Service Manager supports the management of service instances throughout their entire lifecycle, from initial fulfilment and activation to service changes and service recovery. The system supports the full range of service types, including fixed line, mobile, cable, WiMAX, IN, VAS and new 4G service applications, and allows bundling and unbundling of service combinations.
Rules-based activation and provisioning
Service Manager provides the power to activate, update or terminate services automatically on any network device or application, based on workflow conditions and dependencies. Service Manager provides an open and flexible mechanism to interface with any number of network elements, either via direct, serial connection to a network element terminal port or over TCP/IP. It utilises user-definable command profiles enabling the rapid introduction of new services without the need for software customisation.
Service Manager interfaces with all types of network device or business application. The system is equally comfortable provisioning on switches, messaging systems (voicemail, SMSC, MMSC), IN platforms, radius servers and any kind of application server.
Product and service catalogue
Service Manager is pre-integrated with the Enterprise Product Catalogue module, which is a business oriented solution that enables efficient management of the multitude of sophisticated products and services required today. It enables end-user products to be created based on re-usable product and service elements, improving time to market for launching new services and ensuring network capabilities are matched with the commercial products.
Any type of service can be defined and sold as a product, including voice and data access, value added services and content, and other complementary items such as physical communications equipment including devices, routers and set-top-boxes. Enterprise Product Catalogue is also used to define product pricing and packages used by the upstream CRM and billing systems.
Embedded workflow and order management
Service Manager incorporates a workflow management engine to ensure that promises to customers are kept, avoiding complaints and revenue leakage down the line. It controls key business processes including order management and provisioning, and populates the attributes required for each service instance. By linking together both automatic actions and manual procedures, workflows ensure that all the necessary job steps are undertaken to complete a customer order, managing action priorities and issue escalation where required. Similarly, workflow avoids inefficiencies by ensuring tasks are undertaken only when all necessary prerequisites are complete.
Pre-integrated network inventory option
Service Manager is pre-integrated with the optional Network Inventory module, which manages the physical and logical network resources used to build services. This allows “bottom up” service creation, based on real network capabilities, ensuring only services which are available on the network can be offered in commercial packages to the end customer. Linked with workflow and order management, it also helps provide alternative services where a customer’s first choice of service is unavailable.
Service-oriented architecture
Service Manager follows the concepts of a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), including component re-use and exposing a comprehensive set of APIs for interfacing with “upstream” systems such as CRM, billing and self-service applications, and 3rd party Network Inventory and Product Catalogue components as required. These APIs are available as industry standard Web Services interfaces, mixing granular service building blocks and business level functions. Service Manager is also available as an integral part of Cerillion’s end-to-end convergent CRM & Billing solution.
Audit trail and reporting
Service Manager maintains a complete audit trail of all actions undertaken by the system. This includes details of all provisioning requests and responses, and all changes to configuration details by the operator’s staff. Statistics are stored and standard reports support analysis of all stages of the service management lifecycle. Service Manager is equipped with a Business Objects “universe”, enabling further reporting and detailed data analysis through the industry standard reporting tool.