What exactly is Enterprise Service Management?

Enterprise Service Management describes how an established IT Service Management system can be applied to other areas of the organisation. The objectives are essentially the same: to reduce costs, increase efficiency and speed up the ordering process and the delivery of services.

The core disciplines of IT Service Management are just as relevant in Enterprise Service Management:

• Focus on the service concept
• Introduction of control mechanisms (management system)
• Standardised processes (incident and change management, etc.)
• Organisation for service delivery (service desk, support, etc.)
• Technology (workflow, automation, AI, cloud, etc.)
• Self-service (chatbot, knowledge management)
• Consideration of compliance and information security

IT service management has long been tried and tested

IT within a company is not, and has never been, an end in itself. It serves a higher purpose, namely to support business processes as effectively as possible. Based on this understanding, ‘IT’ has evolved into an IT service provider over the last few decades. The central element is ‘service’, as it forms the interface between IT and the business or the customer. Thanks to clearly defined service catalogues, the consumer – that is, the users – knows what can be requested, whilst IT knows what is expected of it and can concentrate efficiently on delivering these services.

This consistent focus on the delivery of services marked the birth of IT service management. Since then, the IT service provided has been viewed from the customer’s perspective. This takes a more holistic approach and places the customer’s requirements at the centre of all efforts. Standardised processes, automation and a complex management system are essential prerequisites for delivering, measuring and optimising services.

To overcome all these challenges, the IT world has developed very comprehensive frameworks. ITIL is one of the best-known and most widely used frameworks worldwide. This collection of best practices is constantly being refined. The current version, ITIL 4, has been available since 2019.

IT service management is a model for success that is constantly evolving. Agile and creative approaches such as DevOps and design thinking are being incorporated. This makes it a highly efficient system for delivering focused services.

Enterprise Service Management as the next evolutionary step

It therefore stands to reason that such a service management system should also be applied to other, non-IT services both within and outside a company. The concept of Enterprise Service Management was born.

After all, the challenges are the same in many areas of a company: focusing as much as possible on customers’ needs and, consequently, delivering the service they have requested. Amazon and others demonstrate how good, customer-focused service can work and, above all, lead to success. Customers may be employees within the organisation, specialist departments, senior management or users outside the organisation, depending on who the services are aimed at.

All product manufacturers in the ITSM sector have recognised this and now offer, alongside the usual ITSM modules, fully developed modules for Enterprise Service Management. After all, it simply won’t work without the right tools. A service that can be ordered, presented in an attractive way on a web interface, only works through rigorously structured, standardised and, as far as possible, automated processes.

These processes must be embedded within an equally well-structured organisation. Underpinning all of this are databases (CMDB), the connecting element between all service components. To manage this service, a management system with key performance indicators is just as essential as a rights and roles framework for the responsible personnel. Modern ITSM and ESM tools also provide support in this regard.

Here, too, nothing works without the cloud

Cloud technology is the turbocharger for all service management systems, whether IT or enterprise-wide. For this reason, it is vitally important that no ITSM, ESM or cloud strategy is developed and implemented in isolation. Only when all systems are introduced as part of a common strategy will success be achieved through end-to-end service delivery.