Asset managers in commercial real estate are routinely making decisions with incomplete data, according to Bill Douglas, CEO of OpticWise. The company specializes in digital infrastructure for commercial real estate, and Douglas has spent over a decade auditing properties, identifying a pattern where owners invest in systems but never utilize the data they generate.
Standard monthly reports from property management systems show leasing data and financial KPIs but lack operational data behind the numbers. Systems like lighting controls, HVAC, and access control generate data that rarely reaches asset managers in a usable form. Douglas identifies utilities, insurance, and occupancy as three major expense and revenue drivers that asset managers lack visibility into.
On utilities, understanding the demand curve is key; without knowing when peak power draw occurs, reducing costs is guesswork. For insurance, properties that can demonstrate standard operating procedures backed by system logs present a lower risk profile to underwriters. Occupancy data, such as space utilization and parking patterns, are revenue drivers that remain invisible to decision-makers.
Douglas notes that when ownership groups recognize the data gap, they often assign the problem to IT managers, property managers, or asset managers—none of whom are equipped to handle operational technology data. IT managers focus on information technology, property managers on leasing, and asset managers on finance. The result is that data remains siloed in vendor systems.
A practical data strategy starts with an audit of existing data and where it lives. OpticWise helped one client activate a lighting control system that was already installed but never turned on, saving $70,000 in electricity over 12 months with no new hardware. Similar opportunities exist for dynamic parking pricing, sub-metering, leak detection, and HVAC management.
The cost of inaction is substantial. A 400-unit apartment portfolio generating an additional $500 per door per year in net operating income would pass on $200,000 annually. An office building with 250,000 rentable square feet recovering 50 cents per square foot would forgo $125,000. With rent growth expected at only 1% in 2026, optimization through data is the primary path to value creation.
Douglas warns that owners who fail to address the data gap are choosing to leave income on the table year after year. The data already exists; the challenge is accessing and leveraging it.
