Commercial real estate owners often make critical decisions without complete information because data gets filtered as it moves up the chain, according to Bill Douglas, CEO of OpticWise. Each handoff between building engineers, property managers, and asset managers strips away details, leaving decision-makers with an incomplete picture.
“It depends on how many filters get applied before a decision-maker gets it,” Douglas said. He noted that people naturally focus on the metrics they are measured and paid on, so unfavorable numbers may not make it into reports. “They’re not lying,” he said. “They’re performing to what they’re being measured for.”
As a result, corporate teams, especially asset managers, often build their own spreadsheets to recapture lost information. But these homegrown solutions create new problems: data lives behind individual logins rather than with the company, and emailed spreadsheets can quickly become outdated. Douglas, who has coached entrepreneurs for 30 years, points out that monthly financials are backward-looking and don’t show how to change future outcomes. “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.”
The cost becomes evident during a sale or financing. When a buyer’s or lender’s diligence team asks for operating history behind a figure, the honest answer may be that it sits on someone’s laptop. “Anything can happen. Bad optics,” Douglas said. “Most commonly, people stop pursuing it.” Alternatively, owners may start collecting data properly from that point forward, meaning usable history begins on day one instead of reaching back years. Gaps in operating data make a property harder to evaluate, affecting both deal timelines and prices.
Many companies try to address these issues by building dashboards around key metrics, but Douglas cautions that visibility is not control. 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.”
Real control, Douglas argues, comes from access to source data. “Aggregated data tells you what happened. Source data helps you understand why,” he said. For example, a benchmark might show a property ranks in the 40th percentile for energy use, but only operating data reveals what to fix. With the full data set in one place, software can flag anomalies over time, and different stakeholders—from building engineers to limited partners—can see the views they need.
Douglas emphasizes that 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. Douglas is co-author of the best-selling book Peak Property Performance®: Game-Changing AI and Digital Strategies for Commercial Real Estate and host of the Peak Property Performance podcast.
For owners and asset managers, the implication is clear: relying on filtered reports can lead to inefficient operations, stalled deals, and suboptimal pricing. By capturing and analyzing source data, they can gain true control over property performance and make more informed strategic decisions. As Douglas puts it, understanding the why behind the numbers is essential for driving future results.
