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Understaning the Do’s and Don’ts of ESM Implementation

Published Date
Author Brooke Tajer

You’ve done the research and found a flexible, easy-to-use IT Service Management (ITSM) tool for your IT department to use – but now you want to scale it to groups outside of IT. What do you do? This is a question many organizations face when trying to implement a full Enterprise Service Management (ESM) strategy across their organization. When done right, there are many benefits to ESM including accountability, visibility, clarity and the ability to clearly identify areas for improvement. But getting ESM buy-in can be tricky. To start, you should make sure that your ESM platform allows each department to ideate and create their own service solution without the need of IT support. For this, it’s recommended you use a codeless platform. Codeless platforms are more approachable for groups outside of IT that may not have the skills or abilities to code. Your marketing department should be able to add a new service catalog, or a new request type, or create new content in the knowledge base without needing to put in a ticket to IT. A good ESM platform should be easy to use, easy own and easy to operate.

Language Matters

Too often, IT teams will introduce ESM to an organization to get rid of the many point solutions being used by various departments, and to provide the userbase with a one-stop service platform. This can lead to friction as terminology used in IT doesn’t scale with use cases in other departments. For example, in IT you “Submit a Ticket” if there is an issue. However, if the same platform is being used for HR and they want to address something like renewing a security badge “Submit a Ticket” might be confusing as the call to action for employees. Instead, you’d need a button that says something like “Submit Security Badge Renewal.” To successfully implement an ESM platform throughout an organization, you need to think through use cases for each department and not assume everyone uses the same language and processes. To be successful, each group needs a purpose-built solution. Simply taking an ITSM platform and trying to duplicate it in each group will not work.

When done right, there are many benefits to ESM including accountability, visibility, clarity and the ability to clearly identify areas for improvement.

How to Get ESM Buy-In

Here are a few practical do’s and don’ts for implementing an ESM solution that is built specifically for each department or group in your organization:

  • Don’t just take an ITSM platform being used within your IT department and try to scale it across each group. It won’t work.
  • Do meet with each department or group prior to implementing an ESM solution and settle on the processes and functionalities they need.
  • Don’t assume that each department has the same language as IT for each process. Marketing might not use the terminology “submit a ticket” for example.
  • Do ask each group or department for a list of their commonly used terms and how they correspond to the actions they’ll be taking when using the ESM platform.
  • Don’t over complicated or try to over process the ESM platform.
  • Do make your ESM accessible and easy to use. For an ESM implementation to be successful, you’ll want departments and groups to be able to fully utilize the platform WITHOUT reliance on IT for support.

Want to learn more about how to analyze IT service management platforms for your business? Check out: ITSM Software – What to Look for When Shopping for a New ITSM Platform.

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