Transforming Global Enterprise Order Management and Service Assurance 

Order management is a foundational and critical function for organizations across multiple industries, including retail, manufacturing, high-tech firms, telecom, and other sectors. For example, as the telecom industry faces increasing competition, transforming its business model to embrace a scalable approach to order management will be essential to future sustainability. The rise of 5G presents significant revenue and market opportunities, and the complexity of offerings from communications service providers (CSPs) is growing, particularly for higher-margin services. Yet, typical methods of launching and activating products and services have remained largely unchanged, creating multiple challenges. Traditionally, CSPs have operated in silos, but as they introduce more complex, customized, or bundled packages, the situation becomes increasingly difficult to manage. 

A major factor in the overall problem arises from the fact that different applications, systems, and teams support various parts of the order management and assurance process. Much of the coordination between these teams relies on manual processes, such as exchanging information through emails, spreadsheets, and paper forms. As a result, it can take weeks, or even months, for CSPs to introduce new products to the market. This slow pace is detrimental to both customers and CSPs, as lost time directly translates to lost revenue. Given the acceleration of new technologies, it is clear that the telecom industry needs a new approach—one that allows CSPs to scale services quickly, deliver them more efficiently, and reduce the complexities involved. 

Streamlining order management addresses key drivers for digital transformation, making it indispensable for achieving strategic goals. These include: 

• Shorter time-to-market for products and services 

• Competitive advantage through increased business agility 

• Transforming customer experience and relationship enhancement

• Diversifying and creating new digital revenue streams 

• Operational expenditure (OPEX) savings 

• Capital expenditure (CAPEX) savings

• Increased end-to-end business transparency 

• Creating a digital organization and culture.

By aligning with these objectives, a comprehensive order management solution empowers organizations to create a seamless digital ecosystem, fostering innovation and enabling a customer-centric approach.

A Proven Unified Solution

To meet their customers’ ever-changing needs, CSPs must embrace agility and innovation. Major operational transformations require and will continue to be built on large-scale digital solutions, such as cloud-based Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platforms that leverage new tools such as AI, Machine Learning (ML), and Robotic Process Automation (RPA). One of the most widely used cloud SaaS solutions in use today is ServiceNow, deployed by numerous Fortune 500 and other companies in diverse industries to seamlessly automate multiple management workflows. 

By offering a unified solution for digital business transformation, we can enable organizations to create exceptional experiences on ServiceNow, drive innovation, and maximize the value of their technology investments. Unlike point solutions that address specific challenges, we can connect siloed systems, departments, and processes on ServiceNow, thereby offering a single platform for enterprise digital workflows, including:

• Technology Workflows that accelerate digital transformation with IT Service Management (ITSM), IT operations (ITOM), IT Business Management (ITBM), Security Operations (SecOps), Governance, Risks, and Compliance (GRC), and much more

• Employee Workflows that deliver a unified employee experience with HR Service Delivery, Workplace Service Delivery, and Employee Center

• Creator Workflows that empower rapid app development with low-code tools like App Engine and Integration Hub

• Customer and Industry Workflows designed to enhance customer experiences with Customer Service Management, Order Management, and Field Service Management, supporting industries like financial services, healthcare, telecommunications, and other sectors.
  

Additionally, we can leverage application programming interface (API) and middleware integrations to enable seamless data exchange and process automation across Enterprise systems and ServiceNow. REST APIs are ideal for lightweight, modern integrations, while SOAP APIs support legacy systems. Understanding API authentication methods, such as OAuth 2.0 and basic authentication, is crucial for ensuring secure data exchange; middleware ensures seamless compatibility without extensive custom development. Middleware tools like Kafka, MuleSoft, Boomi, or Apache Camel can play a critical role in simplifying complex integrations. These platforms act as intermediaries, transforming data formats, managing workflows, and orchestrating communication between ServiceNow and other enterprise systems.

Project Considerations

As a ServiceNow Certified Master Architect (CMA), I have had substantial opportunities to lead strategic ServiceNow projects developing and implementing Order Management solutions utilizing the ServiceNow platform. With such deployments, CSPs gain a unified workflow engine that allows for the fulfillment and assurance of services on a single platform, and thus accelerates revenue realization. Global CSPs can transform order management processes and leverage their legacy infrastructure by uniting and streamlining a complex ecosystem of vendor and partner systems. This approach ensures that CSPs can meet the demands of a rapidly evolving market, while maximizing efficiency and revenue potential.

For any solution architect leading a complex digital transformation project, identifying and addressing inefficiencies in order management is pivotal, as these challenges ripple across the C-suite, impacting various organizational goals and metrics. While different organizations may have different project objectives, their functional executive leaders often share similar overarching concerns:

• COO (Chief Operating Officer): Fragmented processes lead to reduced productivity, increased operational costs, and diminished customer satisfaction

• CRO (Chief Revenue Officer): Long service delivery times and order fallouts delay revenue recognition and heighten customer churn rates

• CPO (Chief Product Officer): Extended product launch cycles and limited bundling options hinder competitiveness and erode profit margins

• CTO (Chief Technology Officer): Operational inefficiencies, such as unresolved serviceability issues and unnecessary truck rolls, inflate costs and disrupt workflows

• CIO (Chief Information Officer): High system complexity and integration challenges impede digital transformation, slowing innovation and agility.

Addressing these pain points through advanced order management solutions helps organizations drive efficiency, improve customer experiences, and accelerate their transformation journeys.

When I embark on a ServiceNow transformation project, my first responsibility is to understand the total impact before proceeding to create and propose solutions that will remain effective and adaptable over time. Organizations face significant challenges in order management, including a lack of agility, high order fallout, process bottlenecks, and manually intensive workflows. Inefficient order management delays new product development (NPD) and increases time-to-market (TTM), limiting flexibility and growth opportunities. High order fallout, with 20% of orders impacted, disrupts the order-to-cash cycle, delaying revenue and increasing customer dissatisfaction. Process bottlenecks caused by manual interventions and disconnected systems result in lengthy processing times for complex orders, ranging from 36 days to four months, leading to poor customer experiences and operational inefficiencies. 

Additionally, over 40% of orders require manual corrections due to data issues, driving up costs, reducing employee satisfaction, and increasing the likelihood of errors. All of these impact factors underscore the need for streamlined, automated, and integrated order management solutions. Another critical impact that has recently surfaced involves deploying the solution for network inventory management. Telecom networks are intricate, comprising extensive cables, fiber, and millions of pieces of equipment. Traditionally, managing these networks has relied on manual, time-consuming processes spread across disconnected systems and applications, leaving CSPs without a unified view of their inventory. For succeeding in the digital economy, CSPs require a comprehensive and accurate view of their entire network to optimize investments, streamline order management, resolve issues swiftly, and enhance customer satisfaction. We can address this need with a Telecom Network Inventory model, which leverages the ServiceNow Platform to provide precise management of telecom assets and applications. This solution enables automation, real-time insights, and scalable, customized service delivery, empowering CSPs to confidently expand and manage their networks with speed and efficiency. Building scalable and sustainable solutions and architectures goes beyond technical optimization, it demands aligning with business objectives while reducing long-term expenses.

As a project leader, a second responsibility I often encounter is demonstrating the financial and operational benefits of “buy vs. build.” While many CSPs will initially set out to build their own order management systems, believing they possess the technical knowledge and capabilities to do so, they soon learn that this approach often leads to increased complexity, budget overruns that increase technical debt, delayed completion timelines, and project failures. Advanced operators with multiple order management systems face heightened risks and inefficiencies. As experience shows, by adopting a single, streamlined order management product—such as a system built on the ServiceNow platform—CSPs can reduce risks, simplify operations, and enhance market competitiveness. 

Designing Digital Transformation: a Three-Pillar Approach

Building and implementing an effective new order management platform requires a strategic approach to designing solutions for critical components. Throughout my career as a ServiceNow CMA, I have found that the following three-pillar approach delivers optimal results for any type of organization. 

First, unite the systems supporting new services to enable faster digital transformation. Bringing a new service to market involves coordination across internal teams and external partners that use a multitude of different systems and processes. It is not realistic to simply toss out legacy systems and start over. To expedite this process:

a. Build a strong foundation for digital transformation with an interoperable infrastructure based on TM Forum standards and industry benchmarks.

b. Synchronize data across all systems—from contract management to sales to billing—with automated workflows built on ServiceNow with a single configuration management database (CMDB) and telecom network inventory.

c. Build a comprehensive product model that is easy to scale and maintain in the long run.

d. Work with product managers to define customer facing services (CFS) and resource facing services (RFS) and have them mapped to ServiceNow product models.

Second, support new, higher-margin revenue streams by launching services faster. Customers are increasingly frustrated by the delays and complications they encounter when trying to place an order or start up a new service. They want things to be simple, easy, and fast, but the way CSPs are set up internally makes things clunky. These five steps will speed the timeline for bringing new services to market:

a. Leverage AI and machine learning so that the Order Management solution optimizes existing processes, while extracting more meaningful insights from internal and external data. 

c. Create a unified product catalog, even for the most complex new services, leveraging resources with expertise in catalog design.

d. Create a structured, proven approach to bundling with predefined product modeling and pricing templates.

e. Translate commercial catalogs into the technical details required for downstream fulfillment using ServiceNow’s rule-based workflows and product-service-resource (PSR) modeling.

f. Create an order fulfillment process that is zero-or low-touch, making it easier for customers and partners to complete.

Third, extend order management to assure service delivery. It is difficult to understand the precise status of a customer’s latest order, derive the cause of potential implementation delays, and view an at-a-glance history of all prior orders, with so many disparate systems involved. The solution you design should give CSPs a clear picture of what’s happening at an individual customer level—from order placement through service delivery. A holistic “platform of platforms” approach to order management improves service reliability, assuring service level agreements (SLAs) and operational level agreements (OLAs) are met and reducing customer fallout. To implement this, you must:

a. Improve visibility across the entire lifecycle of order tracking and management, pulling all relevant information into a single dashboard.

b. Provide proactive, transparent, real-time updates to customers about their orders and delivery dates by leveraging automated dependencies, alerts, and handoffs.

c. Enable in-flight order changes by reducing the reliance on manual tasks.

d. Connect customer and partner ecosystems via an eBonding mechanism, creating an interoperable, seamless experience between the ServiceNow environment and the enterprise environment of CSPs’ customers.

c. When services are installed at the sites, automate service assurance and deliver better experiences by connecting ordering and assurance on one platform.

A Transformation Case Study

The following case study illustrates how I leveraged the ServiceNow platform to create a transformational Order Management solution (Figure 1).

In this example, my client was a large communications operator/carrier in the US, facing challenges with siloed systems for IT Service Management (ITSM), Customer Service Management (CSM), and Order Management (OM). The company’s IT, contact center, and service delivery teams struggled with Incident, Change, and Problem process due to fragmented workflows. Additionally, there was a lack of real-time visibility into case statuses, leading to delays in resolving customer issues. The order management process was heavily manual, causing frequent order fallouts and delays in fulfilling complex telecom orders.

To correct these issues, I deployed ITSM, CSM, and OM solutions on the ServiceNow platform, as follows:

a. ITSM:

i. Centralized incident, problem, and change management processes on a unified platform

ii. Enabled proactive monitoring and automated ticket assignment through ServiceNow 

iii. Built a comprehensive data model and data loading to support ITSM processes

b. CSM:

i. Provided customer service agents with a 360-degree view of customer interactions, including IT tickets and case tasks

ii. Introduced virtual agents to handle common customer inquiries and escalate complex cases seamlessly

c. Order Management Solution:

i. Streamlined order workflows with automated validation, fulfillment, and error handling.

ii. Integrated order management with ITSM and CSM to provide real-time updates on order progress and status.

iii. Integrated order management with sales, billing, and downstream automation platforms, with TM Forum standardization of APIs, to have full visibility of orders and smooth orchestration of workflows across the different teams.

This fully streamlined and integrated solution delivered meaningful results in terms of impact and value to the organization. A significant improvement in outcomes was achieved, including: 

a. Improved Operational Efficiency: Automated workflows reduced IT, problem, and change workflows, improving resolution time by 40% and change processing time by 50%.

b. Enhanced Customer Experience: Customers received faster resolutions with real- time updates on their service and order status, improving satisfaction scores.

c. Cross-Team Collaboration: Integration between ITSM, CSM, and Order Management broke down silos, enabling seamless collaboration between IT, customer service, and fulfillment teams.

d. Scalability: The unified platform enabled the provider to launch new services faster and scale operations across global markets.

e. Revenue generation: The new Order Management solution helped the client achieve revenue of more than $3 million in just the first 6 months.

f. Transformation timeframe: Reduced the implementation timeframe from previous projects of greater than three years to just 6 months.

 To optimally support Order Management, the architecture must integrate seamlessly with sales and operational process stakeholders (Order Capture systems & operational support systems (OSS)) and data sources (Product Catalogs, Service Catalogs, Resource Inventory).

Figure 2: An example of Optimized System Integrations Architecture per TMForum standards for Order management.

Figure 3: An example of a product catalog with PSR modelling for SD-WAN (Software Defined – Wide Area Network) to support a streamlined order management process.

The catalog, as implemented within ServiceNow, combines definitions from the standards group TMForum with the capabilities of ServiceNow’s CMDB/CSDM frameworks. TMForum’s Shared Information Data Model (SID) defined many elements for the catalog as implemented in CMDB, namely defining specifications for product offerings, products, services, and resources (PSR). 

From these building blocks of PSR, almost any product offered by a CSP or IT service provider can be modeled and represented. As products (as described in the PSR catalog) are sold and implemented, the instantiation of the catalog data is stored in the CMDB as sold-products and Configuration Items and realized as TMForum Product-Service-Resource Inventory items. A graphical representation of that model is illustrated in Figure 3.

In developing any solution, Key Performance Indicators (KPI) to strive for should be established in the planning stage. For example, a company might define their expected KPI target goals as: 

• 5x increase in service delivery efficiency
• 90% reuse of service models and processes
• 30% increase in annual order volumes
• Greater than 60% reduction in trouble tickets

These metrics underscore the transformative potential of streamlined order management in driving operational excellence and customer satisfaction. This implementation case study is an excellent example of how you can integrate Order Management with other solutions, such as ITSM and CSM, built on the ServiceNow platform, and how a combined solution can have a much broader and deeper impact.

Designing scalable and maintainable ServiceNow solutions is both a technical challenge and a creative endeavor. It requires a deep understanding of the platform’s capabilities, a focus on future growth, and a commitment to best practices. A well-architected solution not only addresses current business needs but also adapts seamlessly to evolving requirements. Striking the right balance between innovation and stability is essential, as is leveraging new features like AI and predictive intelligence to drive innovation, while maintaining robust change management practices to ensure reliability.

Designing for Governance

It is important to remember that these complex implementations involve coordinating and decision-making for complex workflows across multiple teams, systems, and external partners. Without proper governance, issues such as inconsistent data, misaligned processes, and compliance risks can undermine the implementation’s success. As you develop a ServiceNow project, make sure you are planning for key governance components. Typical governance issues usually include: 

• Stakeholder Alignment: Establish a governance board with representations from executive, portfolio, technical, and external partners to oversee the implementation
• Process Standardization: Use ServiceNow’s TM Forum-aligned data models and workflows to unify processes across the order lifecycle, from pricing and quoting to fulfillment and billing
• Policy Enforcement: Define guardrails and enforce policies for data handling, system integrations, and user access to ensure security and compliance
• Performance Monitoring: Implement KPIs and dashboards to track order accuracy, time-to market, and fallout rates, enabling proactive issue resolution.

In addition to providing for a good governance program, any technology implementation plan must account the company’s people through a plan for Organizational Change Management (OCM). Without a robust OCM strategy, even the most advanced ServiceNow implementations can fail to deliver the desired outcomes, due to resistance from users or a lack of alignment with organizational goals. In the context of ServiceNow implementations for telecom providers, where order management and service delivery are mission-critical, OCM is particularly vital. For example, transitioning from fragmented legacy systems to a streamlined ServiceNow Order Management solution often requires significant changes in how teams operate. Employees may need to adopt new processes for capturing orders, managing workflows, or collaborating across departments. OCM ensures that these transitions are smooth by fostering a culture of adaptability and continuous learning. Moreover, it helps build trust in the new system by demonstrating its value through pilot programs and early successes, thereby reducing resistance and enhancing user buy-in.

ServiceNow’s powerful capabilities can enable organizations challenged by complex order management to transform their system from an operational burden into a strategic advantage. Although the solution described here was designed for the TMT industry, it can be scaled to meet the specific needs of companies across different industries. Whether you’re striving for hyper-automation throughout the order lifecycle, managing intricate product configurations, or struggling with complex orders, you can use ServiceNow to develop a better path forward. 

Streamlined order management is a game-changer for the industry. By adopting these innovative solutions, companies can accelerate time-to-revenue, enhance customer satisfaction, and achieve operational excellence. As the global order management market continues to grow, organizations that prioritize digital transformation and invest in streamlined order management systems will be well-positioned to thrive in the digital age. Through strategic planning, automation, and a customer-centric approach, companies can unlock new opportunities and drive sustainable growth in an increasingly competitive landscape.

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Bhavya Wadhwa is Senior Manager/Senior Architect for Technology Applications Consulting and Business Transformation at IBM. As a ServiceNow Certified Master Architect (CMA) and ServiceNow Certified Technical Architect (CTA), Bhavya specializes in complex service and operations management digital transformations using ServiceNow, optimizing processes in IT, Human Resources, Service Delivery, Procurement, Supply Chain, and Security to solve operational problems and deliver significant outcomes for organizations across diverse industries. Bhavya is a recognized subject matter expert and speaker at leading industry conferences including ServiceNow World Forum and the global ServiceNow Knowledge 23 event, where he presented on telecom industry architectures. He received a Bachelor of Technology degree in Electronics and Communication Engineering from Jaypee University of Information Technology (JUIT) in Solan, H.P., India, and earned a Master of Science degree in Management Information Systems from University at Buffalo, The State University of New York. He additionally holds nearly 20 specialized IBM and ServiceNow certifications. The views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author.