By KeyCrew Media
Commercial real estate owners are experts at tracking NOI, managing leases, and evaluating assets. But there is one area where even experienced operators tend to fly blind: their own data and digital infrastructure.
Bill Douglas, CEO of OpticWise and co-author of Peak Property Performance, has reviewed hundreds of commercial properties. What he finds in nearly every audit is not a dramatic failure. It is a quiet, years-long accumulation of untracked networks, untouched systems, and capital investments that were never put to work.
When Nobody Maps the Network
In multi-tenant buildings, digital infrastructure layers up over time without anyone keeping score. A tenant installs their own connectivity workaround. A vendor configures a system and leaves. A previous property manager approves something that never makes it into documentation. Before long, a building is running four or five networks where one or two would do the job.
In one case Douglas describes, an undocumented duplicate network ran in the background for six years before anyone knew it was there. It only surfaced when it failed.
“Redundant networks, redundant systems,” Douglas says. “You have paid for multiple digital infrastructures, and sometimes you even have multiple systems doing the same thing.”
The cost is not just the original capital outlay. It is ongoing operating expense, with no monitoring, no management, and no return.
A $75,000 Investment That Sat Dormant for Six Years
Perhaps the starkest example from OpticWise’s audit work: a hardware system installed during original construction, with an active software subscription running the entire time, that had simply never been turned on.
When the system was finally activated and configured, the property saved $56,000 in utilities in the following twelve months. The equipment had already been paid for. The savings were always there.
Ownership transitions, property manager turnover, and handoffs without proper documentation are how situations like this develop. Technology gets purchased, a box gets checked, and the system disappears into the background.
“We’re asking people to make decisions and run networks that they are not trained or staffed to handle,” Douglas explains. “The property manager is being paid to take care of tenants and lease up the building, not to run technology.”
The Pattern Behind the Pattern
What connects these scenarios is not incompetence or carelessness. It is a structural gap: most CRE owners treat technology as an expense category rather than as an asset that should generate a measurable return. When that is the starting assumption, there is no reason to map what you have, measure whether it is working, or hold anyone accountable for the results.
Douglas frames it this way: “You can’t fix what you can’t see.”
A data and digital infrastructure review changes that. It surfaces the unknown, including the systems running in the background, the expenses no one thought to question, and the investments sitting idle that could be generating returns today. For many owners, it is the first time they have a complete picture of what they actually own.
OpticWise’s Peak Property Performance DDI Review is designed to find exactly these gaps, before they compound into another six years of waste. Learn more at opticwise.com. Explore the book and podcast at peakpropertyperformance.com.
OpticWise partners with CRE owners to design, implement, and operate owner-controlled data and digital infrastructure, plus an owner-controlled intelligence layer that turns Property Intelligence into Portfolio Intelligence.
Disclaimer: The information provided in this article is for general informational purposes only and should not be construed as financial or investment advice. Past performance and examples discussed are not indicative of future results. Investments involve risks, and there are no guarantees of returns.
