Service Order Management – Part 5: Error Handling

At this point, our subscriber’s services are up and running, but in order to protect business processes and minimize potential disruption to the subscriber’s experience, there must be a mechanism to handle errors. There is potential for a lot of errors throughout the order management cycle, for example:

• The simple but hugely disruptive failure to connect to a third-party system
• A resource is already in use
• Systems timing out when connecting to a third party system due to lack of response

Error Handling

Whatever the reason, the error handling sub-process needs to be able to deal with the error effectively. Some of the ways to achieve this are:

• Retrying the request, sometimes after an interval wait
• Remedial actions if the validation step fails, e.g. the SNR levels are outside of expected thresholds
• Manual intervention, for example:
  • Swapping the device
  • Changing the details of the requests, e.g. a phone number
  • Fixing a network connection and retry

• Failing the request if an issue cannot be resolved, e.g. a subscriber address does not exist

Error handling may involve integration of many components throughout the order management cycle, including:

• Inventory Database
• Address Database
• Product Catalog
• Customer Resource Management (CRM) Platform
• Service Assurance Platform
• Captive Portals
• Order Management/Activation Server

In the final article of the Incognito Order Management Series, we’ll look at how automation is a key component in the end-to-end order management process.