August 4, 2026
Levelling Up
Levelling Up: How Epic Is Using Technology to Raise the Standard of Property Management
Property management has traditionally been an operations-first, relationship-driven industry, where technology often lagged service needs. Epic Investment Services has spent the past several years deliberately changing that picture across its national portfolio by identifying where the right technology platform produces a measurable improvement in service delivery and acting on it faster than larger, more layered organizations typically can.
Nada Sutic, Vice President of Sustainability and National Services at Epic, is direct about the advantage Epic's size creates here. "While operating with a boutique approach, we use many of the same platforms our peers use," she says. "And because we are more nimble, we are actually in some ways more modern in the platforms we adopt."
That Agility Becomes Tangible in Response Times
In a large institutional property management firm, adopting a new technology platform is a significant undertaking. It requires buy-in across multiple layers of management, compatibility assessments with legacy systems, and a rollout timeline that can span years. By the time the platform is live, a faster-moving competitor may already be on to the next iteration.
Epic takes a more deliberate approach. Rather than adopting technology for its own sake, the firm evaluates platforms carefully against the specific operational needs of its buildings and clients before committing. That means conducting the right checks, understanding fit at the asset level, and implementing solutions that improve building management rather than simply adding to the technology stack. When the right tool is identified, Epic's structure allows it to move efficiently, with decisions made by people close to the buildings, without having to navigate layers of institutional approval. That combination of thoughtfulness and agility is the foundation of Epic's technology strategy.
What 10 Minutes Means
The most concrete illustration of this approach is Epic's implementation of Visitt, a property operations and tenant experience platform that has transformed how the firm manages and responds to tenant service requests across its portfolio.
Before Visitt, tenant requests moved through a more fragmented process built on manual workflows, disconnected systems, and phone-based escalation. Acknowledgment times varied, and follow-through was harder to track systematically. The time between a tenant's request and a meaningful response can create growing frustration that, over time, erodes the trust keeping tenants in a building.
Since implementing Visitt, Epic has recorded approximately a 26-minute improvement in response times, with a median tenant request response time of 10 minutes. Kevin Humphrys, Vice President of Real Estate for Western Canada at Epic, puts that figure in context. "From my experience, our response times are at the better end of what we typically see across property management firms, where an average response time of 30 to 60 minutes is common," he says. "That said, we are not satisfied with a median response time of 10 minutes and are always trying to improve."
That 10-minute median is not a ceiling Epic has declared sufficient. It is a benchmark the firm is actively working to improve, which speaks to a broader cultural orientation toward continuous operational improvement rather than a one-time technology upgrade.
Communication throughout the project was tailored to each stakeholder. Ownership, with a high degree of trust already established with the asset management team, received updates at key decision points. The property management team tracked progress closely on a weekly basis, managing tenant communication and building operations throughout the construction period.
Technology That Serves the Ownership Relationship
The technology improvements Epic has made are not limited to the tenant-facing side of the operation. The firm has developed a reporting and data infrastructure that aligns with the principle of providing clients exactly what they need, in the format that suits them, all delivered with institutional-grade security.
Epic's financial reporting platform adheres to SOC 1 Type 2 compliance standards, meaning ownership groups have confidence that their financial data is managed with the governance controls they would expect from a much larger firm. Beyond the security infrastructure, Epic has developed a direct data delivery capability that automates the export of financial data from its system into the client's own platform.
"This enables them to do their own analysis and look at assets managed by Epic alongside others they might be managing directly or with other partners," Sutic says.
For ownership groups managing a broader portfolio with multiple managers, that integration eliminates manual reconciliation and gives them a complete picture of their holdings in one place.
National Platforms, Local Execution
One of the structural advantages of Epic's technology approach is how it distributes the benefit of national platform investment across individual buildings and markets. When Epic adopts a platform at the national level, the operational benefit flows to site teams across the portfolio without requiring each property to source and implement its own solution.
"Our national programs and platforms provide a service model that is consistent across the country," Humphrys says. "It also takes the burden of replicable tasks that can be centralized off the shoulders of relatively lean and nimble site staff."
That means the operations team at a Calgary office building and the team at a Toronto mixed-use asset are working with the same tools, the same reporting frameworks, and the same response time standards. The consistency is built into the platform rather than being dependent on individual site teams to maintain.
Epic is constantly building on its technological capabilities. It is a capability the firm considers core to its service offerings, assessed against benchmarks and driven by the actual needs of clients and tenants from the buildings they occupy. In an industry that has been slow to treat technology as a competitive differentiator, that orientation alone is a meaningful distinction.
"We are always trying to improve," Humphrys says. At Epic, that is not just a commonplace phrase. It is a measurable commitment.
Kevin Humphrys
VP, Real Estate Management (Western Canada)
Nada Sutic
VP, Sustainability & National Services