There is a new king in town, and he goes by the name of Enterprise Service Management (ESM).
I’ve grown up with the old king – IT Service Management, who gave me so much inspiration, advice, best practice and experience. Every time I thought I was in sync with the old king, he re-invented himself with new concepts, principles and practices – Version 2, 3 and 4. Good for me as consultant - new stuff to present to clients 😊.
And for the clients, the wisdom of the old king gave value such as higher customer satisfaction, more efficient processes and clear roles. But also grey hair for example, the CIO wondering why it takes such a long time to ‘implement’ standard processes in the organisation…
3 characteristics of the new era with ESM as king
1. The Scope – the land to conquer
Opposite IT Service Management, the scope of ESM is bigger than one single supporting function. It’s cross-functional by nature and encompasses the following value streams: Idea to Result, Source to Pay, Hire to Retire, Create to Terminate (Contract) and Order to Cash (and more). This is the broadened scope the new king proclaims, and along with that I see some quite big changes in the mindset:
2. The Value – The promise to the people
Enterprise Service Management is about the ability to deliver on the business imperative of excellent business experience to service consumers (be they employees, customers a/o suppliers) from multiple internal service domains in a seamless manner, as opposed to the old ITSM king, who had a limited scope of co-creation of value through delivery of IT-services to the business.
ESM delivers on its promise by three distinctive, yet inseparable components:
3. The Transformation – Business adoption not system customisation
More and more organisations acknowledge that their basic processes and value streams are not that unique to their individual organisation, what is unique are other parts of the operating model – The People, The Service delivery model, Governance and business drivers. For any transformation the ABC (Attitude, Behavior and Culture) of people is still number one to address and deliver on.
We see a clear drive towards moving away from customised solutions to Out of the Box with best practice built in solutions that already exist in e.g. ServiceNow. The configuration of the tool is no longer the biggest part of a project, it is improving and transforming the supporting functions to the new operating model that supports the business strategy!
The past is out – Now is the future!
Many ways of the old king will still make sense and be of value to the IT-function and the business it serves, but Enterprise Service Management is the game changer we have been looking for – finally we are breaking down the silos while focusing on risk and compliance (also from an ESG perspective) and delivering an excellent service experience – the future is Now and it is all enabled in (Service)Now! – Long live Enterprise Service Management!
