ESM (Enterprise Service Management) - Architectural Best Practices?

[jamesmcwhinney]

I am about to start redeveloping our CMS-based ITSM ESS using "Service Portal" and want to take the opportunity to lay the foundation for ESM at the same time.

So far I haven't come across many articles related to ServiceNow as an ESM so far, and those that I have found seem to be quite abstract with little information on actual design or implementation best practices.

Am I right in assuming that we are still in the very early days of ServiceNow as an ESM platform?

Could anyone offer any samples or suggestions as to what a good ServiceNow-based ESM structure really looks like?

How are departmental service offerings best organized?

Within their own portals?, within different pages within a single portal? or as different categories within a central service catalog on a single portal?

Keeping everything within one portal seems like it would make for a more intuitive shopping experience, but would it still be intuitive once we start rolling out department specific SN-based custom applications?

How are departmental service request fulfillment activities best segregated?

If each department offers their own unique catalog items, what is the best way to segregate fulfiller access?

Is domain separation a good idea? Or would it be best to create custom departmental roles and ACLs against the sc_req_item and catalog task tables?

Is it worth building separate portals for the fulfillers specifically?

I would be grateful to hear others experience and insight on the topic.

Thanks in advance!

- James

[jamesmcwhinney]

...Ok I have ruled out domain separation thanks to this post:

When to use Domain Separation?

...Still looking for more information on the topic in general.