application to configure the T-3 pipe into 24 individual T-1 circuits, making a T-1 available to the customer. Once this design work is completed, the order fulfillment process can continue to, for example, activate the T-1 service and notify the billing system that service is initiated. This overall process is known as provisioning, and will be examined later in this chapter. Communication with Trading Partners As more competit