Multi-million pound planning decisions are left unvalidated
We would never ship a website without analytics. For years, digital teams have relied on heatmaps, funnels and A/B tests to understand how people move through pages and where they get stuck. That discipline has unlocked huge value online. Yet in commercial real estate, seven figure design and leasing decisions are still too often made on feel. It is expensive, it is unnecessary, and it is holding portfolios back. Fyma brings Hotjar style insight to the built world so you can validate CapEx, optimise OpEx and increase NOI.
The spend is huge. The scrutiny is not.
The numbers tell a simple story. Web development was worth 70.6 billion dollars in 2024 and is forecast to reach 141.49 billion dollars by 2033. At the same time, heatmapping and behaviour analytics tools have become close to universal for serious marketing and eCommerce teams. Globally, companies spend hundreds of millions of dollars each year on these tools because small improvements in journeys drive measurable revenue.
Commercial real estate is far larger by comparison. It is a multi trillion dollar sector worldwide. In the United Kingdom, CRE investment reached £53 billion in 2025 and the sector contributes an estimated £74 billion of direct gross value to the economy each year. Despite that scale, CRE decisions rarely benefit from the same level of behavioural analytics that the web takes for granted. Lower cost web pages are scrutinised line by line. Higher cost spaces are often not measured at all. That disconnect is a missed opportunity for owners, operators and tenants.
Why CRE still flies blind
There are real barriers. Surveys indicate that only 54 percent of CRE leaders use consumer behaviour data and 58 percent say they have missed business opportunities due to insufficient data. Many teams struggle to find quality data, to make sense of technical complexity or to assemble the right in house expertise. A majority lack the technology required for workplace analytics and many maintain multiple disconnected systems. The result is a patchwork of sporadic manual counts, anecdotal feedback and imprecise Wi Fi signals. Good intentions meet weak instrumentation.
When data is patchy, bad habits form. Amenities are over sized because the baseline is unclear. Quiet corners stay unproductive because desire lines are invisible. Queues grow because nobody is measuring dwell and flow in a consistent way. Decisions still get made, but outcomes are rarely validated and almost never benchmarked across a portfolio.
Cameras, reimagined as privacy first sensors
Every building has cameras. Fyma activates them in a privacy first way and turns them into decision grade analytics. There is no new hardware to buy. Deployment happens quickly, using the infrastructure you already have. Our computer vision measures footfall, dwell time, paths, queue durations, utilisation and anomalies with higher accuracy than traditional sensors or Wi Fi triangulation. Faces are not identified, and outputs are presented as aggregated metrics, heatmaps and path trails that are intuitive and board ready.
Think of Fyma as the real estate equivalent of the web analytics stack. It shows where people go, how long they stay, where congestion forms, and how patterns change after an intervention. It gives property and asset teams the same visibility that product managers expect online.
What to measure first
Start with the fundamentals. They answer the questions that matter to operations, leasing and design.
Footfall and dwell. Prove which entrances, corridors and amenities attract people and how long they stay.
Paths. See desire lines and circulation routes so you can place signage, services and retail where they help rather than hinder.
Queue time. Identify bottlenecks at lifts, turnstiles, coffee bars and reception before they damage satisfaction scores.
Utilisation. Right size amenities, cleaning schedules and staffing levels through real utilisation rather than assumptions.
Anomalies. Detect unusual patterns that hint at safety issues, unexpected behaviours or operational risks.
These metrics do not exist in isolation. They combine to tell a coherent story about experience and efficiency. They also translate cleanly into financial outcomes.
The cost of guessing
Consider a few everyday decisions. A single revolving door can cost around £200,000. Its position and configuration affect throughput and queuing. A retail unit lease can cost £100,000 per year. A tenant wants evidence of footfall and journey quality, not a promise. A mixed use site can see five million visitors each year. Without analytics, the true flow of people across entrances, lifts, atria, corridors and amenities remains largely unknown. These examples show why measurement matters. The price tags are large, and the effects are portfolio wide.
From pilot to portfolio in weeks
You do not need to instrument an entire estate to see value. A focused pilot creates momentum and proves the case with numbers.
Baseline the present. Select one asset and three representative zones such as a lobby, an amenity and a key circulation corridor. Establish initial levels of footfall, dwell, queue time and paths.
Introduce one change. Move a sign, adjust a furniture layout or modify a queue design. Keep the change simple and intentional.
Measure the delta. Compare before and after. Look at percentage change, time saved and the knock on effects on nearby areas.
Package the results. Build a concise, board ready report with heatmap visuals, path trails and KPI chips. Focus on what to replicate and where not to copy the pattern.
Scale the winners. Apply the proven intervention to similar spaces. Use Fyma’s benchmarking to normalise results across assets, floors and visitor profiles.
Because Fyma runs on existing cameras, the time to first insight is short. Teams move from anecdotes to evidence in days rather than quarters.
What better data unlocks
Better instrumentation changes how teams work. Design becomes iterative rather than opinion led. Operations adjust to measured peaks rather than assumed peaks. Leasing can evidence claims about exposure and flow with credible behavioural data. Executives get a consistent view of performance across the portfolio. Finance gains confidence that CapEx allocations are validated and that OpEx plans are grounded in real utilisation.
The benefits show up in numbers and in experience. Congestion drops, wayfinding improves and tenant satisfaction rises. Retail and amenity partners see clearer conversion patterns and can plan offers accordingly. Cleaning and security schedules align to actual use. In many settings, improved flow and better amenity placement unlock dynamic pricing opportunities for parking, events or flexible workspaces.
Put simply, poor insight equals lost profits. With Fyma, pixels of video become profits on the P&L. Accuracy matters because it removes the doubt that stops teams from scaling bold ideas.
Privacy first by design
Privacy is non negotiable. Fyma is built for compliance from the ground up. The platform avoids personal identification, processes only what is required for aggregate analytics, and presents outputs as anonymised visualisations and metrics. You get the clarity of computer vision without exposing individuals. That balance is essential for adoption by stakeholders, partners and tenants.
A simple start that signals a new standard
Heatmaps transformed how we design websites. They made measurement normal and made testing routine. The same approach belongs in commercial real estate. The scale of investment demands it, and the technology is ready.
Pick one asset and three zones. Connect the cameras. Define the KPIs that tie to your goals. Measure, learn and iterate. Share the outcomes with your board and partners. Then replicate what works across the estate with benchmarking that keeps everyone honest.
Every building has cameras. Fyma makes them useful. When you can see how space really works, you stop guessing and start validating. That is how you reduce wasted CapEx, optimise OpEx and improve NOI. That is how you turn better journeys into better businesses.
Heatmaps do not just belong on websites. They belong in your buildings.
Book a demo and see sample dashboards today: https://fyma.ai/demo/