According to results released today from a survey commissioned by Amdocs, a company in the process of delivering an integrated operations and business support systems portfolio, the top priority of service providers when it comes to their back office is an integrated operations and business support system portfolio.

An independent survey conducted in December and January by Coleman Parkes Research of director and C-level technology executives from 100 major wireless and wireline service providers around the globe found a consensus that current capabilities in OSS were hindering the introduction of new services and that OSS transformation is essential to changing that dynamic.

“A fragmented OSS can really stand in the way of network transformation,” said Seth Nesbitt, Director Product and Solutions Marketing at Amdocs. “OSS has a critical role to play going forward in how service providers respond to changes in the marketplace.”

Despite the consensus, service providers differed on their strategies for transforming their support systems. While 77% of service providers said their legacy OSS systems are inadequate for delivering new services such as virtual private networks and IPTV and subsequently meeting the needs of their customers, only 38% said transformation was necessary for all new service and many are taking a service-by-service approach to transforming their OSS systems.

Some Amdocs carrier customers, such as Telstra in Australia, have taken on a complete BSS and OSS transformation. Others, such as Danish carrier TDC have focused on transforming OSS, particularly in the areas of fulfillment and assurance. BT decided on a process-related transformation, which Nesbitt said provides a service management layer that consolidates process across legacy and next-generation systems. Still others, such as KPN, are implementing an inventory-based consolidation using a single point of reference for all network and service-related data.

No matter the method, 70% of wireline providers said the biggest problem they were trying to solve was the speed of service creation. Fifty-nine percent of wireless providers saw the speed of service fulfillment as a key challenge. This is something they will have to fix since 62% of respondents said they plan to introduce new VoIP service in the next five years and 61% said broadband television will get introduced. Half of them plan to introduce mobile music services, iPod and mobile synchronization.

That’s hard to do when 82% of carriers say their order fallout rate is either not improving or getting worse. The rate varies depending on how established a service is and can range between the teens and 30%, Nesbitt said. “The fallout rate is you ranking how you are delivering on your commitment to your customers,” he said.

The best way carriers see to solve all of these problems is with better OSS and BSS integration. Sixty-six percent of respondents said that was their primary OSS requirement over the next two years. They ranked it higher than the rapid introduction of new services (even though 66% of providers said it takes more than six months to introduce a single new service), the integration of fulfillment and assurance (both OSS) and legacy system integration.

“Bridging the gap between OSS and BSS has become a critical factor. People are seeing the ability to bridge the gap will be a key requirement for OSS systems going forward. It has been a theme of ours for a while now,” Nesbitt said.

With the cost of introducing new services still on the rise, according to 62% of respondents, many service providers are looking to data integrity, or the lack thereof, as one of the culprits. Seventy-three percent of respondents said data is insufficiently available to roll out new services, and 56% said inaccuracy of data is an impediment to rolling out new services. Additionally, more than 70% cited that a single view of the network, service and customer is a key requirement for OSS moving forward.