Systems Research and Behavioral Science
Syst. Res. 23,177^190 (2006)
Published onlineinWiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com)
DOI:10.1002/sres.752
&
Research Paper
Knowledge Management in OSS—an
Enterprise Information System for the
Telecommunications Industry
Jiayin Qi
1
*, Li Da Xu
2
, Huaying Shu
1
and Huaizu Li
3
1
School of Economics and Management, Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Beijing, China
2
Department of Information Technology and Decision Sciences, Old Dominion University, Norfolk,
Virginia, USA
3
School of Management, Xian Jiaotong University, Xian, China
Knowledge management in Enterprise Information Systems (EIS) has become one of the
hottest research topics in the last few years. Operations Support Systems (OSS) is one kind
of EIS, which is becoming increasingly popular in the telecommunications industry.
However, the academic research on knowledge management in OSS is sparse. In this
paper, a knowledge management system for OSS is proposed in the framework of systems
theory. Knowledge, knowledge management, organization and information technology
are the four main interactive elements in the knowledge management system. The paper

It was put forward by TeleManagement Forum
(TMF), an international organization that has
been contributing to the information and com-
munications services industry for over 15 years.
So far OSS has been increasingly adopted by
telecom industry with NGOSS (New Generation
Operations and Software Systems) as its next
generation product. If ERP systems are the EIS
mainly help manufacturing industry achieve
competitive edge in the global market, OSS plays
a similar role in the telecom industry.
Telecommunications industry is a very specific
high-tech service industry. The main feature of
the telecommunications industry is its tight
integration of business process and IT applica-
tions; it is very important to use IT to promote its
competitiveness. OSS is generally considered as
a basic EIS which can also support knowledge
management. OSS market and applications are
growing. Taking the Asia Pacific market as an
example, it generated $8.8 billion of revenues in
2002. Revenues show an increasing trend and
the market for OSS is expected to grow at a
steady pace. The compound annual growth rate
(CAGR) of the revenues for the period 2001–2007
is forecasted to be 6.27 per cent. Industry reven-
ues are forecasted to rise to $11.87 billion by the
year 2007.
Although OSS has been acquired by many
telecom companies, the shortage of scholastic

answer to the question.
The paper is organized as follows. ‘Knowledge
Management in Systems Perspectives’ section
presents the implication of knowledge manage-
ment in systems perspectives. The relationship
among data, information and knowledge, as well
as the relationship between knowledge manage-
ment and EIS is discussed. In ‘Overview of OSS
and Knowledge Management in OSS’ sections,
an overview of OSS and the knowledge manage-
ment in OSS is discussed. ‘Discussion and
Conclusion’ section provides a summary of the
paper and future research.
KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT IN
SYSTEMS PERSPECTIVES
Asystemismadeupofasetofinteracting
elements sharing a particular purpose within a
boundary. The interaction among elements forms
the structure of a system. Depending on its
boundary, a system can be an economic entity,
an inventory system, or a business organization.
Knowledge management is an element of the
organizational management system (Warfield,
1989). From the point of view of the concept of
whole, a knowledge management system pro-
motes the effective use of knowledge assets of an
enterprise as a whole over time, and is an impetus
to the performance of the enterprise.
Data, Information and Knowledge
Prior to discussing knowledge management, the

for data. Knowledge warehousing is an exten-
sion of data warehousing to facilitate the captur-
ing and coding of knowledge and to enhance the
retrieval and sharing of knowledge across the
organization (Nemati et al., 2002). Online Analy-
tical Processing (OLAP) is a software application
used to explore the data in ways that are decision
oriented (Shi et al., 2005). Data mining (DM) tools
allow for the creation of well-defined transfer-
able information (Li and Xu, 2001; Li et al.,
2003b). Knowledge discovery (KD) process
agglomerates information found by such techni-
ques as DM in generating domain knowledge
(Bendoly, 2003).
Implication of Knowledge Management
in Systems Perspective
The implication of knowledge management has
been studied by many authors (Warfield, 1989).
Table 1 summarized the selected findings.
In this paper, knowledge management is
studied in terms of systems theory and the
perspectives listed in Table 1 will be synthe-
sized. It is emphasized in this paper that
knowledge management can be used to effec-
tively manage corporate knowledge assets
especially those knowledge in business pro-
cesses. Therefore, the objective of knowledge
management is considered to promote an
enterprise’s core competency. Such an objective
can be achieved with a systematic process of

(Kim et al., 2003). The other questions of interest
include the interaction among these elements,
the structure of the system, and the function of
the system.
Main Factors Influence Knowledge Management
Knowledge management system is a system to
effectively manage knowledge within an enter-
prise. Two main factors are considered influencing
the needs of practicing knowledge management.
The first factor is competition. If there is a tough
competitioninacertainindustrysector,managing
knowledge is generally in high demand. The other
factor is the volume of data. If there is a huge
volume of data that exist within an enterprise, the
data resource is available which can help convert
data into information as well as knowledge.
Elements of Knowledge Management System
Knowledge architecture, knowledge manage-
ment process architecture, organization architec-
ture and IT architecture are the four elements of
knowledge management system.
The so-called knowledge architecture is the
result of classifying organizational knowledge by
one or more dimensions. Fernandez et al. distin-
guished knowledge into human knowledge,
organizational knowledge, technological knowl-
edge and relational knowledge (Fernandez et al.,
2000). Human knowledge refers to the knowl-
edge acquired by a person that can increase
productivity and the contribution to the organi-

existing ‘discovered’ knowledge (Bhatt et al.,
2005). Knowledge distribution means the sharing
of knowledge across the organization. Knowledge
Table 1. Existing research on the implication of knowledge management
Author Perspective Implication
Siemieniuch and Sinclair (2004) Process Systematic process of applying expertise
Kwan and Balasubramanian (2003)
Wang and Ariguzo (2004)
Mesaric (2004)
Fowler and Pryke (2003) Capability Building core competencies through know-how
Badii and Sharif (2003)
Tzokas and Saren (2004)
Nemati et al. (2002) Relationship Converting information to knowledge
RE S E ARCH PAPE R Syst. Res.
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180 Jiayin Qi et al.
review and revision is the modification and
version management of knowledge.
The organization architecture designs organi-
zational structure. Organizational structure defi-
nes the role of each knowledge management team
that is responsible for performing or supporting
knowledge management process.
The IT architecture is a technical infrastructure
for knowledge management. It defines compo-
nents of knowledge management system and
their relationships.
Interactions Am ong the Elements in
Knowledge Management System
The four elements in knowledge management

needs from the three elements too. Knowledge
architecture is the base of knowledge manage-
ment process. The fundamental function of the
knowledge management system is to improve
the business process and to achieve superior
business performance through effective knowl-
edge management process.
Enterprise Information Systems and
Knowledge Management
Enterprise information system (EIS) is an inte-
grated information system seeking to integrate
every single business process and function in
the enterprise to present a holistic view of the
business with a single IT architecture. It is a
powerful and integrated enterprise-level IT archi-
tecture that is also designed to facilitate knowl-
edge management within an enterprise. The
Knowledge Management system
Organization Architecture
Knowledge
Architecture
Knowledge
Management
Process
Corporation’s
business
operation
Corporation
with superior
performance

edge architecture, knowledge process architec-
ture, organization architecture, IT architecture,
and enterprise operations, an EIS supports
knowledge management that encompasses all
types of knowledge in business operations. The
support provided by an EIS to an enterprise’
knowledge management is embodied in each
module for specific knowledge management.
Each module associates with a specific type of
business process, which corresponds to a specific
knowledge management. The knowledge man-
agement of the entire enterprise is realized
through the integration of individual knowledge
management module.
OVERVIEW OF OSS
Evolution of OSS
In the 1980s, the basic standard of OSS was
determined. The main usage is to manage net-
works. In the beginning of 1990s, OSS standard
has placed emphasis on both network systems
and network management. A substantial amount
of work has been completed by the International
Telecommunications Union (ITU) and the Inter-
national Organization for Standardization (ISO).
The representative standards of OSS are Tele-
communications Management Network (TMN)
and Simple Network Management Protocol
(SNMP). In recent years, the next generation
network (NGN) is coming ever closer. NGN is a
high speed multi-service packet data network

OSS and BSS are the main functions.
The main functions of OSS include,
* Customer care: provide an interface to the
customers for all issues related to customer
order, sales, billing, and problem handling.
* Multi-service provision: activate instances of
service for particular customers.
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182 Jiayin Qi et al.
* Service assurance: monitor and uphold the
quality of the delivered services.
* Billing: charge for the service.
* Planning and administration: plan, design and
administer the services and infrastructures.
* EAI (Enterprise Application Integration):
automate the exchange of data between inter-
nal applications.
* Activation: execute a service in an optimal and
well-defined order
Customer/Market
OSS
BSS
Customer Care
Multiservice
Provision
Service Assurance
Billing
& Planning
Administration

dule teams of technicians, installers and engi-
neers.
In this paper, a network operator is defined as
a telecommunication service provider with a
network infrastructure and provides multiple
services. It could be a network, a fixed-line access
network of any kind, or a mobile 2/2.5/3G
mobile network. This type of network operator is
named as telecom operator throughout the
paper. Of course, the research is related to Ser-
vice Provider (SP) and Content Provider (CP)
with no infrastructure of their own although
their tasks are simpler since they only manage
services and IT infrastructure.
TOM and OSS
OSS is intended to cover TOM (Telecom Opera-
tions Map) provided by the organization
TMForum. TOM model focuses on the opera-
tional processes within the telecommunication
industry. It was designed as a blueprint for pro-
cess direction and a starting point for developing
and integrating OSS. The relationship between
TOM and OSS is shown in Figure 4.
FAB (fulfilment, assurance and billing) is the
core area of operations for telecom operators. FAB
defines the process for fulfilling an order, assuring
the defined level of performance and facilitating
billing for the services provided. FAB is carried
out through the following vertical processes:
Customer interface management process: It is

neering (Wade, 2000; Huang et al., 2003).
OSS is a highly integrated software architec-
ture. Integrating multi-sections’ businesses in a
single software platform efficiently for improv-
ing customer service is one of the aims of OSS.
This task requires a high level of integration
among each subsystem.
OSS is not just a software system, but also
represents managerial thinking. Using TOM as
an important reference model, OSS encourages
telecom operators pay more attention to the
customers rather than just do billing as in the
past (Walsh, 1998).
Generally speaking, OSS can work not only for
telecom operators, but also for those other enter-
prises with characteristics resemble to that of
telecom operators with special network resources,
special service flow, and value chain based on
these network resources and service flows; for
example, large power plants (Feng et al.,2001),
traffic management (Takahashi, 1998), and others
(Miyamoto et al., 1997; Sherif and Ho, 2000).
Objectives of OSS
As for the motivation for OSS’ implementation,
there are six main reasons (Schroter, 1998):
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18 4 Jiayin Qi et al.
(1) rapid development and deployment of new
services (Everitt and Virgin, 1996); (2) cost reduc-

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Figure 4. TOM and OSS
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Know ledge Mana gement in OSS 1 85
average revenue per user (ARPU), better ser-
vices, higher customer satisfaction, and improv-
ed asset utilization, etc.
KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT IN OSS
Business Environment in
Telecommunications Industry
The telecommunications environment can be
characterized by its inherent distributive, contin-
uous expansion in the size of network, and
the particular importance of fault-tolerance
requirement. These characteristics are reflected
in the design of software systems. Software sys-
tems in telecommunications have to cope with the
universe of telecommunications protocols, numer-
ous hardware platforms, and network architec-
tures (Csele
´
nyi et al., 1998). The characteristics of
telecommunications software systems include

Industry deregulation, globalization, and IP
make the telecommunication industry full of
intensified competition. The telecommunication
market involves a shift from a stable market to an
increasingly user-driven market place. The suc-
cess of a telecom operator will entirely depend
on the operator’s ability to create services and
applications that are embraced by the users.
Same as the success brought by knowledge
management to the manufacturing sector, know-
ledge management is increasingly helping the
telecomm sector to keep sustainable competi-
tiveness and competency.
Knowledge Management in BSS
BSS focuses on developing the core business by
defining marketing and offering strategies, new
products implementation and managing existing
products. Customer interface management pro-
cess and customer care process are the two major
aspects involved in BSS. Dialogue carrying, ser-
vice ordering, service activation, trouble admin-
istration, and billing account review make up all
the activities in BSS.
Staff knowledge, organizational knowledge,
and relational knowledge form the know-
ledge architecture of BSS. There is a plenty of
staff knowledge involved such as sales staff’s
experience. There are also rich organizational
knowledge existing in the customer interface
management process and customer care process.

response (IVR), computer telephone integration
(CTI), predictive dialers, wireless agents, e-mail,
web self service, text chat and web collaboration
make up the technology to complete customer
communication. IP based call centre, operational
CRM and interactive CRM, billing system, and
performance management are sets of software to
support the business operation process. The
integration of these technologies and sets of
software forms the IT architecture of BSS.
Knowledge Management in OSS
OSS focuses on planning, developing and
delivering services and products in operation
domain. Service/product development and
operation process are the operational processes.
OSS deals with service generation and network
resource planning.
Human knowledge, organizational knowledge,
technological knowledge and relational knowl-
edge are all involved in OSS. Those previous
service cases, as well as proven cross-selling rules
are human knowledge. How to organize service/
product development, operation process, and
network, is considered as organizational knowl-
edge. In addition, culture, regulations, and
partnerships are considered as organizational
knowledge as well. There are many innovative
techniques and skills involved with these which
are considered as technological knowledge. Inter-
estingly, the greater the scope of services offered,

vering resources needed to support services and
products in the operations domain. Network and
systems management process is the operational
process in RSS.
Human knowledge, organizational knowledge
and technological knowledge are the main types
of knowledge. Those previous network resource
planning cases and the accumulated network
resource management strategy form the major
human knowledge. Database, data marts and data
warehouses about services and products represent
the major organizational knowledge. Some inno-
vation techniques are technological knowledge.
Organizational structure has influence on RSS,
but the degree of influence is much weaker than
that to OSS and BSS. Database, data mart and data
warehouse are the three data storages in RSS.
Knowledge Management in SSS
SSS is of significance to OSS as an EIS. A variety of
technological knowledge is involved with this
Syst. Res. RESE ARCH PAPER
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Know ledge Mana gement in OSS 187
system including operating systems methods and
techniques. In general, organizational structure
has relatively minor influence on it.
Summary
BSS, OSS, RSS and SSS are integrated into a single
OSS through system integrator (SI) software.
Knowledge management varies among different

knowledge
RSS Human knowledge, Create, maintain, Team management Database, data To support the
organizational distribute knowledge mart, warehouse, above activities
knowledge, to support network etc. effectively
technological and systems
knowledge management process
SSS Technological Revise knowledge to Team management OS, such as Unix To support the
knowledge support OSS’ regular operation etc. above activities
effectively
OSS Human knowledge, Create, maintain, Team management, Enterprise To gain superior
In knowledge, distribute and revise project manager, Information advantage
general knowledge, knowledge to support communicate with Systems (EIS) through
organizational the horizontal business software effectively
knowledge, process of fulfilment vendor providing
technological assurance and billing end-to-end
knowledge, (FAB) customer service
relational
knowledge
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188 Jiayin Qi et al.
DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION
An integrated OSS is a combination of applica-
tions that interact with each other to enable sup-
port, administration and management of services
for telecom industry. It includes systems that
manage the networking infrastructure, planning
tools, billing systems, customer care, trouble
management tools and the like. It is the funda-
mental integrated software platform for telecom

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