Business support system

Business support systems (BSS) are the components that a telecommunications service provider (or telco) uses to run its business operations towards customers.

Together with operations support systems (OSS), they are used to support various end-to-end telecommunication services (e.g., telephone services). BSS and OSS have their own data and service responsibilities. The two systems together are often abbreviated OSS/BSS, BSS/OSS or simply B/OSS.

The acronym BSS is also used in a singular form to refer to all the business support systems viewed as a whole system.

BSS deals with the taking of orders, payment issues, revenues, etc. It supports four processes: product management, order management, revenue management and customer management.

Product management supports product development, the sales and management of products, offers and bundles to businesses and mass-market customers. Product management regularly includes offering cross-product discounts, appropriate pricing and managing how products relate to one another.

Service providers require a single view of the customer and regularly need to support complex hierarchies across customer-facing applications (customer relationship management). Customer management also covers requirements for partner management and 24x7 web-based customer self-service. Customer management can also be thought of as full-fledged customer relationship management systems implemented to help customer care agents handle the customers in a better and more informed manner.

Revenue management focuses on billing, charging and settlement. It can handle any combination of OSS services, products and offers. BSS revenue management supports OSS order provisioning and often partner settlement. Billing is an integral function offered by BSS systems and is not under the purview of OSS.

Order management encompasses four areas:

Order management as a beginning of assurance is normally associated with OSS, although BSS is often the business driver for fulfillment management and order provisioning.

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