In this context, telecom service inventory management will play a crucial role – as you can see from this high-level diagram, taken from the paper:

A vertical customer may request a service from an operator, and, in turn, the operator must be able to orchestrate this, using telecom inventory management solutions to check and gather the resources required to do so. There are some crucial differences between this new environment and traditional service order management, which point towards future evolution of components such as the telecom service inventory management platforms that will be integral to their delivery.

One example is volatility. In contrast to an existing and classical B2B service, for which a contract period might run over several years, with appropriate periodic billing, a vertical player – a factory for example – might request a specific service for a short period of time. It is anticipated that the vertical should be able to do so directly, from portals – as you can see in the figure above. This dynamic nature needs to be supported by the components, including telecoms inventory management solutions.