The work and effort that happens in the back-end of the Enterprise Service Management (ESM) organization is amazing to me. Each workflow has the potential for dozens of options, layers of approvals, localized anomalies, and cultural implications. And that's just workflows! You can spend weeks burning cycles on which fields should be present on a 'submit feedback' form or who needs to be notified in the chain of approvals or which items should certain users see and have access to, and so on. In the end, the work is worth it as your now cloud-based, scalable solution for ESM is in full swing and more efficient than ever.
Then Finance calls because they're interested in what you're doing and wants to get in on the fun. Facilities is next as they see there are similar processes they can utilize. Next up, Corporate Communications as they realize you have the eyeballs of the majority of the internal organization and they want to tap into that opportunity. And so it grows.
ESM is not just an IT thing. Thinking through how to effectively scale and grow your ESM organization is critical to the long-term success of the solution.
The term "plug and play" is one that people like to float around, especially in the cloud technology space. I believe what it implies in this context is that there is a level of autonomy and integration where I can move modular pieces into place for greater leverage. If I like this one bit of technology over here, let me "drop" it over there and ta-da! It works!
No, it's not magic. In fact it's far from mysterious. It's well thought out and carefully planned for. It involves thinking through a scalable framework. Successful ESM platforms have this baked in to their DNA, like ServiceNow (shameless plug!). For many, the only limitation is the understanding needed to successfully execute. For these types of organization to scale and continue to provide long-term value, the work needed on the front end is usually more than most are ready for.
If you just focus on one aspect of the user experience, for instance the home page of your portal, let's walk through a few questions that can help guide us as to the right way to set up the organization to scale and adapt in this plug and play mentality:
- What does each department "get"? For instance, is each group just a link on the main navigation or do they get their own "block" on the home page? If there is a slider, how do they get added to it? Will what they see change based on their location or role or history?
- Which leads to: how will the home page get laid out? Do you need to lean more towards a "marketing" way of traditional layouts for home pages or is there something that is more utilitarian for the internal audience that can get them to their desired content quicker?
- Which can then lead to: how will they be accessing this page? Will it be on their mobile device as a result of an email they received and clicked on? Or will they be only reaching the page through their desktop?
- Which begs the question: what are the main actions people are going to try and do? Does it depend on which department/country/role they are in or which use case they are trying to accomplish?
As you can see, it can go on and on. But the primary point to take away is that for the successful ESM organization in today's work place, you have to be ready to scale. You can call it plug and play or whatever you like, but the reality is to think through how you are going to ramp up as the width of your site grows, as adoption becomes greater, and as the demand increases.
Many achieve this today by thinking through it in phases. You've heard the adage, "don't try to boil the ocean". Start with one group, but bear in mind that you will be adding more. Leave room in your thinking for how that can grow. Part of the challenge is that for many, this is unchartered territory. You can't just bring in some "web guy" to figure it out as it's going to be very specific and unique to your organization's challenges and requirements. You know your organization the best, so combine that with platform expertise from an architecture perspective and then layer on UX design specialists and you have something special brewing.
Dream with me, if you will, a scenario where you can spin up an entirely new division within your portal by simply filling out a request. The site is designed to scale in such a way that required content is provided, approvals are achieved and without any other effort (or meetings!) a whole new section of your site is built and ready to grow. The new team is then sent down a path of training and enablement and can customize their own area, but not blow up the rest of the site. Data and analytics can then drive the user down a path and make the experience more custom and specialized so they feel the value. This is plug and play. This is scalability for the enterprise.
This can happen now. This SHOULD be happening more and I for one am excited to watch as more adopt this level of planning and architecture to elevate the ESM experience.
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