Case Study: VacationRentalPros.com
EchoSign Helps Us Seal the Deal
Company Overview
VacationRentalPros.com is a full-service property management vacation rental company that manages about 200 properties including condos, homes, and beach houses in Palm Coast and Venice, Florida.
Workflow Challenge
VacationRentalPros.com manages 100-150 contracts each month for independent contractor employment, property owners, and vacation rentals. “We were sending contracts through the US mail (which is the worst way), faxing (which is the 2nd worst option), or email,” says Ed Linsky, IT/IS Manager. When sending via the US postal service, it would take 2 weeks for signed agreements to be returned; faxed contracts were returned in 2-3 days. Once the contract was received, a sales rep from VacationRentalPros would contact the customer to receive payment (typically by credit card.) “An equally big issue for us was the big mess of papers that we had to file, store, and then search through to find something. We take in credit card and sensitive payment information so we have to store the paperwork in a secure fashion,” adds Linsky. Finally, from an employee productivity perspective, this manual process of printing, mailing and faxing was also a significant cost for VacationRentalPros as well.
EchoSign Solution
Steve Milo, owner of VacationRentalPros.com wanted to begin a paperless, green initiative within his company. He tasked Ed with finding a solution for the company. Ed researched electronic signature vendors online, and chose EchoSign because of it’s “a la carte” pricing model. “Other vendors had pricing that was too expensive for our small business”, says Ed. VacationRentalPros.com has been an EchoSign customer since Feb, 2008. “EchoSign is the first green application that we’ve implemented and we’re looking at other eco-friendly applications because we’ve had such a good experience with EchoSign.”
Results
Using EchoSign, VacationRentalPros.com has experienced savings that have added up to over $13K annually — savings have come from postage, printing and toner cartridges, storage space, and process automation. In addition to the significant savings, VacationRentalPros.com has seen signed contracts returned in as fast as 2-3 hours, and a 50% reduction in contract cancellations. “EchoSign helps us seal the deal. Each contract is a few thousand dollars, so it makes a big difference when our cancellations drop by 50%.” Prior to EchoSign, VacationRentalPros.com was printing a lot of paper and “going through $500 laser print cartridges like water.” With EchoSign, and the reduction in printing, their print cartridges now last for months. VacationRentalPros.com has estimated a 90% time reduction in manual process in post sale followup. “The productivity time savings that we get from EchoSign is huge. There’s no more filing, faxing or scanning. Everything is automatically stored online and is easily found with a couple clicks. Since EchoSign is web-based, I don’t even have to come into the office to find a contract,” says Ed. Finally, VacationRentalPros.com can now remove filing cabinets from their office, and replace them with employee desks. “Office space is expensive, and I get more value for my money with a productive employee occupying the space over a filing cabinet.” Getting rid of all the paper allowed Ed to remove filing cabinets and add 2 more employee desks in the office. “When you take into consideration both the hard and soft costs that go into a manual contract management process, it’s probably costing your business a lot more than you think.”
EchoSign saves us about $13,000 annually, and helps us seal the deal in minutes!
— Ed Linsky, VacationRentalPros.com