Every brochure has its hero number. "40% energy savings." It’s almost never your number. So instead of selling you a percentage, let’s be honest about what actually pays back, and what doesn’t.
What’s real and quick: aligning setpoints and schedules to real occupancy, catching anomalies before they reach the invoice, running demand response against the grid signals. The payback usually measures in months. But the percentage depends entirely on how badly the building was run before. A well-managed building won’t see 40% — and that’s perfectly normal. Be wary of anyone who promises the same number to everybody.
What’s oversold: the "rip everything out for 40%" pitch; ERP-style implementations that take years and cost more than they save; the fantasy of "AI that optimises everything on its own with nobody approving anything".
And the ROI that nobody puts in the spreadsheet, because it doesn’t fit on a percentage line: the breakdown that didn’t happen (the chiller that didn’t fail in the middle of August); the report that went from three months to two weeks; the tenant and the employee who stayed (that intangible cost); the hours your team stopped losing assembling data by hand. All real. None of it lands in the hero number, which is exactly why the brochure leaves it out.
Our experience putting this into real buildings — LEED Gold towers, multi-building portfolios — keeps saying the same thing: the value is broader and more boring than the cover percentage, and it’s a lot more durable.
Don’t buy on the hero number. Buy on payback period and on the problems that actually hurt you. Ask for a pilot on your own data, in weeks, and measure against your reality — not against a brochure.