Reimagining Utility Bill Delivery with Scalable PDF Rendering for Avista

Background

Avista Utilities, a regional energy company with a legacy of innovation, serves customers across the Pacific Northwest. Known for its forward-thinking approach to energy delivery and customer service, Avista sought to modernize its billing infrastructure. The company turned to IntelliTect to help them to design and implement a performant, cloud-native solution capable of handling large-scale PDF bill rendering with speed and accuracy.

Challenge

Avista needed a scalable solution to generate high volumes of production-quality bill images quickly and reliably. The rendering platform had to meet strict performance standards and integrate seamlessly with Avista’s existing systems. Beyond speed, the solution needed to support flexibility in delivery options, including email, print, and custom bill messaging.

Solution

IntelliTect was brought in for its proven architectural expertise and commitment to delivering under pressure. The team designed and implemented a high-performance rendering pipeline using AWS technologies, meeting and exceeding Avista’s goals:

1. Cloud-Optimized Architecture: Leveraged AWS Lambda functions and S3 buckets to build a scalable PDF rendering system capable of outputting over 100,000 PDFs in under 15 minutes.
2. Robust Rendering Engine: Employed QuestPDF and C# for rendering production-quality bills directly from XML data, ensuring fidelity and performance.
3. Validation Portal: Built a custom portal for business stakeholders to review and validate flagged bills, enabling quality assurance before distribution.
4. Process Refinement: Provided architectural guidance beyond rendering, helping Avista refine post-rendering processes including custom messaging, email delivery, and integration with print services.

Partnering with IntelliTect gave us the technical leadership and execution we needed to modernize our bill delivery processes. Their team architected a high-performance and highly resilient solution that exceeded our expectations and helped us fulfill a promise we made to our board over two years ago. The work they’ve delivered in such a short time has been very impressive — IntelliTect has been a wonderful partner for us.

Matt Halloran, Manager, Customer Solutions Avista

Outcome

IntelliTect delivered a scalable, cloud-native system that significantly improved Avista’s operational efficiency. The new platform met all SLA requirements and streamlined bill generation, validation, and delivery. By simplifying touchpoints for internal teams and enabling seamless integration with existing AWS workflows, the solution empowered Avista to manage billing with precision and confidence.