Sharing data across the enterprise
Jim Thies
Intergraph Communications
150 Executive Center Drive
Greenville, South Carolina 29615
Overview
Today's utility and communication companies participate in a global and dynamic marketplace.
Constantly faced with new markets, new competition, and increasing customer expectations,
companies must focus on increasing customer service, providing reliable service, and maintaining
or lowering costs.
E-commerce, Web hosting, B2B Internet applications, ASP's, ISP's. The global economy has
given rise to a host of new opportunities. How do we take advantage of the new opportunities and
maintain a competitive advantage? This paper attempts to clarify the internal processes that must
come into play to implement an OSS that supports business decisions in a competitive
environment.
The global communications industry has undergone significant changes and this trend is expected
to continue. The modernization of the communications infrastructure will also continue to be a
top priority. The on-going upgrade will present communications companies with a number of
unique operational challenges in achieving its business and financial objectives while maintaining
an expected quality of service to the customer. These challenges will include the complexities of
controlling the construction and facility management of new high-speed technologies, while at the
same time, working in a competitive environment to meet increasing demands for customer
service.
The current mix of manual methods and legacy applications in support of communications facility
planning, design, analysis, management and mapping are no longer adequate to keep up with the
increased demand for installation and maintenance of both current and new facilities. In addition,
the continued economic growth and aggressive modernization of the communications
infrastructure will place increased demands on existing human resources, requiring information
technology solutions and support systems to be easier to use, more automated, more tightly
integrated, and more accessible across the enterprise.
Enterprise Data
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems are proving valuable tools for achieving many of
these business objectives. ERP systems link together the various parts of a company, enabling
executives to make informed decisions, reduce costs, and bolster productivity. The business
processes automated and integrated by the ERP system include finance, accounting, human
resources, work management, material management and many others.
More and more companies are replacing legacy systems with pre-integrated, vendor-provided
solutions. These solutions are becoming increasingly popular as corporate mergers and
acquisitions result in numerous incompatible systems within a single organization.
