Prepare for OTS
Prepare for your OTS journey by making crucial decisions, gathering necessary resources, and reading essential materials. Don't forget, if you need help and support we are here each step of the way.
To ensure a successful transition to the OTS process, stakeholders should follow these steps.
Before onboarding, you face an important decision in their approach to onboarding to the TOTSCo Hub: connecting directly or connecting through a Managed Access Provider (MAP).
This option involves you taking full responsibility for adapting your systems and processes to complete the OTS process. It requires resources, including technical expertise and dedicated personnel.
A Managed Access Provider offers services to assist you in connecting to the TOTSCo Hub and managing the necessary message exchanges. MAPs can provide varying levels of support, from basic technical solutions to full management of the OTS process on your behalf. For full information on each MAP solution see Working with Managed Access Providers.
Get started as early as you can. To prepare for OTS it means adapting your systems and processes. It requires resources, including technical expertise and dedicated personnel. To support you in this process, we have drafted a Getting Ready for OTS Checklist with an idea of some of the activities you need to think about.
| Activity |
| People and Process |
| Understand the obligations and impacts of the One Touch Switch process for your end to end business in both gaining and losing capacity – legal, commercial and offers, customer segments and journeys, suppliers, data, technology, process, reporting, capability and training, budgets and resources. |
| Identify the key activities and outcomes required to successfully deliver One Touch Switch from initial enquiry through to satisfied customer – review our enhanced checklist providing you with the next level of detailed activities to consider |
| Understanding the One Touch Switch Industry Process and technical specifications |
| Prepare and execute your governance, budgets, resourcing, project and change plans and identify and manage risks and issues |
| Technology and Data |
| Review the industry process section 6.2.1 – Update your customer data using this advice. This will deliver a higher percentage of first attempt success on the match message |
| Matching algorithms to generate switching information. Ensuring that the right information can be provided in a timely and accurate way so that you and your customers have the best experience. |
| Develop switching information generation |
| Develop your systems in line with the OTS Industry Process v4.3, including the generation, sending, receiving and processing of messages in the standard format. |
| Onboarding |
| To prepare for Step 1 of the onboarding process (available from 10 July), please decide who in your organisation is going to complete the Onboarding process. We will ask you about your company, your position and email address. Our User Guide provides step-by-step instructions on how to onboard, book a test slot and test. |
| Click here to onboard. Complete a short form then you will receive your RCPID and book your test slot. |
| Click here to continue your onboarding adding in your commercial details. Sign the User Agreement. You are now ready to use the live hub once it is available. |
| Testing |
| Prepare your test approach considering all affected channels, customer groups (including vulnerables) processes and systems |
| Prepare your integration and data test cases and test plan |
| Consider if you need to test customer journeys for switching and prepare test cases as needed |
| Prepare your go live checklist and QA thresholds |
| Test your matching algorithms using dummy data – go onto the online community to discover potential companies to buddy up with to test (without the hub to begin with) |
| Test all aspects of your systems and process except sending and receiving of messages from the TOTSCo Hub |
| Book a test slot (see how to in our User Guide) and perform connection testing (using these test cases) – sending basic message to the test simulator to ensure you receive a reply |
| Book a test slot (as above) to test a complete message set. |
| Integration Testing starts – Test sending messages with other CP's to the TOTSCo Hub. Contact us if you would like to start |
| Integration Testing continues – You will now be able to test the complete customer OTS journey using the full hub functionality with other CPs in a full industry test environment. |
| Industry Trials begins – you can now test the full customer OTS journey in a live environment |
We've identified a set of essential documents, called ‘mandatory', with which everyone involved in the OTS process must become familiar. All of which can be found in our document centre.
| Mandatory Documents | |||
| Subject Area | Document Title | ||
| Technical Specification | TOTSCo API Specification | ||
| OTS Message Specification | |||
| OTS Response Codes | |||
| OTS Process | OTS Industry Process | ||
| OTS Industry Process Flow | |||
| One Touch Switch Message Delivery Policies | |||
Additionally, we have a collection of advisory documents, thoughtfully created by industry participants with TOTSCo’s facilitation to offer industry guidance. They can be found in our document centre.
It's crucial to note that the advisory documents do not serve as legal or regulatory advice, nor do they bear the endorsement of Ofcom, ICO, or TOTSCo. As a result, they will consistently undergo updates and enhancements to evolve and better cater to the industry’s requirements.
There’s a misconception that you can leave the OTS process until the last minute. However, the complexity of the OTS process and preparation means it is imperative everyone, regardless of your size, begin preparations as soon as possible.
While a fully managed MAP arrangement does offload significant technical burdens, you are still responsible for certain tasks. One critical task is data cleansing – ensuring that customer data is accurate and up to date. Relying entirely on a MAP does not absolve you of this crucial responsibility.