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ITSM & ESM · Article · 8 min read

Enterprise Service Management (ESM): The New ITSM?

Why is Enterprise Service Management (ESM) such an important concept, why does it have staying power, and why are people calling it “the new ITSM”? To answer that, it is worth looking at how ESM — just like ITSM — can make your operations more efficient and your employees more productive. In recent years, especially with the rise of cloud services, IT has lost some of its control over technology decisions.

Instead of turning to IT for a solution, lines of business are becoming more comfortable choosing business solutions that are offered as a service or hosted elsewhere.

This creates a fragmented solution landscape. It can undermine IT’s ability to support what individual departments consider business-critical applications, lead to frustration among internal users and, ultimately, reduce productivity and increase operating costs.

Above all, it shifts control away from IT, risking a reduction in the IT team’s scope of responsibility and relevance. If IT is to remain relevant and keep adding value, it must lead the organization with new ideas. Enterprise service management is rapidly emerging as exactly that — and it can pave IT’s way to the solution.

What Is Enterprise Service Management?

First of all, what is enterprise service management (ESM)? ESM is the ability to manage processes across many lines of business from a single application flexible enough to handle them all. This can include IT, Human Resources, Facilities, Fleet, Case Management, Project Management and even some aspects of Accounting — really, any department that delivers some kind of service. ESM is usually delivered through an enterprise service management software platform that enables these departments to deliver their services to their users in a streamlined, cost-effective way.

IT professionals will recognize ESM essentially as an extension of the already well-understood concept of IT service management (ITSM) to the wider business. ITSM has allowed organizations — and IT teams in particular — to understand how to automate and streamline many critical service functions. The same principle is now being applied to the services and solutions provided by other departments within an organization. While standalone service management solutions outside IT exist today, they only become ESM when these separate solutions are brought together in a single portal or service suite designed for easy management of the entire organization.

IT teams with prior knowledge and experience in implementing and managing robust ITSM solutions are ideally positioned to help organizations adopt an enterprise service model and implement ESM software. Moving to enterprise service management is the fastest way for IT teams to make a valuable contribution to the business — especially one with rapidly changing requirements — instead of sliding into a mere existence as administrators of outsourced solutions.

Some examples of enterprise service management that mirror expectations from our personal lives (and often mimic ITSM features) include:

Other existing service management solutions outside IT are also separate elements of a complete ESM model, for example:

While all of these solutions deliver undeniable value to an organization, on their own they are incomplete fixes for a bigger (and growing) challenge. With ESM, these individual approaches are centralized into a single solution that is easy to manage and use, with far broader impact.

ESM vs. ITSM

Although enterprise service management and IT service management are similar, there are key details that set the two apart. One of the main differences lies in the core meaning of ESM and ITSM.

ITSM specifically aims to improve the way organizations approach, deliver and manage IT services. ESM applies similar service management practices and goals not just to IT, but to virtually every part of the business that provides a service. When fully implemented, ITSM is one part of the larger ESM solution (albeit a very large, fundamental part).

Adopting a broader enterprise service management strategy (beyond ITSM alone) has many benefits: simplifying and reducing processes, lowering costs, and bringing different departments and teams together through a single portal. It also helps clarify end goals and organizational needs when evaluating the approach to individual services (such as project management or HR), enabling smarter decisions about future growth.

How the two are implemented is another distinguishing factor. ITSM is usually implemented using a defined framework and processes — most commonly ITIL, though there are others. While ESM is growing in popularity, there is currently no widely accepted, clearly defined framework for its implementation and management. There are, however, ESM tools to help. At the tool level, ESM software is similar to ITSM solutions, but enterprise service management tools also include functionality and services for HR, facilities, security, project management and other enterprise-level needs.

It is important to remember that ESM versus ITSM is not a simple either/or decision. ITSM is a key component of overall enterprise service management, and often the foundation on which more robust ESM approaches are built.

The Relationship Between ITSM and Enterprise Service Management

While ESM covers more than IT service management, the two have a particularly close relationship. Both are built on the concept that users can make requests that are tracked, prioritized, routed and fulfilled. IT sits at the center of this process and is almost always the one implementing the broader ESM — which means ITSM is usually the starting point for a larger enterprise service model. This plays out in two notable ways.

First, the vast majority of companies are moving toward ESM using an ITSM solution they have already implemented as the foundation. Most ITSM tools already offer catalog or portal functionality, very robust process flows that can be adapted, and strong integration capabilities. These features are equally valuable within ESM and should be the key capabilities organizations look for when evaluating ESM tools. In addition, ITSM solutions designed as a platform are well positioned for expansion into broader enterprise service management. This matters because many organizations already have successful, robust ITSM solutions in place. If that is the case for your organization, adopting ESM may be simpler than you first think.

Second, because ITSM and ITIL are so well defined and there is not yet a unifying framework for ESM, many organizations are extending ITIL’s general processes toward ESM. This approach provides guidance on what should be included in an ESM solution and how best to achieve the desired efficiencies. Among many other factors, this makes it natural for IT teams to increase their organizational relevance by moving beyond ITSM (without abandoning it!) and by championing, implementing and managing enterprise service management solutions.

Who Can Benefit from ESM?

Almost everyone is used to finding and adopting technology solutions that fit their needs in their personal lives. Lines of business have become more comfortable choosing business solutions that are offered as a service or hosted elsewhere, and many departments now select these solutions without involving IT in the decision. Over time, this can lead to weaknesses in application support, frustration and other unwanted consequences that affect the entire organization. Yet however hard IT or organizational leadership tries to correct this self-service mindset, the tide is unlikely to turn. This is where ESM comes in: an enterprise-wide solution that unites the organization and delivers value to everyone in it.

The Benefits of ESM

ESM has a particularly positive impact on IT overhead and, as a result, on the profitability of the business. Consolidating the fulfillment, catalog and automation of processes across business units keeps IT relevant across the entire business while eliminating redundant solutions, maintenance, vendors and, ultimately, costs. It is important for IT organizations to support employees by delivering services in the way that suits them best and by encouraging productivity. The best way to do that is to take steps toward an enterprise service management strategy.

With ESM, organizations gain operational visibility, making the value each unit brings to the business visible. In essence, ESM shows you where value is created in your organization and gives you a map of the processes that support it, so you can find and eliminate bottlenecks and inefficiencies.

ESM also drives value transformation. By streamlining the delivery of internal business services, business units can reduce their day-to-day operational overhead and devote more time and resources to change and improvement projects that increase value creation — and they come to recognize the need to be more proactive and agile. ESM is also a key factor in interaction management: by turning interactions between business units into records, those interactions can be measured, managed and optimized. Introducing a digital interface reduces incoming phone calls and emails, lowering operational overhead, while requests are automatically routed to the right teams. ESM is a good strategy for reducing “inbox overload” and moving staff away from using their email as a work queue.

By its very nature, ESM can be an antidote to the siloed structure of many large organizations. It enables a shift toward a more transparent, integrated and collaborative mindset. By turning barriers into interfaces, the walls between business functions become windows, and departments become more aligned with the wider business ecosystem. Higher end-user satisfaction and productivity follow naturally: a single point of access to all available services and knowledge resources means employees get faster access to the tools they need to be at their most productive.

Delivering successful enterprise service management can position IT as the hero that helps the business and individual departments solve problems, resolve frustrations and streamline productivity. An enterprise service management solution that offers a single portal for all the services an organization provides is no longer hard to achieve. All it takes is IT’s vision and willingness to launch a broader service management initiative.