Across board meetings of real estate funds, private equity investors and infrastructure developers, a common question is voiced: Why are we so data rich and yet insight poor?

The era of patching together one piece of software for project management, another for cost tracking, one for development management and a static spreadsheet for the business plan is officially over.

This is the view of Varun Malik, chief operating officer of Fu3e, which delivers integrated digital project management for real estate and critical infrastructure. Boardrooms now expect their teams to use artificial intelligence to deliver real insights.

However, if teams leap too quickly into using AI to create their own solutions, the industry risks missing out on full benefits, Malik said.

“While we are at the formative stages of AI, we need to create a structured mode of implementation,” he said. “Otherwise, we risk creating it so haphazardly, at a breakneck speed, that we have to dismantle it and reassemble.”

Bisnow spoke to Malik about how software can deliver the real-time data that financial teams have been seeking to manage costs while providing a benchmark across the industry.  

Bisnow: What is the main information challenge facing boards?

Malik: The problem is twofold. First, there is not enough software in the financial services industry that effectively pulls, summarises and visualises information together from multiple places to give a real-time view of when a problem is occurring.

Some of this is a design fault, because all the information gets fed into a system at different times. By the time analysts pull it together, it’s either too late or it’s irrelevant. It can’t deliver the insights into business performance the board needs.

Second, everyone wants AI to be the magical genie that gives them the answer. But to get an answer, the fundamental information needs to be correct, and you need to be able to make contextual sense of the data.

After the Global Financial Crisis, a lot of businesses went through the process of pulling information together, but many still cannot draw a straight line from their software stack to measurable improvements in margins and productivity.

Bisnow: How can a lack of insight affect a business’s bottom line?

Malik: If you’re working on a major development, say £100M of capital expenditure, and running £5M to $10M over due to contractor delays, something has gone wrong.

You try to gather information from multiple sources to identify the revenue leakage, but by that time, it’s too late. All you can do is damage control.  

An investor doesn’t just want to know if a building is being constructed on time or on budget. They want to know how that two-week delay impacts the cash flow profile against initial underwriting. They want to know if cumulative development management fees are tracking to the fund’s target yield.

That requirement doesn't stop at real estate development. Whether you are managing private real estate portfolios, public-private partnerships or complex critical infrastructure, the core operational disease remains the exact same: a broken connection between the investment thesis and execution reality.

If you think about how much money and time is saved using a system that provides real-time, joined-up information, it’s a no-brainer.

Bisnow: What is now possible with technology?

Malik: AI and modern digital platforms are no longer just advising. They are starting to act as enterprisewide operating systems.

A single platform can track a construction schedule, while dynamically linking live site data back to an underwriting model. It flags emerging cost, schedule and delivery risks before they turn into permanent impairments.

It monitors the vital signs of a business plan in real time, automatically comparing actual performance against baseline assumptions across private markets.

The goal of automation isn’t to replace the asset manager or the director. It’s to strip away the administrative grind so they can focus entirely on strategy, risk mitigation and value creation.

Bisnow: How will greater use of AI change how projects and businesses operate?

Malik: AI can lead to more informed decisions and better investments. But the industry needs to be wary of how people use AI, because it is extremely accessible.

A company can now build its own AI agent to measure performance against its KPIs, but what standard measurement will it use? Without this, it’s like grading your own homework.

We have worked with multiple real estate businesses and critical infrastructure companies to create our platform that knows what KPIs look like. It allows us to speak to clients about what a common benchmark should be and how they should measure performance.

For example, what are the formulas a business uses to measure revenue to inform a KPI? Is net revenue matching how other businesses measure revenue? You might take an element into account that another business ignores.

When a standardised approach is taken, it can also be scaled. The organisations that dominate the next decade will be those who ditch fragmented software tools and demand a unified digital infrastructure. That infrastructure must be capable of scaling from a single development site all the way up to enterprise-level business performance.

The best use of AI will give us what we want, rather than making itself the spotlight.

This article was produced in collaboration between Fu3e and Studio B. Bisnow news staff was not involved in the production of this content.

Studio B is Bisnow’s in-house content and design studio. To learn more about how Studio B can help your team, reach out to studio@bisnow.com.