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ESM and the Future of ITSM Software; How to Accelerate Enterprise Service Adoption

Published Date
Author Brooke Tajer

For many years now, organizations have come to understand that IT service management (ITSM) can and should be expanded to enterprise service management (ESM). However, to do this, the software must be able to easily morph – for instance, instead of calling the request a ‘ticket’, it may become a ‘work order’ in facilities, or a ‘creative brief’ in marketing. While these may seem like nuances, the nomenclature matters. Equally, the platform must be truly an enterprise solution which means that the care and feeding cannot require IT resources. If marketing wants to create a new request type, a user in marketing should be able to create a new form, add their own fields and create a workflow – all without development resources or back-end programming knowledge. 

We decided to take a closer look at how organizations are progressing toward true enterprise service management during a recent market study conducted together with Information Week. 

ITSM Software has Evolved to Enterprise Service Management

As IT organizations plan for the future of service management, the overwhelming trend they’re preparing for is digital transformation. Approximately 51% of survey respondents report this as the most critical trend barreling for them in the next couple of years (Figure 8). This indicates that ITSM leadership will need to be cognizant of how their service platforms and workflows integrate with user technologies and, more appropriately, tie data and services together on the back end. This will be crucial in creating seamless digital experiences that drive transformation investments. 

Critical ITSM Trends

This push for end-to-end service is echoed by the next two critical trends, each named by 38% of respondents. Those are integrating ITSM and project management on a single platform and extending ITSM software to other departments through broader enterprise service management (ESM) initiatives. Like the digital transformation trend, these two trends are also driven by the more tightly coupled and complex technology platform relationships needed to build digital ecosystems that enable critical business functions. ITSM groups must ensure that disparate platforms like Salesforce and DocuSign are well integrated to provide valuable functionality across numerous groups like facilities, marketing, and human resources.  

The State of ITSM Software and Enterprise Service Management

Currently, only about three in ten organizations have a formal ESM program to leverage ITSM principles outside of IT. However, work on this front is clearly underway. Even though many of them may not have an ESM program on the books, half the organizations have extended their ITSM or ticketing platform for use in managing work in other departments. Approximately a quarter of organizations say they’ve deployed ESM in more than two departments outside of IT.

State of ESM Deployment

Integration of IT Service Management and Enterprise Service Management

In addition to expanding service management across the enterprise, organizations are looking to integrate service management with the broader tech stack in each department. According to the Information Week market study, approximately 52% of organizations handle these requests manually, another 38% have implemented automation, but only through a patchwork of scripts and APIs. Just 10% of organizations say they’re able to leverage an integration and workflow platform to handle these tasks automatically. What if you could automate basic, repetitive tasks, like the following, to reduce the drain on the IT service desk as well as key groups such as human resources: 

  • Onboarding/offboarding employees.
  • User and group management.
  • Round robin ticket assignment. 
  • Password resets. 
  • Name changes.