If you own or manage property, start looking for a data tracking and performance measurement partner the second you finish reading this. It is the most important thing you will do for your business this year. Your property likely lacks a Building Management System entirely, and if you have one, it probably isn't very good. Not utilizing proper measurements and controls for your infrastructure assets practically guarantees poor performance—wasting energy and flushing money down the drain. This applies to all structures, from sophisticated data centers to multi-family buildings. The building automation systems market will grow to $43 billion by 2018, supported by technologies that allow you to track building performance and compare it to external information like weather data and energy prices—all on a convenient, reactive, customizable dashboard. Energy Metrics (provider that feeds data to our energy savings hub, www.GridMarket.com,) provides a platform to crunch thousands of real-time data points on the cloud, tracking and optimizing building performance. EM installs a small and affordable device that taps into your building, allowing you to measure how your boiler reacts to ambient temperatures, whether your chiller is operating as efficiently as possible, how real-time user occupancy impacts your building's performance, how much carbon your building emits, which assets should be replaced and when, if energy arbitrage can save you a fortune, how CHP or energy storage could mitigate steep demand charges, and how to optimize your building's bottom line by comparing internal performance to external factors. And they do it for cheap. Others, like NYC based Utilisave, offer complimentary dashboards and data analytics to analyze your energy and water bills, ensuring you pay the right rates. They save clients big dollars in utility rate corrections and have secured millions in reimbursements. Effective data analytics help you measure building performance, identify great opportunities, and track your results. You will never find a quicker ROI than an effective data platform. Good owners and operators keep building assets running smoothly. They keep budgets tight and costs contained, minimizing unwelcome surprises. But the landscape has become more competitive, and owners and operators are discovering that "good" simply isn't enough. Tracking performance makes new projects easy to justify, and the "good" managers are getting left in the dust by "great" managers who take advantage of aggressive incentives and leverage tracking tools to measure, plan, and implement successful initiatives. Nicholas Davis is the managing director for AGRION Americas, New York, N.Y.