Home > What is ESM? Hint: It’s Not What You’ve Been Told

What is ESM? Hint: It’s Not What You’ve Been Told

October 9, 2018

IT Service Management

As organizations have gotten better at employing ITSM and ITIL concepts and processes across their multiple departments, they have sought a means of simplifying them and communicating about them with one another. The term “Enterprise Service Management” was coined as a catchall of sorts, a term that encompasses the employment of ITIL and ITSM concepts throughout organizations. But what is ESM exactly? In order to understand the enterprise service management framework, it may be helpful to think of it more as “Employee Service Management,” or an organization-wide effort to create a single platform that serves any and all employee needs. In this way, the question: “What is ESM?” can be answered simply with: “an employee-centered use of the concepts of the enterprise service management framework that is expanded across all departments within the organization.”

What Is ESM Compared to ITSM?

In the past, service management principles were primarily focused on IT processes; now, they have evolved beyond IT processes. ESM has many, if not all of the same goals as ITSM—namely, the improvement of efficiency within service design, efficiency in transition, and efficiency as it supports both overall user satisfaction and organizational needs. But ESM also goes beyond this, encompassing mandates and processes that aren’t traditionally a part of ITSM. ESM is inspired by ITIL or ITSM strategies, goals, and best practices, but it goes beyond them to bring these ITSM strategies to bear across various teams and departments outside of IT. Solutions that arise from the enterprise service management framework track various aspects of the overall organization, including assets, moving parts, resources, orders, equipment, and many others.

What Is ESM Compared to Shared Service Management

Shared service management is similar to ESM in many ways. Shared service management employs scalable solutions across departments, or traditional silos, unifying the way in which various departments support employees in their day-to-day activities and tasks. Shared service management employs tools to bring together the handling of internal and external requests, no matter the nature of the request or the department or individual who will be fulfilling said request. It shares efficiency as its primary goal with ESM, but it is more limited in its scope.

The Benefits of Employing the ESM Framework

The benefits of employing an enterprise service management framework to strategically apply ITSM strategies and ITIL concepts across an organization are vast. Organizations that employ ESM can expect to see improved and streamlined productivity as inboxes and to-do lists across the company become less cluttered. They can also expect a reduction in wasted time, coupled with enhancements in both control of issues and resources, and the visibility that such control depends upon. Through these benefits, an organization should be able to improve its competitive position, while reducing costs and improving employee morale in the process. ESM as employee service management is becoming the new standard—more than just a best practice.