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Town staff outline plan to replace legacy utility-billing system; new customer portal targeted for 2027
Summary
Town staff told council they will migrate Cary's legacy billing systems to Oracle Customer Cloud Service and launch a modern customer portal aimed at improved accessibility, leak alerts, language options and tighter integration with financials; staff expect to return with implementation details and security briefings.
Town utility staff outlined a multi-year effort to replace Cary's aging utility-billing platforms, saying the move will modernize billing, customer access and financial integrations.
Corey, the utility lead on the project, told the council the town currently operates on an older customer portal (AquaStar) and a back-end system called Navoline that require many manual workarounds. "We are moving to Oracle customer cloud service, CCS," Corey said, adding that the town expects to go live in 2027. She emphasized the migration must connect meter data, the customer portal and Oracle financials so payments are posted correctly to the utility fund.
Scott Berry, who earlier described the 2011 AMI rollout, reminded the council of the scale of the system: "Between 2011 and 2012, we implemented over 60,000 meters," he said, noting AquaStar dates to that era. Staff said advisory boards have asked for comparative charts, leak alerts, multilingual support and improved navigation; outreach and testing with customers will continue through design and the rollout.
Council members pressed staff on security, automation and lessons learned. One council member asked that the town's chief security officer or Nicole Coughlin present a cybersecurity plan after other municipal rollouts experienced issues; staff said the CSO is already reviewing protections and will return with more detail. Staff also said they visited Raleigh, Apex and Fayetteville to learn from recent deployments and plan additional training for both staff and the public before launch.
Next steps: staff will continue advisory-board engagement, document testing and training requirements and return to council with specifics on cutoffs, late-fee handling and security containment measures before advancing to implementation.
