When information about a commercial building reaches its owner, it has typically passed through several people, and each handoff removes detail. Bill Douglas, CEO of OpticWise, says this filtering is a primary reason owners and asset managers make decisions without the full picture. "It depends on how many filters get applied before a decision-maker gets it," he said. The pattern is familiar: a property manager asks an engineer for data and gets exactly what was requested, nothing more. The manager then reports to an asset manager or owner, and the same happens again. Each person passes along only what they are accountable for. "Not that it's being massaged," Bill said, "but it's being filtered." He is careful not to blame individuals. People naturally focus on the numbers they are measured and paid on. If a metric looks bad, it may not make the report. "They're not lying," Bill said. "They're performing to what they're being measured for."
The consequence is that corporate teams, especially asset managers, often build their own spreadsheets to recapture filtered information. The data exists; it just isn't reaching them in full. Bill, who has coached entrepreneurs for 30 years, points to the difference between backward-looking and forward-looking key performance indicators (KPIs). Monthly financials show how a property performed, not how to change what comes next. "If I want to change the NOI, if I want to change the utility expenses, what's the data that will actually make it change going forward?" he said. "I can't change my financials until I look at the inputs." Homegrown spreadsheets create new problems. When one person keeps the numbers, the information lives behind that person's login rather than with the company. When spreadsheets are emailed back and forth, the copy someone is reading may already be out of date.
The cost becomes clear during a sale or financing. A buyer's or lender's diligence team asks for the operating history behind a figure, and the honest answer is that it sits on someone's laptop. "Anything can happen. Bad optics," Bill said. "Most commonly, people stop pursuing it." Alternatively, the owner starts collecting data properly from that point forward, so usable history begins on day one instead of reaching back years. Either way, gaps in operating data make a property harder to evaluate, affecting both the timeline and the price of a deal.
Many companies respond by building dashboards around a handful of key metrics. Bill says that helps but has limits. A person can realistically track six to 12 measures, while a building produces far more information. "Someone builds a dashboard around it, and they think they have control of everything," he said. "All they have is visibility of the KPIs. That is not control." Bill argues that real control comes from access to source data. "Aggregated data tells you what happened. Source data helps you understand why," he said. A benchmark might show a property ranks in the 40th percentile for energy use, but only operating data shows what to fix. With the full data set in one place, software can watch for anomalies people can't. Owners can set systems to flag anything outside normal ranges over months or years. Different stakeholders—building engineer, property manager, asset manager, CFO, and limited partners—can then see the view they need from the same data. Bill is clear this isn't about replacing staff. "Your property still needs that many property managers," he said. The value comes from efficiency and decisions based on complete information rather than filtered reports. More on this approach is available on the OpticWise blog.
OpticWise is a commercial real estate digital infrastructure and data strategy firm that helps owners and operators take control of their property data and technology. CEO Bill Douglas is co-author of the best-selling book Peak Property Performance®: Game-Changing AI and Digital Strategies for Commercial Real Estate (Fast Company Press) and host of the Peak Property Performance podcast.
