Paper 6: Management Information System

Module 16: Tools for Business Support System

Prof. S P Bansal
Principal Investigator Vice Chancellor
Maharaja Agrasen University, Baddi

Prof Yoginder Verma

Co-Principal Investigator Pro–Vice Chancellor
Central University of Himachal Pradesh. Kangra. H.P.

Prof. Manu Sood

Paper Coordinator Chairman, Department of Computer Science
Himachal Pradesh University, Shimla.

Dr. Ashish Saihjpal

Content Writer Assistant Professor,
University Business School, Panjab University (RC),
Ludhiana
Items Description of Module
Subject Name Management
Paper Name Management Information System
Module Title Tools for Business Support Systems
Module Id Module No 16
Pre- Requisites Basic understanding of components of an MIS system.
Objectives To understand the tools and requirements for Business Support Systems.
Keywords Product Management, Revenue Management, Customer Management, Fulfillment
Management, Persware, Rapid Application Development, Cloud Computing,
Auditing.

QUADRANT-I

Module- 16 Tools for Business Support System

1. Learning Outcome
2. Introduction
3. Role of Business Support Systems
4. Building Business Support Systems
4.1 Components of the Business Information System
4.2 Interdependence between the Organizations and Information Systems
5. Information Technology Infrastructure Ecosystem
6. Summary

1. Learning Outcome:
After completing this module the students will be able to:
 Understand the concept of Business Support Systems.
 Understand the role of Business Support Systems in MIS.
 Understand the basic components of Business Support Systems.
 Analyze the interdependence between the organization and information systems.
 Overview of various components comprising the Information Technology infrastructure
ecosystem.

2. Introduction

Fundamentally, any system carries a simple process of taking input, processing it and then producing a
certain output. At the organizational level, multiple activities occur simultaneously that together comprise
business processes. In the context of an information system, it captures and accumulates raw data which is
processed to yield information for business related purposes. This interaction can be well understood from
exhibit 1.

Exhibit 1: Defining a System

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Information systems facilitate business operational activities across different functional divisions of the
organization. One of the industry applications of the information systems are the business support
systems. The term encompasses tools for business support software for billing solutions; customer
management; product design & management; order activation and processing and the corresponding
hardware for infrastructural requirements (Exibit2).

Exhibit 2: Value Proposition BSS/OSS

Image Source: https://www.targetso.com

A business support system (BSS) is an integration of elements that support computer networks to help
stakeholders gain customer related information, compile subscription data and introduce new revenue
mechanisms.

A BSS supports operational activities required to maintain an integrated and coherent business ecosystem.
A good BSS provides various features such as scheduling of activities, deliverables, change requests to be
incorporated in a way that business at customer end is not affected.

A well designed BSS helps an enterprise to maintain a competitive edge by adapting to changing market
dynamics quickly. A BSS deployment finds applications across different functional departments in an
organization, thus, maximizing return on investment. The portfolio of applications range from product
management, scheduled deliveries of software and hardware, project management, contracting to sales
and marketing activities.

Fundamentally, the role of a BSS is to synchronize control, share business resources and enable managed
services across the organization or different organizations. The BSS handles the different stages of the
system development life cycle for an organization. It ensures that the processes are well integrated and
activities are scheduled in a sequenced manner.
3. Role of Business Support System

To have the right product or service delivered to the right people in the right time frame requires the
organization to align all of the moving parts of business. It is needed to incorporate them into one holistic
system that consistently delivers that product or service with excellence. Business support functions are
key enablers to an organization’s success, and their activities need to be aligned to support the efficient
and effective delivery of organizational goals.

BSS activities typically include business to business and business to customer activities. BSS deals with
the taking of orders, payment issues, revenues, etc. It supports four processes namely product
management, order management, revenue management and customer management (figure 1). These are
discussed below:

Product Customer
Management Management

Revenue Fulfillment
Management Management

Figure 1: Primary Business Support System Areas

 Product management – It comprises activities related to product development, sales and building
marketing collateral for products. Also, pricing parameters, offers and promotional activities to
cater to business. Product management regularly includes offering product centric solutions along
with appropriate pricing and managing how products relate to one another.

 Customer management – Business Support Systems help in management of customer interaction

and customer facing applications. Vendor management and customer support services are also
supported. For example, customer relationship management software is an end to end customer
management tool.

 Revenue management – It focuses on providing compatible billing and charging solutions to

manage customer profiles along with billing details. It can handle customer accounts and related
data and integrate with operations support systems (OSS) services. This helps manage revenues,
payment status and frauds for the gamut of customers it caters to.

 Order management – It comprises of defragmentation of a received sales order into multiple work
orders. Further, the concept of orchestration helps in managing distinct customer processes.
Moreover, status management helps in monitoring status of processes and agreeing timelines with
the business customers accordingly.
Exhibit 3 showcases various application areas of Business Support Systems across different functional
departments of the organization.

Exhibit 3: Applications of Business Support Systems

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4. Building the Business Support Systems

The main aim to build a robust business support system is to ensure that the core enterprise functions are
coherent to sub systems. This eventually ensures customer service delivery and customer management as
per industry standards. The important aspect to note is how the BSS/OSS is engineered into the network
topology. The integration interfaces should be managed in such a way that it allows further integration
with changing business needs.

The expectations and requirements from a BSS implementation are unique for every customer. These
changes have to be engineered to meet the needs of each network operator. With huge investments
involved in such infrastructural requirements, it is important to channelize how the working of BSS/OSS
is designed. It should be able to cut down surmounting costs yet serve multiple application areas to keep
cost of operation low.
4.1 Components of the Business Information System

Whenever we think of information systems in business; normally, we think of hardware and software.
Such a view provides a narrow insight into the business information systems. There is another dimension
that be overlooked and that’s the people side or “persware.”

Persware

Hardware Software

Figure 2: Components of Business Information Systems

The information process comprises the input, processing, output and feedback processes. Importantly, the
feedback process tends to be the most overlooked one. It is the hardware (input and output) and the
software (processing) that is assumed to be of paramount importance. The “persware” aspect completes
the feedback loop and represents computer literacy as shown in Fig 2.

The following are components of Information Systems which help to gain a better insight of business
support systems.

 Data – It refers to the input, which the system takes to produce information. This can be in the
form of numbers, alphabets or special characters coded in binary form. Data are very critical to
organizations and they strive to put it to best business use. Data management refers to the
complete lifecycle of data acquisition, storage, processing, information control and feedback. It is
maintained via architectural expertise and managed by database experts.

 Hardware – Hardware refers to the physical equipment that comprises the information system
infrastructure. Hardware comprises the end to end requirements that network the system and
enable the communication to be set up. It involves input and output devices, storage devices and
peripherals.

 Software – Software is the set of programs and instruction that the hardware follows to process
the instructions. It lays out the sequential tasks that the computers have to follow. Software
platform is the operating system and the application software on which the information system is
built.

 Communication networks – It refers to the arrangement of computer peripherals with reference to

their complexity and size. It determines the connectivity and flow of information that determine
 their method of resource sharing. Computer networks support numerous applications and services
and follow network topology and networking protocols to establish communication.

 World Wide Web – It is the technological platform that people use to interact with each other on a
real time basis despite the physical distance. It refers to the technology standards that are
acceptable worldwide. Web pages when cascaded together and synchronized form websites. They
have embedded files like audio, video, graphics, animation etc.

 People – People, refer to the information system professionals and users who design, construct,
operate and maintain IS. These refer to the end users of the IS as well as various technical and
managerial specialists.

 Procedures – Procedures imply the rules that govern data processing. It also refers to the
organizational policies to be adhered to and compliances that have to be met as per industry
standards.

Every Information System is equipped with the afiresaid resources. The goals of information systems
can be easily achieved by employing these resources to their optimum level by keeping in view the
purpose for which IS are used in an organization.

4.2 Interdependence between the Organizations and Information Systems

Information systems are powerful tools in the hands of managers for achieving efficiency and
productivity in business operations. IS caters to changing business needs of organizations in terms of
scalability and interoperability between other systems. Fundamentally, there should be synergy between
firm’s information systems and its business capabilities. Strategic changes at the management level
should flow down to the lowest level of organizational structure i.e., system engineers. These need to be
incorporated in operational activities, procedures and corresponding amendments in the configuration of
the system. The hardware, software, databases and network have to be aligned in order to serve business
requirements. What an organization aims to do is what its back end systems are capable of. Figure 3
showcases the roles and responsibilities of the different entities in realizing the interdependence.

Figure 3: Organization & Information System

 The association between organizations and information systems involve integration of the
automated platform to various stakeholders responsible for carrying day to day business
operations. This comprise such as employees, suppliers, vendors, clients on a converged platform
where communication and information sharing is possible.

The process is responsible in bringing together people, processes and technology and enables
communication in different forms like voice and data. It involves creation and maintenance of
data repositories that hold large volume of data that can be processed for business use cases. Data
base expert work on these data storehouses using their expertise of Data Base Management
Software. They can process queries and fetch data as per day to day business needs.

Exhibit 4: Rapid Application Development

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 Rapid application development tools – These tools make use of graphic user interface provided
by the operating system. The changing market trends and business needs signal towards the
development and use of software to design the screens and input formats, menus and output
reports.
.
 Application Software - Application software involve operations between a user and an
organization’s back office business systems. The application server may reside on the same
computer as the web server or on its own dedicated computer. e.g., knowledge management
software, data mining software, logistics and supply chain management etc.

 Computer aided software engineering tools (CASE tool) - These help the designers to have a well
defined and systematic approach in their efforts with facility to store the results for modifications
and iterations. They help to interpret user requirements to machine level diagrams.

 Objects Oriented Methodology – It refers to the programming interface for developing

information system. Adoption of this methodology gains wider acceptance due to lack of
flexibility in traditional structured methodology for development. This technology is now used in
 almost all fields of application development such as Information Engineering, RAD Tools, CASE
Tools, Neural Networks, and Parallel Computing etc.

Exhibit 5: OSS/ BSS and Internet

of Things
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https://media.licdn.com

 Training & Development - The basket of information technology services comprises the services
to plan and coordinate business operations and related services. IT standards and protocols
determine the standards and policies to be used. Education services comprise the complete gamut
of training and development for the know how to operate the applications.

 IT research and development – These services help to develop the future roadmap of product
development and service enhancement as per market trends. Any new functionality to be added or
changes to be incorporated are worked out by developers and research and development experts.

Exhibit 6: Cloud Computing

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 Cloud computing - With the concept of hosted services comes cloud computing. It comprises of
services that run on remote servers hosted over the internet. Cloud computing enables storage,
management and processing of data over the cloud instead of physical servers present locally.
The advantages of cloud computing are represented in exhibit 6.

 Auditing – It involves taking stock of hardware, software, procedures and data at regular
intervals. With regard to software and data, auditing can be carried automatically with an
appropriate program. Auditing software works by scanning the hard disk drivers of computers,
terminals and servers attached to the network. As each hard disk gets scanned, the names of any
programs found are added to a log. This log can be prepared to a list of programs that are
 legitimately owned by the organization. Auditing programs help in the management of software
licenses and other licensed agreements with third parties.

Exhibit 7: Amdocs Business Support System

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Amdocs, one of the world leaders in the communication business took over the BSS by Comverse. This was
to further enhance the customer experience as they would jointly address the market space in the digital
arena. Together they have created a larger impact as they implement their solutions across the satellite
markets globally. BSS in particular shall cater to the Customer Relationship Management and Billing
Solutions. Key features of the Amdocs business support system are highlighted in Exhibit 7.

Amdocs Compact Convergence on the Cloud is an end to end Business Support System to meet
requirements of small to medium size enterprises. These services are available as a managed services model
where the application installed on a remote server can process business requirements on a revenue share
model. This not only reduces capital expenditure but improves operational efficiency.

Case: A TCS HOBS Solution at Tesco

Tesco Plc one of the largest supermarket chains across UK, is among the world’s largest retailer. It’s
telecom market space Tesco Mobile comprises of customers with mobile, fixed line, internet and dial up
connections.
Tesco reintroduced their residential phones services and dial up connections with improved service level
agreements. Their focus lay on reducing the turnaround time for customer query resolution and making
customer billing easier than before.

Exhibit 8: N Chandrasekaran, Tata Group

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The new service offering was an “As - a - Service Model” which Tesco needed. The legacy system was to
be migrated to a centralized customer care and billing platform. Tesco moved to a whole new hosted
OSS/BSS system offered by TCS. The new hosted platform rendered full support to all operations and
business support activities. This supported the back office solutions which could now be marketable
faster. The business was moving towards an incremental “Build – as – you – grow” and “Pay – as – you –
use” model. This has largely improved the effectiveness of the new implementation substantially reducing
the capital and operating expenditure.

Exhibit 9: Tesco Mobile

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Efficient use of the cloud based technology is only one portion of the Tesco information system
implementation. The managers have integrated IS in multiple business deployments at Tesco. From stock
keeping units, inventory management to billing solutions, from maintain customer profiles to accounting
solutions, surveillance to order processing. Tesco mobility solutions to Tesco personal finance, Tesco
retail formats ranging from supermarkets to metro and express stores utilize business support solutions in
multiple ways to optimize business activities and assist customers. They maintain customer profiles and
study the pattern of past purchases to offer loyalty card schemes.
5. Information Technology Infrastructure Ecosystem
Following are the major components in any enterprise that must be coherent with IT infrastructure. These
components should be well coordinated with each other to provide an integrated solution. The important
components are discussed below:

Internet Platforms
Computer Hardware Operating System Enterprise Software
Apache Platforms Platforms Applications
Unix Sun, HP, Dell, IBM Mac OS, Unix, Linux SAP, Oracle, Microsoft
Java

Networking Consultants & System

Integrators Data Management &
Linux, Alcatel, Nortel, Storage
AT&T IBM, EDS, Accenture

Figure 4: IT Infrastructure Ecosystem

 Operating systems – The OS is the backbone for any IS solution. It forms the platform on which
the end user interacts with the hardware. It is the basic necessity for the hardware to understand
what software is running on it and how to function. OS are robust software solutions that allow
multitasking by time sharing of the processor time between tasks e.g Windows, Macintosh, Linux
etc.

 Enterprise database management software – It is responsible for organizing and managing the
firm’s data so that they can be efficiently accessed and used. They enhance the productivity and
efficiency of a company by enabling it to process queries simultaneously.

 Networking Telecommunication Platforms - The most popular networking hardware providers are
Cisco, Alcatel-Lucent, Nortel and Juniper Networks. Telecommunications platforms are typically
provided by telephone services companies that offer both voice and data connectivity.

 Internet Platforms - Internet platforms must comply with the firm’s networking infrastructure and
technology platforms. It should further involve hosted services over the web, which the users can
buy as an incremental service model. This means as service users increase, the service charges
increase.
 Exhibit 10: System Integration
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 Consulting and System Integration Services - Software integration is the continued operation of
the new system in concurrence with the existing one and ensuring the new elements of the
infrastructure work with one another (Exhibit 10). Legacy systems are the older applications
programs. However, outdated they are, these are not always completely discarded due to the
higher capital expenditure required in migrating completely to a new system. The firm may
further need training, consultation, skills, budget and resources for complete mitigation and
replacement which is avoided. Firms for the likes of Wipro, IBM, HPE are among few who
render consulting services in this domain.

6. Summary

Business support systems enable smooth flow of information throughout the business process lifecycle.
This ranges from the initial stages of design and implementation to systems updates, maintenance and
finally termination. The volume of information determines the extent or duration of each stage. BSS
integration enables a quick to market solution. Also, incorporating changes is a less tedious process.
However, it is important to note that all processes should comply with industry norms, procedures and
regulatory compliances. This promises higher return on business investments and better revenue share
models between collaborative firms. Not only, can these be deployed over different business to business
networks but low capital expenditure models. BSS integration has multiple benefits of being an
incremental, scalable, compatible and interoperable platform. However, all of the above business
practices are possible with coordinated flow of information and corresponding changes at organizational
and managerial levels. Computer based information systems make this possible with use of business
support systems.