You should own your property data. Do you?

When property owners evaluate facility management platforms, they tend to focus on features, price and user experience. Data ownership is rarely on the checklist. It should be the first thing on it.

What building data actually represents

The data in a facility management platform is the accumulated knowledge of your organisation — every asset mapped, every work order completed, every fire safety round carried out, every work request resolved. For a property portfolio maintained in a digital platform for five years, that data represents thousands of hours of work by property technicians, property managers and administrators. In Vyer, that knowledge is stored in a structured, location-based format, which means it is not just yours, it is usable.

What happens when you change platforms

If you decide to move to a different platform, what happens to the data you have built? In the best case, you export everything in a standard format and continue without losing years of history. In the worst case, the data is locked into a proprietary format and you effectively start from scratch. The difference is determined by decisions made when the original platform was chosen. Vyer's position is clear: your data is yours, full export is available at any time, in open formats, without negotiation.

What to ask before you sign

Can I export all my data at any time, without contacting support? Who owns the data I create in the platform? What happens to my data if the supplier is acquired or goes out of business? A platform that cannot answer all three directly is not a platform you should trust with ten years of building knowledge.

Why this matters more now

Two developments have made data ownership significantly more important. First, AI: the value of AI in property management is directly proportional to the quality and completeness of the data it can access. If your building data is locked into a platform you cannot leave without losing it, your AI strategy is constrained before it starts. Second, market consolidation: the property technology market is consolidating. Organisations that chose platforms with strong data portability provisions have been able to migrate with their data intact. Those that did not have had to start over.

The practical principle

Choose platforms that treat your data as yours. Open export formats, documented APIs and clear contractual language about data ownership are not premium features. They are baseline requirements for any platform you intend to rely on for more than two years.