Paul Apple­gate brings a front­line view of how util­i­ty orga­ni­za­tions are mod­ern­iz­ing cus­tomer engage­ment. As Vice Pres­i­dent of Alliances and Busi­ness Devel­op­ment at Invoice­Cloud — a cloud-based elec­tron­ic bill pre­sent­ment and pay­ment plat­form used by more than 2,200 util­i­ties nation­wide — Apple­gate works with InvoiceCloud’s part­ner ecosys­tem to dri­ve dig­i­tal adop­tion, reduce arrear­ages, and improve oper­a­tional efficiency.

Invoice­Cloud is a pur­pose-built SaaS solu­tion that inte­grates with a wide range of util­i­ty sys­tems, includ­ing SAP, to sup­port secure, user-friend­ly dig­i­tal pay­ment experiences.

In a sec­tor fac­ing grow­ing com­plex­i­ty around col­lec­tions, staffing, and cus­tomer expec­ta­tions, Apple­gate empha­sizes the val­ue of incre­men­tal, mea­sur­able change.

In this inter­view, Apple­gate offers a prac­ti­cal look at the trends shap­ing util­i­ty strat­e­gy today — from using AI to antic­i­pate late pay­ments to stream­lin­ing billing work­flows and reduc­ing man­u­al work­loads. He also explores how util­i­ties are adapt­ing to ris­ing expec­ta­tions for dig­i­tal ser­vice and why improve­ments to the cus­tomer expe­ri­ence can’t wait for long-term ini­tia­tives like S/4HANA migrations.

This inter­view has been edit­ed and con­densed for length and clar­i­ty. You can down­load it in full here.

Q: With Invoice­Cloud work­ing with over 2,200 util­i­ties, what high-lev­el shifts are you see­ing that are shap­ing their busi­ness priorities?

Even in the four years that I’ve been here, cus­tomer expec­ta­tions across the board have changed and con­tin­ue to change dra­mat­i­cal­ly. It used to be that util­i­ties would some­how get a break in terms of how their cus­tomers per­ceived them from an engage­ment per­spec­tive. How­ev­er, util­i­ty cus­tomer expec­ta­tions are now shaped by oth­er enti­ties they inter­act with.

Whether it’s Ama­zon, a ride-share com­pa­ny like Uber, or their bank, all of which pro­vide a fric­tion­less engage­ment expe­ri­ence, these orga­ni­za­tions are the new nor­mal in terms of cus­tomer expectations.

This presents both a huge oppor­tu­ni­ty and a huge chal­lenge for util­i­ties. It affords them the chance to move more read­i­ly toward what they view as an ide­al cus­tomer: some­one who is com­plete­ly dig­i­tal­ly engaged, pays their month­ly bill via auto­pay, and inter­acts with the util­i­ty only when it’s absolute­ly nec­es­sary. But it also presents a chal­lenge because some of the tech­nolo­gies they’ve employed in the past were not pur­pose-built to meet cus­tomers when and how they want to engage.

From our per­spec­tive, this is the moment where it all comes together.

Q: With chal­lenges like weath­er events, emis­sions goals, and grid expan­sion con­verg­ing, where do you see inno­va­tion efforts most focused today? What near-term inno­va­tion imper­a­tives should util­i­ties prioritize?

I feel like every ques­tion relat­ed to inno­va­tion has to address AI in some shape or form. But I want to expand on some­thing I said earlier.

Look­ing at how peo­ple are inter­act­ing with the com­pa­nies around them, that’s the blue­print going for­ward. Think about your own expe­ri­ence using Ama­zon. I believe the real effect is how good they are at get­ting you to do some­thing you didn’t plan on doing. At the moment of truth, when you’re about to check out, they’re telling you: peo­ple who bought this also bought that, peo­ple are set­ting up recur­ring ship­ments, and peo­ple like you are using the Ama­zon cred­it card to get rewards. They’ve earned the right to get you to think more broad­ly than your ini­tial inten­tion. Learn­ing from that is key.

When I think about where util­i­ties can go — let’s call it the ​“con­sumer-type expe­ri­ence” — util­i­ties have earned the right, because of mar­ket shifts, to step into that and offer a sim­i­lar expe­ri­ence. I pre­sume we’ll talk lat­er about how we do that, but I think it’s an inter­est­ing inno­va­tion. Every­one now expects that kind of expe­ri­ence: one that’s easy to use and prompts you, at the right moment, to do some­thing else.

Now, from an AI per­spec­tive, espe­cial­ly as we start to get into agen­tic AI, what’s fas­ci­nat­ing is that you’ve got to have your dig­i­tal house to ful­ly take advan­tage of it. We see what we do as pro­vid­ing an inter­me­di­ate step by dri­ving dig­i­tal engage­ment and giv­ing util­i­ties the data and engage­ment points they need to ful­ly lever­age AI.

What we’re real­ly excit­ed about is AI’s pre­dic­tive abil­i­ty, espe­cial­ly around fore­cast­ing behav­ior. In our world, the most impor­tant ques­tion is: who’s like­ly to pay late next month? Under­stand­ing someone’s pay­ment his­to­ry and how and when they pay rais­es pre­dic­tive flags. If you have the right tech­nol­o­gy in place, you can start get­ting ahead of those risks.

Q: As more util­i­ties explore what ​“dig­i­tal pay­ments for every­one” real­ly means, what are the biggest take­aways from your cus­tomer base about how to make that real, par­tic­u­lar­ly for cus­tomers who might not be dig­i­tal­ly engaged today?

This jour­ney toward full dig­i­tal engage­ment has been going on for years. This isn’t a new con­cept, but we’re get­ting to the hard­est part: the folks who have resist­ed becom­ing dig­i­tal­ly engaged for one rea­son or another.

There’s a com­mon mis­con­cep­tion that some pop­u­la­tions will nev­er go dig­i­tal. Peo­ple often cite senior cit­i­zens, those whose native lan­guage isn’t Eng­lish, or indi­vid­u­als who are under­banked or unbanked.

But the fact is, 97% of peo­ple own a mobile phone. Inter­net access is still creep­ing up; it’s in the high 70s or low 80s across the U.S. But many peo­ple have skipped past that and now have a full-blown com­put­er in their pock­et. And not only do 97% of peo­ple own a mobile device, but 91% bought some­thing on that device last year.

That’s the oppor­tu­ni­ty. When we talk about dig­i­tal pay­ments for every­one, we mean: how do we, as util­i­ty part­ners, make that process as easy and engag­ing as what peo­ple are already expe­ri­enc­ing with tech­nol­o­gy and con­sumer companies?

This presents a real oppor­tu­ni­ty for util­i­ties. His­tor­i­cal­ly, the tech­nolo­gies they used to process pay­ments weren’t set up to dri­ve behav­ioral change. They were sim­ply there to take a pay­ment. But if you’re not meet­ing cus­tomers when and how they want to pay and encour­ag­ing them to change their behav­ior, like sign­ing up for auto­pay, paper­less billing, or pay-by-text, you’re miss­ing a key opportunity. 

So, when we talk about dig­i­tal pay­ments for every­one, it’s about pro­vid­ing every­one, regard­less of age, lan­guage, or life cir­cum­stances, with the same ease of use they expe­ri­ence elsewhere.

Q: From a staffing, cus­tomer ser­vice, and oper­a­tional stand­point, what does that kind of fric­tion­less expe­ri­ence make pos­si­ble internally?

The idea of tak­ing a dig­i­tal pay­ment and let­ting peo­ple pay their util­i­ty bills with a cred­it card, Apple Pay, Ven­mo, or Google Pay is not new. It’s been around for a while.

When some­one is going through the billing and pay­ment process, they’re ful­ly engaged. If I, as a util­i­ty, don’t have the right CX plat­form in place to ful­ly lever­age that moment, I lose the oppor­tu­ni­ty. I can’t take advan­tage of those 30 sec­onds to dri­ve the type of change that’s so important.

With a plat­form like Invoice­Cloud, util­i­ties can fun­da­men­tal­ly change their business.

What would it mean to a util­i­ty if they could dri­ve on-time col­lec­tions up by 40%? Because that’s what hap­pens with Invoice­Cloud. What if they could get 60% more of their cus­tomers dig­i­tal­ly engaged, specif­i­cal­ly by mov­ing them to auto­pay? And what if they could improve paper­less adop­tion by 80%?

The ben­e­fits you men­tioned, like oper­a­tional costs, effi­cien­cy, and finan­cial process­es like col­lec­tions, are all influ­enced by those three met­rics. The data we’ve seen puts total arrear­ages above $20 bil­lion across all U.S. utilities.

It’s not just about shrink­ing that num­ber; it’s about keep­ing it low. On just the first two met­rics — 40% more on-time pay­ments and 60% more cus­tomers mov­ing to auto­pay — that has an imme­di­ate and huge impact on that $20 billion.

The oppor­tu­ni­ty is right in front of them. It’s that 30-sec­ond win­dow each month when their cus­tomers are engaged. But with their cur­rent tech­nol­o­gy, they can’t ful­ly lever­age it.

Q: Giv­en recent urban-to-rur­al migra­tion, how can dig­i­tal tools help util­i­ties main­tain con­sis­tent ser­vice qual­i­ty as their ter­ri­to­ries expand?

We’ve done some research on this because we all heard anec­do­tal­ly what hap­pened dur­ing COVID, relat­ed to where peo­ple were moving.

Every­one under­stands that peo­ple left big­ger cities and moved to more rur­al areas. But what’s fas­ci­nat­ing is that there were very clear migra­tion paths. Peo­ple moved west and to the south­east. If you look at the 15 or 20 biggest cities in the U.S., they all saw neg­a­tive growth dur­ing COVID. Peo­ple moved out.

In Flori­da, U.S. Cen­sus data showed net growth in bright blue; it lit up in terms of inbound migra­tion. Com­mu­ni­ties were grow­ing unex­pect­ed­ly by 5%, 8%, even 12%.

But util­i­ty staff lev­els weren’t keep­ing pace. And util­i­ty staff — long-tenured, hard-to-hire employ­ees — were also aging out. The work­force wasn’t reflect­ing the growth in the cus­tomer base.

If you step back and look at this as a math prob­lem, 10% more peo­ple means 10% more man­u­al process­es. Every time you have a man­u­al process, such as send­ing paper bills, pro­cess­ing checks, or answer­ing unnec­es­sary calls, for some­one who sim­ply for­got to pay, that’s 10% more work across every part of your system.

We’ve seen that they’ve been able to lever­age tech­nol­o­gy like ours. If you can take man­u­al process­es out of your sys­tem, you can get back to a degree of san­i­ty in terms of how your employ­ees are work­ing to not only serve your cus­tomers but retain those employ­ees. That’s so impor­tant for util­i­ties — hav­ing time and ener­gy to focus on things that real­ly mat­ter as opposed to wast­ing time on unnec­es­sary man­u­al processes.

Q: When you take those man­u­al bur­dens off the table, what becomes pos­si­ble strate­gi­cal­ly for the utility?

Pic­ture a cir­cle that rep­re­sents every­one who’s going to pay late next month. Now bisect that cir­cle, rough­ly half on the left, half on the right.

On the left-hand side are peo­ple who are going to pay late because they for­get. They’ll get a paper reminder or an email that’s not action­able, hit a login wall, aban­don the process, and sud­den­ly get a shut-off let­ter or a knock on the door. But they still end up in the arrear­ages bucket.

What if you could shrink that half of the cir­cle to zero? Then you’re left with the right-hand side: the peo­ple who are strug­gling to pay every month.

That’s where the strate­gic val­ue comes in. Elim­i­nat­ing unnec­es­sary man­u­al process­es frees up util­i­ties to focus on what mat­ters. In this case, that means work­ing with the cus­tomers who are gen­uine­ly strug­gling and help­ing them find the right afford­abil­i­ty pro­grams, help­ing them reg­is­ter, remov­ing hur­dles, and field­ing questions.

This extends beyond just the cus­tomer ser­vice team. Every minute saved on avoid­ing these unnec­es­sary man­u­al process­es is time those teams can use to focus on deliv­er­ing their strate­gic initiatives.

Q: Let’s talk about DERs and the rise of util­i­ty ​“pro­sumers.” What are the impli­ca­tions of that mod­el for CX design?

I’d rather draw a broad­er con­nec­tion across all types of pro­grams that util­i­ties are try­ing to roll out and proac­tive­ly engage cus­tomers on.

It real­ly comes down to two things: how you’re com­mu­ni­cat­ing and how easy it is for the cus­tomer to work with you. That’s foun­da­tion­al for whether these pro­grams succeed.

We hear a lot about the ​“util­i­ty pro­sumer” or ​“pro-con­sumer.” Peo­ple want to go online, see their ener­gy usage, and man­age it them­selves. But what ends up hap­pen­ing is all that data lives over here, your billing infor­ma­tion lives there, and your bill pay­ment lives some­where else. There’s fatigue. Cus­tomers can’t find what they need.

The num­ber one use case for those cus­tomer self-ser­vice por­tals is to pay a bill. About 80% of users go there just for that. Whether it’s a guest check­out or a full reg­is­tra­tion expe­ri­ence with access to rich data, peo­ple just want to make a payment.

There are incred­i­ble por­tals out there that do this well. At Invoice­Cloud, we’ve cho­sen not to build one — we part­ner with com­pa­nies that spe­cial­ize in that. What’s impor­tant for the util­i­ty is rec­og­niz­ing that this is about meet­ing cus­tomers when and how they want to engage.

This is about bring­ing togeth­er the right best-of-breed tech­nolo­gies into one seam­less expe­ri­ence. That’s where being a true SaaS solu­tion real­ly mat­ters. We’ve been cloud-native from day one.

It means every one of our cus­tomers is on the same ver­sion. When we roll out inno­va­tion, either direct­ly with our util­i­ties or through our por­tal part­ners, every cus­tomer ben­e­fits. Because we’ve built inte­gra­tions with dif­fer­ent por­tal solu­tions, whether it’s sup­port­ed by SAP or anoth­er provider, every­thing can look and feel seamless.

Q: Do you see that same log­ic apply­ing across oth­er types of com­mu­ni­ca­tions and pro­grams, like rebate pro­grams, assis­tance pro­grams, and ener­gy effi­cien­cy messaging?

Util­i­ties shouldn’t lim­it them­selves to just one type of communication.

If you’re send­ing a mes­sage about your EV pro­gram, bat­tery pro­gram, or assis­tance pro­gram, why not use that moment to offer cus­tomers the oppor­tu­ni­ty to do some­thing else?

These are the kinds of con­ver­sa­tions we’ve had with lead­ing tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­nies. They’re focused on dri­ving a sin­gle out­come. But when it comes to dig­i­tal adop­tion and engage­ment, what if you could also get some­one to take addi­tion­al action?

Sign up for auto­pay. Go paper­less. Sign up for text pay­ments. Why not include that in the communication?

There’s a real oppor­tu­ni­ty here. Often, these pro­grams are owned by dif­fer­ent depart­ments with­in the util­i­ty. It’s going to take some cre­ative think­ing, whether that comes from SAP con­sult­ing part­ners or util­i­ty lead­ers at the C‑level.

It doesn’t have to be either-or. Two things can be true: you’re try­ing to dri­ve enroll­ment in a rebate or assis­tance pro­gram, and at the same time, maybe you pick up 2 or 3% of peo­ple who might oth­er­wise pay late next month.

Con­nect with Paul Apple­gate on LinkedIn.

Q: How do you see the shift to S/4HANA and the pub­lic cloud unlock­ing new oppor­tu­ni­ties for cus­tomer expe­ri­ence gains?

When we were in Mia­mi last year for the SAP for Util­i­ties event spon­sored by ASUG, every sin­gle per­son we talked to — whether they worked at a util­i­ty, for SAP, or were a part­ner or con­sul­tant — was talk­ing about this migra­tion. Every­one was focused on the upcom­ing dead­line and what it would take to move util­i­ties en masse from where they are now to their future state.

This shift from on-prem to the cloud has a lot of busi­ness ben­e­fits: improved func­tion­al­i­ty, secu­ri­ty, and access to the lat­est tech­nol­o­gy. But it’s also painful. It’s a lengthy process.

It could take anoth­er 12 or 24 months or more before util­i­ties cus­tomers see any ben­e­fit from this. So why not think about a stair-stepped approach? Why not lever­age niche tech­nolo­gies with proven SAP

inte­gra­tion to offer mean­ing­ful cus­tomer ben­e­fits in a much short­er timeframe?

When I think about what we pro­vide to the mar­ket, the impact we can have in six to nine months is sub­stan­tial. Whether you’re an SAP cus­tomer or a glob­al con­sul­tan­cy sup­port­ing clients in this migra­tion, there’s a real oppor­tu­ni­ty to take a stair-stepped approach to cus­tomer val­ue. Fit­ting in some­thing like Invoice­Cloud presents a unique opportunity.

Q: What’s your per­spec­tive on AI’s tra­jec­to­ry in the util­i­ty sec­tor? Are there use cas­es that feel par­tic­u­lar­ly near-term and real?

About a month ago, I was in a room with a group of util­i­ty exec­u­tives, and the whole ses­sion was about AI. The first ques­tion: ​“How many of you are think­ing about what AI means to your orga­ni­za­tion?” — every hand went up. The next ques­tion: ​“How many of you are active­ly invest­ing real dol­lars in AI?” — no hands went up.

Maybe there’s a mid­dle ground. Util­i­ties should start putting pres­sure on their cur­rent providers to help them fig­ure out how to use exist­ing tech­nol­o­gy more effi­cient­ly with AI and machine learn­ing on an ongo­ing basis.

This wasn’t some­thing on anyone’s radar two or three years ago. But now, we have a large, well-siloed dataset that cov­ers about 25% of the U.S. util­i­ty mar­ket. And we’ve learned a few things.

Every month, we send out hun­dreds of mil­lions of email reminders. From that data, we can see when peo­ple pay, how they pay, how close to the due date they pay, and what it might mean if some­one who’s paid on time for 24 straight months sud­den­ly miss­es two pay­ments. That kind of change is a trigger.

For util­i­ties, AI is an oppor­tu­ni­ty for the IT team and busi­ness users to sit down with ven­dors and say, ​“Here are the busi­ness prob­lems we’re try­ing to solve.” Let the ven­dors come back with ideas.

It’s going to be a slow burn before util­i­ties start nam­ing Chief AI Offi­cers and build­ing out in-house AI teams. Why not lever­age the folks who are on the cut­ting edge of tech­nol­o­gy already to help you?

Q: Any final thoughts on how util­i­ty lead­ers can bet­ter sup­port their staff while also meet­ing cus­tomer expectations?

Tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­nies often talk about ben­e­fits for the util­i­ty and the util­i­ty cus­tomer. But it’s also impor­tant to ask: what will this tech­nol­o­gy do for the peo­ple who work at the utility?

We’ve talked a lot about how Invoice­Cloud frees up time for employ­ees to focus on mean­ing­ful work. But we also have a range of back­end solu­tions that make life eas­i­er, espe­cial­ly for the finance team. The last thing you want is to adopt a piece of tech­nol­o­gy that cre­ates more prob­lems than it solves.

There’s a rea­son 98% of our cus­tomers stick with us year over year. We’re not just invest­ing in the plat­form but in mak­ing sure our cus­tomers know how to use it. We pro­vide ser­vices to help them ful­ly take advan­tage of the technology.

That cre­ates a rip­ple effect. Yes, it leads to the busi­ness out­comes we’ve already dis­cussed. How­ev­er, it also leads to inter­nal employ­ee sat­is­fac­tion, which is impor­tant and too often overlooked.

We see every day how hard util­i­ty employ­ees work. It can be a thank­less job. Any relief we can give means a lot to us. Every­one needs pow­er, water, and gas.

We’re proud to sup­port the peo­ple who pro­vide those essen­tial services.

Vis­it the Invoice­Cloud website.

About Invoice­Cloud

Invoice­Cloud pro­vides mod­ern dig­i­tal pay­ment, cus­tomer engage­ment, and out­bound dis­burse­ment solu­tions. The com­pa­ny ser­vices more than 3,250 cus­tomers across the util­i­ty, gov­ern­ment and insur­ance indus­tries and is a leader in the elec­tron­ic bill pre­sent­ment and pay­ment (EBPP) space. InvoiceCloud’s SaaS plat­form enables con­tin­u­ous enhance­ments to the cus­tomer expe­ri­ence result­ing in high­er dig­i­tal pay­ment, Auto­Pay, and paper­less adop­tion rates. By switch­ing to Invoice­Cloud, clients can improve cus­tomer engage­ment and sat­is­fac­tion while low­er­ing costs, accel­er­at­ing pay­ments, and reduc­ing staff work­loads. To learn more, vis­it www​.Invoice​Cloud​.com.

About ASUG

ASUG is the world’s largest SAP user group. Orig­i­nal­ly found­ed by a group of vision­ary SAP cus­tomers in 1991, its mis­sion is to help peo­ple and orga­ni­za­tions get the most val­ue from their invest­ment in SAP tech­nol­o­gy. ASUG cur­rent­ly serves thou­sands of busi­ness­es via com­pa­ny­wide mem­ber­ships, con­nect­ing more than 130,000 pro­fes­sion­als with net­work­ing and edu­ca­tion­al resources to help them mas­ter new chal­lenges. Through in-per­son and vir­tu­al events, on-demand dig­i­tal resources, and ongo­ing advo­ca­cy for its mem­ber­ship, ASUG helps SAP cus­tomers make more possible.