BSS - Business Support Systems

Business Support Systems (BSS) are the systems that a telephone operator or telco uses to run its business operations. The term BSS is no longer limited to telephone operators offering mobile to fixed and cable services but also can apply to service providers in all sectors such as utility providers.

Typical types of activities that count as part of BSS are taking a customer’s order, managing customer data, billing, rating, and offering B2B and B2C services. In summary, Business Support Systems (BSS) cover 4 main areas:

Product Management: Product management supports 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 customer loyalty programs.

Customer Management: Service Providers require a single view of the customer and regularly need to support complex hierarchies across customer-facing applications. Customer Management also covers requirements for partner management and 24x7 Web-based customer self-service.

Revenue Management: Revenue Management is a BSS focus on billing, charging and settlement that can handle any combination of OSS services, products and offers. BSS Revenue Management supports OSS order provisioning and often partner settlement.

Fulfillment Management: Fulfillment Management as part of assurance is normally associated with Operational Support Systems though Business Support Systems are often the business driver for Fulfillment Management and order provisioning.