The Cost of Standing Still: Why Payments Can’t Wait for Your Next Big IT Project
Utilities running CIS migrations, AMI rollouts, or portal projects often defer digital billing and payment (EBPP) upgrades until those programs finish. That wait carries a real cost: rising mobile payment preference, utility digital-experience scores that trail every other service industry, and mounting expenses from paper billing, contact center calls, and delinquency drag. Modern EBPP platforms now deploy in under six months alongside larger IT programs without disrupting them.
01. Where Customers Actually Are
InvoiceCloud’s 2026 State of Online Payments report, a nationally representative survey of 2,000 U.S. adults conducted in October 2025, found that 68% of consumers used a mobile device to pay a bill in the past year, making mobile the top payment channel for the fourth year running. 45% of consumers now name mobile as their preferred payment channel, up from 29% a year earlier — a 16-point jump in a single year. By contrast, 20% of respondents still mail in check payments, but only 4% actually prefer that method.
Fifty-nine percent of respondents reported paying utility bills online in the past year, putting utilities behind phone service bills (70%) and internet service bills (68%). According to J.D. Power’s 2025 U.S. Utility Digital Experience Study, overall customer satisfaction with the utility digital experience is 611 on a 1,000-point scale, climbing only modestly to 616 in the 2026 update. J.D. Power’s cross-industry digital experience comparison ranks utilities last among major service industries: wealth management apps and websites (738), retirement plan providers (703), property & casualty insurance (698), retail banking overall (655), commercial health insurance apps (653), and utilities (616). J.D. Power also found that 32% of utility websites and apps fail to meet basic standards for navigation and design, and 28% of utilities do not offer a mobile app at all.
02. What Outdated EBPP Costs
Among customers who already pay digitally, the top complaints are lack of payment reminders (22%), forgotten usernames and passwords (21%), and payments that take too long to process (18%). For customers who avoid digital payments altogether, the biggest deterrent is perceived online payment fees (39%), followed by limited or inconvenient payment options (18%), security concerns (14%), and a preference to talk to a person (13%).
Mailing a paper bill runs about $1.10 per envelope once printing, materials, postage, and labor are accounted for. A utility processing 30,000 bills a month spends close to $400,000 a year on paper bill production; moving 50% of customers to email cuts that roughly in half. For municipal utilities accounting for fully loaded labor, benefits, supervision, and overhead, a single contact center call can run as high as $20 to $30. When payment problems arise outside business hours, 44% of customers simply wait to call the next business day — a delay that measurably contributes to days sales outstanding.
03. Where Digital Billing and Payment Platforms Actually Differ
Four areas separate platforms that move the numbers from platforms that simply check the boxes: AutoPay setup and self-management (the bar is whether a first-time customer can enroll in minutes without calling customer service); payment method breadth (digital wallet usage is climbing across all income tiers, reaching 44% among higher-income households, so platforms limited to ACH and cards leave adoption on the table); pre-draft reminders and confirmations (60% of non-AutoPay customers say they would enroll with the right safeguards in place); and marketing and adoption support (vendor-provided enrollment campaigns and behavior-based segmentation are one of the biggest drivers of the gap between platforms that hit 30% paperless adoption and platforms that hit 60%).
04. What “Waiting” Actually Costs
Large IT programs typically run 12 to 18 months to implement and another 18 to 36 months before results materialize. A Harvard Business Review study of nearly 1,500 IT projects (Flyvbjerg and Budzier) found the average project overran its budget by 27%, and one in six became a “black swan” with cost overruns of 200% and schedule overruns of almost 70%. On a sequential plan, customer experience can stand still for three to five years while a utility waits to start EBPP modernization — and McKinsey research (Smaje and Zemmel, 2024) found that large companies actually capture only 31% of the revenue lift they expect from digital transformations. Meanwhile customer expectations, operational costs, and stakeholder patience keep moving.
05. Why Parallel Modernization Actually Works
Modern digital billing and payment platforms sit alongside core systems through standardized integrations rather than requiring deep changes to the CIS being modernized. Established payments platforms have pre-built partnerships and joint deployment playbooks with major CIS providers, so implementation is mostly configuration rather than architecture. Payment platform deployments now routinely complete in under six months. The internal IT lift is measured in hours per week, not the five-to-ten dedicated full-time staff a CIS migration requires for 12 to 24 months, or the three-to-five years of cross-functional engagement large AMI deployments require.
06. What the Numbers Look Like With InvoiceCloud
Utilities that moved to InvoiceCloud during broader transformation programs report a 35% reduction in bill-related call volume and a 40% increase in on-time payments, typically within the first year of deployment.
San Jose Water — results in 9 months
San Jose Water, a regulated water utility serving approximately one million people across roughly 140 square miles, modernized its billing and payment experience through a joint deployment with its Oracle Utilities CIS. In nine months it reported a 76% digital payment adoption rate, 56% paperless adoption rate, 44% increase in AutoPay enrollments, and 35% reduction in late payments. “We were anxious about the implementation — similar undertakings with payment platforms can take years to complete and cost thousands of dollars. But thanks to Oracle and InvoiceCloud’s joint solution and dedicated implementation teams, all deadlines and goals were met with the exceptional collaboration of all parties involved,” said John Tang, VP of Regulatory Affairs & Customer Service, San Jose Water.
Sacramento Suburban Water District — year one results
Sacramento Suburban Water District, a publicly owned water utility serving nearly 195,000 customers in California, replaced a legacy payment system that was driving up call volume and absorbing staff hours through manual processing. In its first year it reported a 149% increase in electronic payment adoption, 41% increase in paperless enrollment, 32 hours saved monthly in staff payment workload, and $13,500 saved in print and mail expenses. “We have seen steadily decreasing call volumes and paperless billing adoption has spiked, allowing us to decrease our mailing expenses. Plus, with the time saved, we were able to shift resources to meaningful improvements and projects that we’ve never had time for in the past,” said Julie Nemitz, Customer Services Manager, Sacramento Suburban Water District.
07. How to Tell If Your Situation Fits
The utilities with the clearest case for moving now are the ones with low digital adoption, heavy manual processing, an existing CIS partnership with billing and payments vendors, and stakeholder pressure to show results before the larger program completes.
Frequently Asked Questions
Where are you in your major IT transformation timeline?
Early stages give the most flexibility. Mid-program utilities can still move on payments if the workstream is genuinely separate from the critical path. Late-stage programs need a sharper risk assessment.
What is your current digital payment adoption rate?
Below 40% digital adoption usually signals strong upside. Above 70% suggests the gains will be more incremental, though paperless and AutoPay rates often tell a different story.
How much manual work is your billing team absorbing?
If reconciliation, exception handling, and bill production are eating staff hours that could support the core program, parallel modernization relieves pressure rather than adding it.
Does your CIS provider have an existing partnership with billing and payments vendors?
Joint deployment models compress timelines and reduce IT burden. If your CIS team has done this integration before, the risk profile drops significantly.
Are CIS and portal decisions already locked in?
Once those are set, the viable options for digital billing and payments narrow. Evaluating it before those decisions finalize, even if implementation comes later, prevents downstream integration pain.
Is leadership looking for visible value during the IT program?
Multi-year programs need interim wins. Self-service payment adoption produces measurable customer-facing results within months, which is one of the few places that kind of evidence is available.
Sources
InvoiceCloud, 2026 State of Online Payments Annual Report (October 2025 survey, 2,000 U.S. adults). J.D. Power, 2025 U.S. Utility Digital Experience Study and 2026 U.S. Utility Digital Experience Study. J.D. Power industry digital experience comparisons drawn from the 2024 and 2025 Wealth Management, Property & Casualty Insurance, Retirement Plan, Retail Banking, and Healthcare Digital Experience Studies. Bent Flyvbjerg and Alexander Budzier, “Why Your IT Project May Be Riskier Than You Think,” Harvard Business Review, September 2011, based on a study of nearly 1,500 IT projects. Kate Smaje and Rodney Zemmel, “Rewired and running ahead: Digital and AI leaders are leaving the rest behind,” McKinsey & Company, March 2024. CIS implementation timeline benchmarks drawn from Itineris industry commentary. AMI deployment timeline benchmarks drawn from CLOU Global research and IEEE Smart Grid industry reporting. Fully loaded contact center cost figures for municipal utilities drawn from InvoiceCloud client research. Paper bill production cost estimates derived from utility industry print, postage, and labor benchmarks. San Jose Water case study, based on InvoiceCloud client data and data collected by San Jose Water in 2024. Sacramento Suburban Water District case study, based on InvoiceCloud client data and data collected by SSWD in 2024.