Case Study

Held Together with Spreadsheets

Before Vantaca, Beacon's day-to-day operations were held together with manual effort. Shari Hopkins, Vice President of Corporate Operations and Vantaca superuser at Beacon, described it as using a lot of emails, spreadsheets, and multiple systems just to accomplish one goal.

Status updates were hard to track. Transparency for homeowners, board members, and employees was limited. Workflows touching multiple departments had no single home, which made accountability difficult and efficiency nearly impossible.

"We were not able to track status updates or have transparency for homeowners, for board members, and even for our employees," said Hopkins. "Having those workflows all in one place allowed us to be more efficient as a management company."

Michael Dubas Beacon's CEO, echoes the same sentiment. "I had worked in several different softwares prior that had things happening in multiple different platforms. For me, Vantaca was a welcome new platform, and I was immediately excited about it," said Dubas.

What Vantaca Changed

Since implementing Vantaca in 2019, Beacon has doubled its association count, from around 120 to over 330, without a proportional increase in staff. Growth at scale used to mean hiring. Vantaca changed the math.

Hopkins estimates Vantaca saves the team 200 hours per month across departments. Financial reporting once took five days; now it takes two. Statement distribution went from a manual, calendared effort to fully automated. Every department, from accounting to customer service to closings, has seen meaningful reductions in time spent on routine work, and freed capacity to take on more.

Dubas is quick to highlight the transparency Vantaca provides, both internally and for clients. "The ability to get information in a matter of seconds, especially in the financial area, is so helpful in answering questions for clients and planning for their future."

Visibility That Changes How Teams Lead:
Vantaca IQ

With workflows centralized and time recovered, Beacon's leadership needed a way to see it all. That's where Vantaca IQ came in. The platform's built-in analytics tool became central to how Dubas monitors performance across the portfolio — tracking workload distribution, identifying resource gaps, reviewing association-level metrics, and checking account balances, all in one place.

Dubas was part of IQ's original beta launch and has used it to solve one of the more persistent challenges in managing a growing company: knowing what's actually happening on the ground.

"It was always a struggle to see what is in any individual user's queue at any given time, so we immediately started using it for that to understand the workload and when work was occurring by members of our team," he said.

"The one thing I really appreciate is being able to see everyone's bank account balance in a very easy one spot, rather than having to look through different things — and also the number of action items by association."

For Dubas, IQ isn't just a reporting tool. It's how Beacon keeps a pulse on every client and every team member at the same time — and it's what made the next step possible.

What HOAi Added

Building on a foundation of centralized data and automated workflows, HOAi accelerated what Vantaca had already put in motion. The results came quickly. Within six weeks of launching, Beacon had already saved an estimated 1,100 hours of team time, primarily through the orphan email agent and the triage and response agent working together.

"The amount of time our team spent looking at incoming communications and trying to sort those to the right place is now something that can be done in a matter of seconds," said Dubas. "That team is no longer doing that at all, and it allows them to focus on their primary responsibility: answering phone calls and providing direct, high-touch service."

On the accounting side, Beacon processes around 225,000 invoices per year. HOAi's AP agent improved invoice processing efficiency by approximately 50%, cutting through vendor emails, billing notifications, and non-invoice communications previously requiring manual review.

Hopkins also points to a less talked-about benefit: HOAi's ability to surface information from governing documents and association records in seconds. "Being able to type in a question and get an answer within seconds is mind blowing," she said. "Whether it's annual meeting notice requirements or clubhouse reservation policies, access to information like that is really good for our team."

Why the Ecosystem Matters

For Beacon, Vantaca and HOAi aren't separate tools. They're two parts of the same system, and the combination is what makes the difference. Data lives in Vantaca. HOAi draws from it. The result is faster responses, more accurate outputs, and a team spending its time on work that matters most.

Looking ahead to 2026, Beacon is projecting approximately $200,000 in savings from headcount alone, directly attributable to HOAi handling work otherwise requiring additional staff. "We're basically paying somebody to do a job that has to be done, but is a low-level task. HOAi just picks that up and moves things forward," said Dubas.

For Hopkins, the bigger picture is about what her team gets back, and where they're headed. "We're in the walk phase right now, but it's been exciting just to see how we can train this agent to do most of the admin behind the scenes work, and for us to focus on our customers and our employees."