Week 5: How Vendors Monetize What You Ignore
Introduction
Welcome to Week 5 of our 52-week series helping commercial real estate leaders unlock value from digital infrastructure. I’m Bill Douglas, CEO of OpticWise and co-author of Peak Property Performance: Game-Changing AI and Digital Strategies for Commercial Real Estate. Today’s focus: building data. Specifically, the invisible ways it’s leaking value from your assets — and what to do about it.
The Cost of Complacency
If you’re not actively collecting, governing, and monetizing your building’s operational data, chances are someone else is. Vendors—ISPs, access control providers, PropTech platforms—routinely insert themselves into the digital layer, harvesting insights and monetizing usage patterns. What do owners get? Usually, nothing more than a bill.
Examples of value leakage include:
– Third-party ISPs monetizing tenant behavior
– Integrators bundling your network data into their SaaS upsells
– PropTech platforms storing data off-site and locking owners out, then monetizing it themselves
– Utility and BMS vendors keeping insights behind dashboards you don’t control
PPP Insight: Data Is a Performance Asset
In *Peak Property Performance*, we call this the ‘data drain’—the systemic loss of value due to outsourcing or ignoring data pathways. Under the 5C™ Framework, the third step is **Collect**—because if you don’t own the data, you can’t optimize operations or tenant experience. Modern buildings generate millions of data points daily. Every one of them is an opportunity to cut costs, personalize service, and/or drive NOI—if you own it.
Real-World Example
A 300-unit multifamily property audited by OpticWise found that 80% of its network data was routed through third-party networks it didn’t control. After reclaiming ownership of the infrastructure and establishing a local data governance layer, they:
– Gained real-time visibility into bandwidth and usage trends
– Introduced premium service tiers for tenants
– Reduced platform fees by eliminating redundant vendors
– Cut network downtime by 45%
– Saved $30,000 annually in third-party markups
In less than a year, this shift yielded over $95,000 in NOI upside—just by stopping the data leak.
It’s Time to Reframe Data as a Utility
In the past, infrastructure ownership was about pipes and power. In today’s economy, the most valuable ‘utility’ is structured, accessible, owned data. And yet most CRE teams don’t even know where their data is stored—let alone how it’s being used or monetized.
Ask yourself:
- Can your operations team access live data without going through a vendor?
- Do you have historical logs of systems performance, outages, or tenant support events?
- Can you offer differentiated digital experiences without vendor permission?
- Would you lose all relevant data if you switched vendors for that single system?
If not, you’re likely subsidizing someone else’s SaaS model.
Call to Action
🔍 Want to know where your building’s data is going?
**Book a PPP Digital Infrastructure + Data Ownership Audit** with OpticWise and find out how much value is flowing through your asset—unclaimed.
Next week, we’ll unpack why most tech upgrades fail to improve NOI—and what a strategy-first model looks like.
Andrew Stanton CEO Proptech-PR
Andrew Stanton Founder & Editor of 'PROPTECH-X' where his insights, connections, analysis and commentary on proptech and real estate are based on writing 1.3M words annually. Plus meeting 1,000 Proptech founders, critiquing 400 decks and having had 130 clients as CEO of 'PROPTECH-PR', a consultancy for Proptech founders seeking growth and exit strategies. He also acts as an advisory for major global real estate companies on sales, acquisitions, market positioning & operations. With 200K followers & readers, he is the 'Proptech Realestate Influencer.'
- Andrew Stantonhttps://proptech-x.com/author/andrew-stanton/
- Andrew Stantonhttps://proptech-x.com/author/andrew-stanton/
- Andrew Stantonhttps://proptech-x.com/author/andrew-stanton/
- Andrew Stantonhttps://proptech-x.com/author/andrew-stanton/
