Commercial real estate has long operated under a simple premise: build buildings, lease space, collect rent. But according to Bill Douglas, CEO of OpticWise, this traditional approach is leaving significant value on the table. His company is advocating for a fundamental shift in how the industry thinks about technology, not as a necessary expense, but as a revenue-generating asset class.
“We are making digital infrastructure and data an investable asset class inside of commercial real estate,” Douglas explains. “It should have a return on investment, not just be an expense.”
This perspective represents a significant departure from how most commercial real estate operators currently view technology. Where many see complexity and cost, Douglas sees untapped potential worth millions in additional revenue and cost savings.
Douglas brings a unique perspective to the commercial real estate technology space. A lifetime entrepreneur with engineering degrees from Georgia Tech and MIT, Bill Douglas joined OpticWise in 2015 after consulting with the company’s founder. What started as a three-month engagement to develop a go-to-market strategy evolved into a complete business transformation.
“We repositioned the entire company,” Douglas recalls. “We got out of student housing because it was purely commodity. We weren’t solving large problems for large portfolios.” OpticWise shifted focus to addressing technology challenges for commercial real estate, initially concentrating on apartments and office buildings.
The company’s evolution reflects broader industry trends. Douglas has observed increasing recognition among property owners that their approach to technology needs fundamental restructuring.
At the heart of OpticWise’s mission is a simple but powerful observation: commercial real estate is the only major industry that routinely allows outside companies to install networks in their buildings, mine data from those systems, and sell services back to building occupants.
“You don’t see Amazon, you don’t see hospitals, you don’t see manufacturing plants letting other companies come put a network in their building and mine data out of it,” Douglas points out. “But it happens every day in commercial real estate.”
This data represents significant untapped value. Douglas estimates that building-generated data, not personal user data, which the company refuses to touch, is worth millions to property owners who currently have no access to it.
The problem stems from fragmented technology implementations. Douglas regularly encounters buildings with multiple networks serving different functions: one for internet service, another for building automation, a third for security systems. He’s seen buildings with as many as twelve separate networks in a single 300,000-square-foot facility.
OpticWise advocates for treating digital infrastructure like any other real estate investment, with clear return expectations and performance metrics. This means pulling technology line items from operating expenses and positioning them as income generators that positively impact net operating income.
“Don’t treat technology as an expense, treat it as an income generator,” Douglas emphasizes. “Shift the paradigm and start holding everybody accountable for that.”
This approach has proven successful for OpticWise clients. Douglas cites examples of apartment complexes generating $800 per door in NOI from integrated digital systems, not including operational savings. These returns far exceed traditional value-add improvements like new countertops. Office building are seeing an additional $1 per square feet in NOI with the same strategies.
The company recently completed a project where consolidated digital infrastructure design eliminated ten equipment closets from the original architectural plans, freeing up space for two additional rentable apartments while reducing capital expenditure.
OpticWise focuses on three primary areas where digital infrastructure improvements deliver measurable returns: insurance, utilities, and occupancy.
Utility reductions of at least five percent are common, particularly in buildings with significant common areas. These savings come from intelligent building management systems that optimize heating, cooling, and lighting across shared spaces.
Insurance represents another significant opportunity. Rather than accepting large premium increases, property owners with comprehensive building data can present detailed risk profiles to underwriters, demonstrating their ability to prevent and respond to various scenarios.
Occupancy improvements come from enhanced tenant experiences. Modern tenants, whether residential or commercial, expect seamless connectivity throughout properties. They want to work from rooftop decks while remaining on secure corporate networks, or access high-speed internet anywhere within their apartment complex.
While most commercial real estate investors focus on traditional value-add strategies like cosmetic improvements, Douglas sees digital infrastructure as a largely untapped opportunity. His clients are using technology upgrades to transform Class B properties into A-minus assets, attracting premium tenants willing to pay for enhanced experiences.
“We have clients that are buying a Class B property and taking it to an A-minus, as well as opportunity zone funds making significant improvements,” Douglas explains. “These investors recognize that technology improvements can deliver returns that “far exceed the yield they would get on that countertop.”
The approach works because tenant expectations have evolved significantly over the past five to seven years. Commercial tenants want employees to access company networks from anywhere within the building. Residential tenants expect to work remotely from common areas while maintaining secure connections.
Despite clear financial benefits, Douglas acknowledges significant industry resistance to his approach. The primary barrier isn’t financial sophistication, commercial real estate professionals excel at analyzing returns on physical improvements. The challenge is that digital infrastructure feels abstract and intangible.
“They’re financially sophisticated. They’re not tech sophisticated,” Douglas observes. “The building engineer is great at moving power in and out, and water in and out, and people in and out. But when they see something that looks like a tech stack, they glaze over.”
This knowledge gap leads to poor technology decisions. Douglas recounts discovering a $40 undocumented network switch that, when it failed, rendered an entire building’s access control system inoperable. Such incidents reinforce negative perceptions about technology reliability.
Status quo bias also plays a role. Many industry veterans remember failed technology implementations from years past, creating reluctance to embrace new approaches. Douglas addresses this through education, including a recently published book titled “Peak Property Performance: A Digital Strategy Playbook for Commercial Real Estate.”
OpticWise begins client engagements with comprehensive digital infrastructure audits covering six domains and nearly 100 line items. The goal is mapping existing systems, identifying data ownership, and understanding current capabilities.
“Right now, you don’t know what you don’t know,” Douglas explains. “If you start with knowing what you don’t know, then you can figure out where you want to apply resources to get better.”
These assessments reveal opportunities ranging from immediate low-hanging fruit to longer-term strategic investments. The company doesn’t prescribe universal solutions but rather develops customized recommendations based on each property’s specific circumstances and owner objectives.
As the commercial real estate industry adapts to evolving tenant expectations and economic pressures, Douglas believes digital infrastructure will become increasingly critical for competitive positioning. Properties with integrated systems and comprehensive data capabilities will command premium rents and trade at higher multiples.
The trend toward treating digital infrastructure as an asset class is already gaining momentum among forward-thinking owners and developers. As more success stories emerge, Douglas expects broader industry adoption of data-driven property management approaches.
For commercial real estate professionals, the message is clear: the question isn’t whether to invest in digital infrastructure, but how quickly to begin capturing the value that’s currently being left on the table. In an industry built on maximizing returns from physical assets, the digital realm represents the next frontier for value creation.
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