Buying Fault Detection and Diagnostics Software in 2025? Here’s The Truth No One Is Telling You

Fault Detection & Diagnostics (FDD) software was once a nice-to-have tool for asset owners and operators. But after 20+ years of gaining maturity as a solution, it has cemented its place in the heart of FM / Maintenance technology stacks around the world.

That’s why so many facility management and maintenance professionals today search for the best FDD software, expecting a guaranteed fix to issues. However, if you’re someone who knows the importance of focusing on end outcomes, the real question shouldn’t be which FDD software is best. Instead, you should look for tools / systems purpose-built for maintenance efficiency, asset reliability, and cost savings. It’s a tough pill to swallow, but it’s nothing except the absolute truth.

Who Should Read This Guide?

This guide is especially relevant if you are:

• A Facility Manager looking to improve your team’s efficiency and ability to improve asset performance.
• An Energy or Sustainability Manager focused on optimizing energy efficiency and reducing waste.
• A Technical Services or Engineering Manager aiming to enhance predictive maintenance strategies.
• A Decision-Maker or Procurement Professional evaluating FDD software and ensuring it delivers long-term value.

What We’ll Cover in This Guide

Choosing the best FDD software in 2025 isn’t about buying a tool — it’s about selecting a solution that ensures insights lead to action. In this guide, we’ll cover:

• What most FDD software gets wrong and why traditional solutions fail to deliver results.
• FDD is a means to the end, not the end itself; from ‘System of Alerts’ to ‘System of Outcomes’.
• How the ‘autonomous maintenance’ approach ensures organizations move beyond reactive fault detection toward continuous optimization and proactive asset management​.

By the end of this guide, you’ll have a clear understanding of what to look for in your ideal maintenance software, one that doesn’t just detect faults but actually helps fix them in the most effective manner possible. Let’s get started.

Where Fault Detection & Diagnostics Software Misses the Mark

Most FDD solutions on the market aren’t built to drive action. They’re built to detect faults and provide basic diagnostics. And they do a pretty good job at that. While this may seem enough, it alone won’t solve your core operational challenges. Here’s why conventional FDD tools often fail to deliver real impact:

I. Creates More Work Than Solve The Problem

When you invest in Fault Detection & Diagnostics (FDD) software, you expect it to simplify maintenance, improve efficiency, and prevent failures. Instead, many conventional FDD solutions do the opposite — overloading teams with alerts without actually helping them resolve issues. The problem isn’t fault detection itself. It’s that most FDD software don’t follow through to resolution, at least not in the most effective and efficient way possible. The result? Engineers spend valuable time sorting through alerts, filtering out false positives, and manually prioritizing tasks. Instead of making maintenance more efficient, these FDD systems increase operational burden.

II. Traditional Tools = Static Alerts + Manual Triaging

Most FDD platforms operate on static rules and fixed thresholds, triggering alerts whenever a value exceeds a predefined limit. While this helps identify issues, it fails to differentiate between critical failures and minor deviations. As a result:

Every deviation gets flagged: whether it’s a real failure or just a one-time fluctuation.
No built-in prioritization: engineers must manually review and decide what needs urgent attention.
No automated diagnostics: teams investigate issues without accurate contextual insights.
No impact verification: after resolution, there’s no assessment or feedback loop.

III. Disconnected from the Maintenance Workflow

Beyond the alert overload, most FDD solutions fail in…you know, a more fundamental way: they don’t integrate with the actual maintenance process. Instead of driving corrective action, they leave facility teams with a dashboard full of faults and no clear next steps.

Data Graveyards, No Actionable Insights

• Conventional FDD systems generate fault reports and analytics, but without a direct link to work order systems, nothing gets acted upon in a structured way.
• Lack of accountability: without a closed-loop system, there’s no way to track whether detected faults were resolved, what the impact on the asset was, and how that feeds into dealing with similar issues in the future.
  

No Link to Work Orders = Inefficient Resolution

• If an FDD tool doesn’t integrate with CMMS, BMS, or work order systems, it creates more friction in the maintenance process.
• Engineers must manually copy alerts into maintenance systems, increasing the risk of delays, miscommunication, and missed issues.

To truly improve maintenance efficiency, your tool must go beyond fault detection. It must drive action, reduce manual effort, and ensure every fault is properly addressed. In the next section, we’ll describe what a real maintenance transformation looks like and how organizations can move beyond conventional FDD limitations.

Beyond FDD: What True Maintenance Transformation Looks Like

Even the best fault detection and diagnostics software out there doesn’t guarantee better maintenance outcomes. Detection alone doesn’t amount to efficiency, cost savings, or reliability. The real goal is to ensure faults are fixed in the most effective way possible.

So instead of just evaluating FDD software based on how well it can detect and diagnose issues, ask:

• Will this tool help automate decision-making and reduce manual workload?
• Does it integrate into my work order process, ensuring faults are acted upon? 
• Can it track not just faults, but their resolution and business impact?

Without these capabilities, an FDD system is just another alert generator, creating more noise without delivering real value. True maintenance transformation goes beyond detection and focuses on decision intelligence, turning raw fault data into prioritized actions, automated workflows, and measurable results.

Five Critical Factors to Consider Before Buying ‘FDD Software’

Not all Fault Detection & Diagnostics (FDD) solutions are built the same. Many focus on detecting faults but fail to ensure resolution, leaving teams overwhelmed with alerts and manual work. To avoid investing in a system that adds complexity instead of solving problems, consider these five key factors before making a decision.

1. Accuracy & Contextual Insights

Your FDD software should do more than flag anomalies. It should differentiate between critical failures and minor deviations to prevent alarm fatigue. A system that constantly triggers unnecessary alerts forces engineers to spend time filtering noise instead of fixing real issues.

✔ Does the system intelligently prioritize issues based on impact?
✔ Can it learn from historical and real-time data, adapting to asset behavior over time?
✔ Or does it rely on rigid, manual rule-setting that requires frequent updates?

A modern FDD solution should self-optimize, improving accuracy and reducing false positives over time.

2. Integration & Workflow Alignment

FDD tools are only valuable if they fit into existing facility management and maintenance workflows. A disconnected system that generates alerts but doesn’t integrate with CMMS, BMS, or IoT platforms becomes just another dashboard that requires manual effort to track and act upon.

✔ Can the system push fault insights directly into work order management systems?
✔ Does it automate diagnostics and work order creation, or does it just generate alerts?
✔ Can it connect with building automation systems (BAS) and IoT platforms for deeper insights?

Seamless integration closes the loop between detection and resolution, ensuring that insights lead to actionable outcomes.

3. Automation & Decision Intelligence

Traditional FDD solutions rely heavily on human intervention and expertise. Engineers must manually review alerts, determine priorities, and assign work orders. A next-generation FDD system should reduce manual workload and neutralize the skills gap through AI-driven assistance and automation.

✔ Can the system triage and prioritize faults automatically?
✔ Does it assess operational impact and recommend corrective actions?
✔ Can it assign tasks to the right teams without requiring constant human input?

FDD should not be an added burden on engineers—it should function as an intelligent assistant, enabling faster, more effective decision-making.

4. Business Impact & Scalability

Your software should drive measurable improvements in uptime, energy efficiency, cost savings, and SLA compliance. It must also be scalable across multiple sites and asset types, ensuring long-term value.

✔ Can the system analyze performance trends across different facilities and asset classes?
✔ Does it provide clear visibility into KPIs like downtime reduction and operational efficiency?
✔ Can it scale from a single building to an enterprise-wide deployment without losing effectiveness?

The best FDD solution should grow with your organization, adapting to new assets, technologies, and maintenance strategies.

5. Future-Readiness: FDD as a System of Outcomes

As organizations move toward predictive and autonomous maintenance, investing in a future-proof FDD system is critical. Many traditional tools will become obsolete as AI-driven decision intelligence takes center stage.

✔ Will this solution still be relevant in 3-5 years, or will it require frequent overhauls?
✔ Can it evolve towards predictive analytics and automated maintenance workflows?
✔ Is it designed as a foundation for AI-driven, autonomous maintenance strategies?

Instead of just fixing problems after they occur, the right FDD system should anticipate failures before they happen, ensuring long-term operational resilience.

How Xempla Integrates the FDD Component Into Its ‘System of Outcomes’ Approach

Without a structured process to convert detection into resolution, FDD becomes just another alerting system, not an effective maintenance solution. This is where Xempla takes a fundamentally different approach. Instead of functioning as a System of Alerts, Xempla acts as a System of Outcomes, ensuring that every fault detected leads to a structured, automated, and verifiable maintenance response.

✅ AI-Powered Triaging Filters Noise, Focusing on Real Issues

• Engineers no longer waste time sorting through false alarms. Xempla’s AI intelligently filters out low-priority issues and focuses attention on high-impact failures.
• Issues are automatically ranked and categorized, ensuring that urgent problems receive immediate attention while non-critical faults are handled in a structured manner.

✅ Fault Detection Is Tied Directly to Automated Work Order Creation

• No manual logging or triaging. Xempla ensures that qualified faults automatically trigger work orders within CMMS, BMS, or existing facility management workflows.
• Eliminates delays by ensuring that every fault is acted upon immediately, based on priority and operational impact.

✅ Actionable Insights Are Integrated Into the O&M Workflow

• Instead of an isolated fault detection dashboard, Xempla syncs directly with FM O&M workflows, so that engineers and technicians receive relevant, contextualized insights where they need them.
• Historical data, root cause analysis, and recommended corrective actions are seamlessly accessible within existing platforms, ensuring faster decision-making.

✅ Continuous Impact Verification for Long-Term Optimization

• Xempla goes beyond just detecting and logging faults. It tracks and improves important indicators like time to resolution and measures the effectiveness of corrective actions.
• AI-powered feedback loops continuously refine maintenance strategies, ensuring that recurring failures are addressed proactively rather than reactively.

Xempla transforms FDD from a reactive fault detection tool into a proactive maintenance solution. Instead of overwhelming teams with alerts, it ensures every issue is resolved efficiently, with minimal manual effort.

Conclusion: Choosing the Right FDD Solution for 2025 & Beyond

Traditional FDD tools, built as systems of alerts, often create more work than they eliminate. They flood teams with notifications, lack integration with maintenance workflows, and require manual triaging and decision-making. This outdated approach increases operational burden rather than reducing it.

To truly optimize maintenance efficiency and asset reliability, organizations must move beyond static fault detection and adopt a System of Outcomes — one that:

✔ Automates fault detection and seamlessly connects with work order systems
✔ Filters noise, prioritizes critical issues, and reduces manual intervention
✔ Ensures detected faults are acted upon, tracked, and continuously optimized
✔ Helps you move from reactive to predictive and autonomous maintenance operations

The future is AI-driven, outcome-focused maintenance. Investing in the right solution today will determine whether your facility operates efficiently, proactively, and cost-effectively in the years ahead.

If you’re still looking to buy FDD software, remember: the best solution isn’t just about features. It’s about rethinking conventional approaches and shifting to a smoother, smarter, and more effective maintenance process. Explore how an outcome-focused approach can transform your maintenance operations. Request a demo of Xempla today.