In early 2023, ManageEngine created a crowdsourced eBook called “Service management strategies for the next 3 years from 10 ITSM experts and leaders”. It recognised that organisations are likely under pressure to reduce costs, improve products and services, increase employee productivity (and in the context of new ways of working), and deliver better customer experiences through technology-enabled competitive advantage. In creating the eBook, we asked ten IT service management (ITSM) industry authorities to share their insights in response to the following question: “Which three IT strategy areas are critical to the evolution of ITSM in the next three years?”
When the responses from the ten ITSM industry authorities were analysed, there was a wide variety of recommended IT strategic focus areas. However, two strategy areas were called out more than others:
- Addressing people-related issues and needs
- Ways of working or process-related improvements.
One of the points that I discuss in the eBook is enterprise service management, which could help organisations across both of the areas mentioned above. This is “the use of IT service management (ITSM) principles and capabilities in other business areas to improve their operational performance, services, experiences, and outcomes”. This article digs deeper into where enterprise service management currently is and where it’s going over the next few years.
Enterprise service management adoption levels in 2022
In late 2022, HDI released its annual State of Service Management report. It offered North American insights into the opportunities for enterprise service management:
- “45% of respondents report that their organisations are using the principles and practices of ITSM outside of the IT department”
- “82% of respondents report that their organisations have a defined strategy or approach for using ITSM practices/capabilities outside of the IT department”
- “85% of organisations with a service management solution in place say those solutions can be used in non-IT areas of the business”.
While the North American adoption level is lower than the global view of the Axelos 2022 ITSM Benchmarking Report at 51%, with another 19% planning to do so, it still shows the growing use of service management capabilities by other business functions to realise benefits such as:
- Improved experiences
- Increased productivity in terms of operational efficiency and effectiveness
- Reduced costs
- Improved performance insights and decision-making
- Better governance and control
- Increased technology exploitation.
The key drivers for enterprise service management
Nearly a decade ago, as enterprise service management was growing in popularity, common factors – such as consumerisation, demand for service management capabilities from other corporate service providers, improved ITSM solutions, and increased ITSM tool vendor marketing of enterprise service management – were identified as the reasons for increased uptake. Then the global pandemic brought the need for increased digital enablement across organisations.
However, the Axelos Enterprise Service Management Industry Report 2021 shared the enterprise perspective of adoption with the three primary reasons for enterprise service management:
- Process standardisation and optimisation 64%
- Digital transformation enablement 52%
- Employee productivity improvement 51%.
All of these relate to improving the ways of working for employees and the two strategy areas that run through the “Service management strategies for the next 3 years from 10 ITSM experts and leaders” eBook.
Targeted strategy advice for enterprise service management
Two key strategic points are made in the eBook.
Sophie Danby:
“The interest in enterprise service management continues to grow. Still, one of the key industry learnings IT organisations should factor into their sharing of ITSM capabilities with other business functions is that their focus needs to be on improving business operations and outcomes (using select ITSM capabilities), not on the replication of ITSM across the enterprise.”
The bottom line is that enterprise service management is ultimately about better business.
Paula Määttänen:
“Expand ITSM outside of IT. It doesn’t matter that many organisations already use their ITSM tools for Human Resources (HR), Facilities, Finance, etc. – we still rarely call them enterprise service management tools. But many organisations still only use these tools for IT needs and miss out on the benefits of shared technology, processes, and workflows. For both sets of organisations, there are still benefits to be had from expanding ITSM capabilities outside of IT.”
But what does this mean for IT leaders looking to add more business value? There are some common dos and don’ts that will help:
- Don’t use the IT term “enterprise service management” with other business functions, “digital workflow enablement” will likely resonate better
- Get corporate-level, not business-function-level, funding for your enterprise service management initiative
- Don’t sell ITSM capabilities; communicate the available benefits in (line of) business terms
- Optimise IT practices before sharing them and leverage organisational change management (OCM) tools and techniques to help deliver the required people change
- Focus on quick wins to help drive enterprise service management adoption.
The continued growth in enterprise service management in 2023 and beyond
Enterprise service management is a route to “better, faster, cheaper” business operations and outcomes – improving customer satisfaction and increasing productivity while reducing costs.
The continued evolution of ITSM tools will add to this growth, where the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in the form of machine learning and natural language understanding (NLU) technologies is being used to automate routine tasks intelligently. For example, issue resolution and request fulfilment, which not only speeds up execution and reduces costs and errors, it also adds the opportunity for greater personalisation of service and support.
Traditional technology aspects will increase the business value of enterprise service management too. For example, the greater integration of ITSM tools with other enterprise systems, such as customer relationship management (CRM) and human resources (HR) systems, allows for end-to-end service delivery processes in both IT and the business functions benefitting from the digital enablement capabilities of ITSM tools. This integration also brings end-to-end insight that enables more-informed and better decision-making.
The eBook “Service management strategies for the next 3 years from 10 ITSM experts and leaders” is a compilation of strategy-driven solutions your organisation can apply to tackle digital transformation and service management challenges, delivering insights from 10 ITSM industry authorities. You can download a free copy of the eBook here. You can also follow the ManageEngine YouTube channel for video insights from the contributors, including myself here.
By Sophie Danby, ITSM.tools
