Taking the leap from IT Service Management (ITSM) to Enterprise Service Management (ESM) and the importance of OCM

[Dan Spada]

What is ITSM

ITSM is a concept that enables an organisation to maximise business value from the use of information technology. ITSM encompasses the process, activities, products and procedures required to design, implement and support IT services within a business. This is typically underpinned by a framework such as ITIL.

When implemented well, ITSM provides a consistent method for the delivery of IT services. Often this takes the form of processes such as incident management and request fulfilment which are built into products like ServiceNow.

ITSM products provide an easy way for end-users to engage and request services. For example, an IT service catalogue presented through a Service Portal provides a way for employees to easily request services from IT without needing to rely on email or phone.

What is ESM

Forrester defines ESM as “extending IT service management capabilities beyond technology services to address business-centric use cases; managing service demand and supply through a common platform, portal, and service catalog; and speeding up innovation and workflow automation through PaaS/low-code development tooling.”

With the above in mind, when a catalogue is deployed for IT, other areas of the business quickly notice. These areas can see the simplified engagement mechanism for end-users, the increase in operator efficiency and the timeliness that these requests can be fulfilled in and have a desire to apply these to their respective business areas.

Allowing users to request new computers, phones or software is not significantly different from some common business requests, such as users requesting building access, logo creation, or the creation of a new cost code.

Taking the leap

Many businesses take the successes in IT and apply these in other areas of the business such as finance, marketing, payroll, and health & safety to transform their ways of working. In many cases, work was previously managed through unstructured mechanisms - shared mailboxes or Excel spreadsheets, and This approach to managing work limits the way that end-users engage, and the way that agents can action work.

ESM is seen as a game-changer and helps ensure there is consistent quality applied to the delivery of all business services. By taking the leap to using a digital ESM platform, there is much greater opportunity to leverage data to assist the decision-making process. Businesses demand the insight to help them run and improve their businesses which can only be realised through a dedicated work management platform. ESM platforms such as ServiceNow also assist with the reduction of repetitive effort, allowing approvals to be automated and certain action items automatically fulfilled, without human involvement.

The Change

The move towards ESM requires change for both end-users and teams that manage and fulfil requests. ESM products have automatic categorisation and automatic routing – negating the need for fulfilment staff to perform these activities. Managing this change requires a focus on an effective organisational change management stream to ensure successful adoption.

The change can be very valuable for the business, as some service catalogue items may be 100% automated. For example, changes to building access may be automatically applied to a user’s access card once approval has been digitally received requiring no backend involvement.

As an organisation embarks upon an ESM program, appropriate Organisational Change Management (OCM) needs to be put in place to ensure successful adoption. The change in the ways of working for these teams may be great, and it requires dedicated focus to ensure the change is well communicated, and stakeholders needs and desires are represented through the program.

ServiceNow’s Customer Success Centre has published some very useful documentation on OCM (https://www.servicenow.com/success/playbook/change-management-plan-guide.html) and has also incorporated many OCM elements into the NowCreate methodology.

Closing

Unfortunately, there is no one size fits all approach to ESM or OCM. Organisations of different sizes, composition, demographics and industries present unique challenges that must be overcome as part of the ESM implementation journey. There is no doubt that every organisation can develop significant improvements in their operations by implementing an ESM strategy, however, the execution requires a focused OCM stream to ensure successful adoption and realisation of ESM value.