Tag Archives: ESM

ESM, ITSM, Leadership

The Real Reason IT Can’t Keep Up – and What Needs to Change

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When business leaders say they need to “move faster,” they are rarely talking about speed for its own sake. They mean faster time-to-market, faster recovery from disruption, faster answers, and a greater ability to change direction without rebuilding the business around new technology. But IT can’t keep up.

AI has only made the gap more visible. As Newsweek noted in 2026, AI adoption is forcing organizations to compete for the same limited pool of budget, talent, and attention already needed to maintain existing systems. AI is not reducing pressure on IT; it is increasing demand across infrastructure, services, skills, and spending.

The problem is that this pressure is not new. In many organizations, business demand has been growing faster than IT’s ability to respond for years. IT is expected to enable innovation while still carrying the weight of reactive support, operational complexity, and “keeping the lights on” work. As that imbalance grows, speed becomes harder to deliver—even when the intent is there.

IT hasn’t been able to keep up – and if something doesn’t change, it’s only going to get worse.

Symptoms of an IT organization that isn’t keeping up

Those pressures do not show up only in missed deadlines or overloaded teams. They show up in visible patterns across the organization—patterns that signal IT is struggling to keep pace with what the business now requires.

Personal technology outpaces corporate technology – Employees often have access to faster, easier, and more modern tools at home than they do at work. When workplace tools feel outdated or restrictive, people turn to “shadow IT” or “shadow AI” to get work done. While that may improve individual productivity in the short term, it undermines collaboration, consistency, and knowledge sharing across the enterprise.

Policies constrain instead of enable – Good policies explain why the policy exists and provide useful guidance that helps the organization achieve intended outcomes while minimizing unintended consequences. But when policies are not updated to reflect current market conditions, emerging technologies, or new ways of working, they create friction. In those cases, the effort required to comply can outweigh the risk the policy was meant to manage.

IT and business strategy are disjointed – As I’ve discussed previously, many organizations still develop IT strategy separately from business strategy. The result is fragmented initiatives, poor investment decisions, underused technology, and missed opportunities to create value. Research from Grant Thornton found that while 93% of business leaders are investing more in technology, only 27% say their technology is fully aligned with business goals.

IT’s house is not in order – One of the clearest signs that IT is falling behind is the absence of foundational delivery disciplines. IT practices are not aligned to organizational goals, work is managed in isolation from the rest of the enterprise, and business governance over systems and services is weak or missing. Since IT cannot create business value on its own, these gaps make it harder for the organization to move with speed and confidence.

Together, these symptoms make it harder for the enterprise to move quickly, coordinate effectively, and respond confidently to change.

What’s holding IT back?

These symptoms do not happen by accident. They usually point to deeper structural issues in how IT is organized, governed, and connected to the business.

Lack of transparency – IT often lacks a clear, end-to-end understanding of the organization’s value streams. While IT may understand its own internal workflows for systems or application development, it often struggles to see how those systems and applications contribute to broader business value.

Processes without purpose – People in IT are often busy doing work, but the reason behind that work is unclear—or no longer valid. When processes continue without a clear connection to outcomes, they create effort without delivering meaningful value.

IT is not aligned with the enterprise – As I’ve discussed before, IT often lacks a clear understanding of how the enterprise operates and creates value. Instead, IT treats its non-IT colleagues as “customers,” which can create an unnecessary barrier between IT and the rest of the organization.

IT services are not defined – The way people, processes, and technology come together to enable business outcomes is often not clearly defined, documented, or agreed upon between IT and the rest of the organization.

Lack of governance – Business decision rights are often undefined for products and services provided by IT. As a result, ownership of those decisions is frequently ceded—consciously or unconsciously—to IT. In effect, IT ends up making, or being asked to make, business decisions it does not own.

Tool sprawl – A “technology first” approach to business problems often leads to a proliferation of tools. A 2026 report from Auvik found that SaaS sprawl continues to outpace visibility for many IT teams. Sixty percent of organizations report discovering unauthorized SaaS applications at least monthly, reinforcing how difficult it is to maintain an accurate view of what is running across the environment.

If these are some of the forces slowing IT down, the next question is what can help. This is where service management should matter—but only if it evolves beyond a narrow operational focus.

Service management can help – but not the service management found in many organizations

Many organizations have adopted the operational side of service management, but those practices alone have never been enough. The business, technology, and consumer landscape has changed. Organizations need greater velocity, customers expect better experiences, technology environments are more complex, and work happens everywhere. In that context, an operationally oriented, “inside-out” approach to service management falls short.

What organizations need now is service management that supports business outcomes, enables value co-creation, and improves measurable business impact. That means helping the organization pivot safely, respond to market change, adopt emerging technologies with discipline, and manage growing cyber and operational risk.

For IT to shift from reactive work to strategic business enablement, service management must evolve. It should strengthen governance and control, become more responsive and value-driven, and focus on how the organization uses people, processes, and technology together to deliver differentiated outcomes. Here are a few examples (referencing ITIL®[i]practices) of how service management can help.

Portfolio management – Helps the organization work on the right things. It clarifies which products and services should exist, governs them across their lifecycle, and supports decisions about what to fund, improve, or retire.

 Strategy management – Ensures the organization’s desired outcomes are clearly defined, agreed, maintained, and translated into action.

Service design – Focuses on creating modern, scalable, and resilient digital services rather than treating systems and applications as ends in themselves.

Service desk – Becomes the hub for the consumer experience, not just a function that reacts to incidents and requests.

Measurement and reporting – Shifts the conversation from IT activity to enterprise performance, using measures that reflect business results rather than technical effort alone.

Monitoring and event management – Enables earlier detection, automated response, and more predictive operations, reducing the amount of reactive work carried by IT teams.

Continual improvement – Builds the learning loops needed to keep adapting. In a fast-changing environment, improvement cannot be occasional; it must be part of how the organization works.

Start by asking better questions

If IT feels like it is constantly behind, the issue is rarely effort alone. More often, the problem is that demand has outgrown the structures, governance, and operating practices needed to respond safely and effectively. That is why simply asking IT to “move faster” will not solve the problem. Organizations need a more business-connected approach to service management—one that improves visibility, clarifies ownership, strengthens decision-making, and helps turn technology work into business outcomes.

If you want IT to help your organization move faster, start by asking a different set of questions:

  • Do you have clear service ownership?
  • Are decision rights defined?
  • Can you see how technology work connects to business value?
  • Are you reducing reactive work—or just funding more of it?

Service management should help answer those questions. If it is not, this may be the right time to rethink what service management is for and how it should support the business.

[i] ITIL is a registered trademark of the PeopleCert group.

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ESM, Leadership

Why Enterprise Service Management is the Operating Model Your Organization Needs

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New technologies promise greater speed, increased accuracy, improved productivity, and more efficiency. Many organizations invest in these new technologies to address those challenges and unlock new capabilities.

But in many cases, after significant investments in time, resources, and people, these new technologies don’t deliver those promised results. What happened?

Did internal silos and outdated processes get in the way? Are workflows clumsy, with poor handoffs between departments? Are those workflows even defined? Were the results promised by the new technology internally translated into quantifiable goals, frictionless interactions, and clear accountabilities?

While a technology first approach is often followed for solving business problems, such an approach rarely achieves the intended results. Why? Because the problem is not a technology problem. The problem is often in the organization’s operating model. What if enterprise service management (ESM) is the new operating model?

The challenges of operating models

McKinsey defines an operating model as “a strategic blueprint that defines how a company organizes its people, processes, technology, and governance to deliver value to customers and achieve long-term goals. It acts as the functional bridge, translating a high-level business model (the “what”) into daily actions (the “how”), ensuring efficiency, scalability, and alignment across the organization.”

The fact is that every organization has an operating model. Work is being done somehow, whether it is by design. And design and adoption of the operating model is the problem that ESM adoption could resolve.

But organizations resist changing, much less defining, their operating models – even though organizational leaders agree that they should. Many executives say that their operating model must be rethought, yet over 30% of those executives point at internal resistance as a barrier to redesign.

So, if defining and implementing operating models result in better ways of working within organizations, why do executives get resistance?

  • Fear of the unknown – People fear the unknown and worry about how new roles, workflows, or decision rights will affect them.
  • Internal politics – Concerns over losing control, influence, or decision right results in pushback against defining operating models.
  • Siloed operations have become deeply embedded – In the absence of an operating model, internal teams and departments have locally optimized the work that they are doing without considering the impact on the overall organization.

Introducing technology in the absence of a defined and agreed operating model only exacerbates these issues.

Why ESM is your operating model is ESM

Good ESM helps organizations understand their existing (even if undocumented) operating model. But ESM is not just ITSM extended across the organization. ESM is an organizational capability for holistically delivering business value and outcomes, based upon shared processes, appropriate technology, increased collaboration, and better communication across the organization.

To me, the purpose of an operating model and the purpose of ESM sound the same. Should ESM be your operating model? Should your operating model be ESM?

When organizations commit to defining, implementing, and following an operating model, the result is clarity regarding roles, responsibilities, and decision rights.  Functions align better with business strategy and customer outcomes.

ESM succeeds by empowering people, clarifying responsibilities, and supporting cross functional collaboration to deliver business outcomes.

When organizations commit to good ESM, the result is standardized processes and enhanced visibility regarding how value flows through the organization. This makes it easier to identify problem areas, simplify workflows, and clarify expectations and roles.

When organizations commit to defining and implementing an operating model, that operating model becomes the blueprint for service delivery. Processes facilitate the actions that bring the blueprint to life.

The introduction of new technology changes the enterprise operating model by reshaping how the whole business creates, delivers, and captures value across structure, processes, people, and governance—not just how IT runs.

Good ESM illustrates how technology enables or supports processes and people in delivering business outcomes and value.

Governance is a core enabler of good ESM, by providing the structures needed to effectively govern emergent technologies and distributed processes at an operational level.

An operating model defines how governance happens on a day-to-day basis.

5 Steps toward adopting ESM – and defining your operating model

How can business executives accomplish both defining the operating model and adopting ESM? Here are five steps to getting started:

  • Stop thinking of ESM as “ITSM everywhere”. It’s not. ESM applies service management concepts across the organization to enable a clear understanding of how work and value flows from start to finish – across departments. Many ITSM adoptions are (incorrectly) focused internally on IT.
  • Clarify the technology strategy. When business strategy and technology strategy are developed independently, the result is poor technology decisions and missed business opportunities. For success in the digital economy, the business and technology strategy must be integrated.
  • Understand the current state. Identifying and mapping the current ways that value flows through the organization not only brings transparency and clarity into how work is being done, it also identifies improvement opportunities. It will also highlight the need for operating models and ESM.
  • Think, talk, and act in terms of “PPTG”. The key to success with both ESM and operating models is thinking through PPTG – People, Process, Technology, and Governance. What skills and competencies are needed for organizational success? How should work flow across the organization? What systems and technology are needed? How will decisions be made? Thinking, talking, and acting in terms of PPTG establishes the foundation for success for operating models and ESM.
  • Start with what’s most important – Identify and begin with the critical few end-to-end processes within the organization. This will get the right parts of the organization involved. It also enables a bigger impact on the organization, validates the value of operating models and the use of ESM, builds momentum for continued improvements, and shifts the mindset of business executives from just buying-in (“nice idea”) to commitment (action).

When organizations embrace ESM as their operating model, technology starts working for them – not the other way round – unlocking clarity, alignment, and measurable value.

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AI, ESM, Leadership

From IT Support to Enterprise Nerve Center: ESM Is the CIO’s AI-Era Edge

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In this recent CIO.com article, Mike Blandina, the CIO at Snowflake, made some predictions regarding the CIO role. As one would expect, AI adoption is a significant part of Blandina’s predictions, but there are a few details within his predictions that I found interesting:

  • The need for governance frameworks – As organizations adopt AI-enabled capabilities, they must also adopt responsible AI practices. CIOs will be held accountable to implement governance frameworks that span the entire AI lifecycle, with clear ownership, regular audits, and documented risk assessments.
  • Enterprise-wide innovation – The CIO role will shift from ‘IT’ to ‘ET’ – enterprise technology The traditional IT metrics will still matter, but CIOs will increasingly focus on business outcomes. The IT function becomes less about infrastructure and more about delivering intelligence.
  • Technology must move from only support to business-critical – Blandina concludes his article by stating that “successful CIOs will be those who elevate technology from a support function to the central nervous system of the business.”

Admittedly, these are all topics that have been long discussed. What is different now?

At the risk of stating the obvious, the difference now is the business demand to adopt AI-enabled capabilities. This demand represents a significant opportunity for CIOs to transform the role and reputation of IT. Now is the time to act.

Are you ready for the new (renewed?) expectations of the CIO role? Can your IT organization elevate its thinking from just developing and implementing technology solutions to delivering business outcomes?

If not, enterprise service management (ESM) may be the solution.

Why ESM is the solution

ESM is a way to meet the new expectations that organizations will have of CIOs. While ESM leverages the principles of IT Service Management (ITSM), true ESM is not just extending IT workflows into other departments within an organization. ESM is an organizational capability for holistically delivering business value and outcomes, based upon shared processes, appropriate technology, increased organizational collaboration, and better communication across the organization.

As I’ve said before, when done well, ESM drives greater operational efficiency, fosters cross-department collaboration, reduces costs, enhances customer satisfaction, and increases an organization’s ability to adapt quickly to changing business needs. It also strengthens governance and compliance, while the improved service delivery resulting from effective ESM enables a truly differentiated customer experience.

Don’t fall for “imposter ESM”

Unfortunately, many organizations have adopted what I would call “imposter ESM”. For example, many organizations have fallen into the trap of trying to extend IT-oriented workflows into other parts of the organization. Other organizations have used the guise of an ESM initiative to spread the costs of an expensive ITSM tool across the organization. Still others take a technology-first approach and install department-specific modules intended to manage workflows within those departments.

None of these approaches deliver the benefits of real ESM adoption. The CIO can avoid imposter ESM by following these tips:

  • ESM is best considered as a business strategy designed to deliver value and improve both the employee and customer experience across the enterprise.
  • ESM requires that organizations break down silos and focus on end-to-end value streams, which involves collaboration across departments.
  • ESM establishes the foundation for compliance to governance policies to ensure consistent and measurable business outcomes and value.

Good ESM positions organizations to take advantage of AI-enabled capabilities. But it’s more than that – good ESM positions the CIO to establish IT as a business-critical capability, driving appropriately-governed technology to deliver business outcomes.

Elevate Enterprise Value through Strategic ESM Foundations

These critical success factors for ESM also provide a great foundation for effective ESM.

  • Understanding how value is perceived within the organization – Talk to other business leaders to understand how they perceive value – and how to measure and report on that value.
  • Understanding and mapping organizational value streams – Value stream mapping provides visualization of how value flows through the organization. A value stream map also depicts where collaboration is required for the customer to realize value.
  • Understanding the journeys of customers and employees – Journey mapping provides insights into the experience of individuals as they interact with the organization. Journey mapping provides the foundation for delivering differentiated human experiences, both within and external to the organization.
  • Committing to continual improvement – Formally build continual improvement capabilities to ensure that the organization can react to changes in the business environment in a timely fashion to ensure on-going value to its stakeholders.

AI adoption can be transformational with an organization. But, as with any transformational and impactful solution, there is no “magic wand.”  Technology – like AI – only amplifies the current state of workflows and behaviors – right or wrong. Outcomes come from the interactions of people, systems, and tools – not just tools alone. Good business results come from an effective strategy for achieving objectives – not from chasing technology without clear business goals and defined success measures.

Good ESM is no different. But the benefits of good ESM are more than establishing a holistic and collaborative approach for delivering business value and results. Good ESM provides the foundation for governance, fuels innovation by understanding how work gets done, and shifts the role of IT from technology support to business enabler.

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ESM

Fear of collaboration: A silent killer of ESM initiatives

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Is your Enterprise Service Management (ESM) initiative stuck? Does it feel like no one wants to talk about, much less support, ESM?  Do you feel like you’re on an island?  If these questions resonate with you, your ESM initiative may be a victim of a fear of collaboration.

Collaboration is when two or more people work together to achieve a common goal.  Successful collaboration involves sharing responsibilities, supporting each other, and sharing risks. When people collaborate, they invest in the success of each other, and work as a team to overcome challenges to achieve shared goals.

Successful ESM requires collaboration. But to many, being asked to collaborate is intimidating.  It’s uncomfortable.  In some cases, it is counter to the culture of the organization. In other cases, it’s a threat to an individual’s sense of control, self-worth, or identity.

Collaboration can be downright scary.

Why are people afraid of collaboration?

People are often afraid of collaboration for several reasons.  These reasons range from psychological, cultural, and organizational factors – factors that create obstacles to the effective collaboration needed for successful ESM.

This article from Harvard Business Review discusses the “blind spot” many leaders have when asking their teams to collaborate.  Leaders often overlook the experience teams may have when invited to collaborate, such as when asked to divulge information, break down organizational silos, share resources, sacrifice autonomy, or even relinquish responsibilities that define them as a group.  Rather than embrace the opportunities and successes that come with effective collaboration, some teams take on a defensive posture to protect their team identity, legitimacy, and sense of control.

An ESM initiative may encounter other barriers to collaboration. Some people fear appearing incompetent or weak when admitting gaps in their knowledge, especially in high performing organizations. Others are concerned about being indebted to others or having to reciprocate in the future, which can make collaboration feel transactional rather than mutually beneficial.  In workplaces that highly value individual achievement and self-reliance, people may feel pressure to solve problems on their own. Collaboration can be seen as a weakness, discouraging people from reaching out for help or engaging.

Why good ESM is critical to success in the digital economy

Why is having and practicing good ESM so important for organizations now?

Having reliable and responsive technology solutions is critical for business success in the digital economy.  The digital economy moves at digital speeds.  Understanding the organizational value streams – how work and value flow through an organization – is foundational for reliable, repeatable, and trustworthy digital interactions.  Since technology is a critical factor in underpinning and executing organizational value streams, having a mutual understanding of  the outcomes and value the organization wants to achieve is required.  Good ESM enables and embeds that mutual understanding across the organization.

The customer experience will be significantly influenced by the interactions of customers with technologies provided by the organization.  Those interactions must be frictionless, intuitive, and responsive – and in many cases, will not involve a human from the organization.  Good ESM enables organizations to understand and continually improve how the technologies underpinning organizational value streams that face the customer.

Good ESM requires good collaboration

As I’ve stated before, ESM is not “ITSM for the rest of the organization”.  ESM is holistic, organization-wide approach focused on value delivery, collaboration, and continual improvement, rather than just technology deployment. Good ESM is a strategic initiative that requires proper planning, leadership, and a focus on real business outcomes.

The focus of ESM must be on value streams and business outcomes, not implementing tools. Good ESM is achieved by aligning workflows and processes with organizational value streams and regular engagement among colleagues from across the organization to understand priorities and pain points and identify opportunities for improvement.

Good ESM relies on shared processes, increased collaboration, and improved communication across departments. This holistic approach enables organizations to leverage the full talents and competencies of the entire workforce, leading to better outcomes.[i]

Overcoming the fear of collaboration

While there is no “instant fix”  that results in collaboration, there are some significant steps an organization can take to enable and motivate the collaboration required for ESM.

First, an ESM initiative requires executive sponsorship and a champion.  Since good ESM requires a holistic approach, executive sponsorship is critical for helping tear down organizational silos.  Equally as important is having an ESM champion.  The champion not only represents the initiative at the senior levels of the organization but must also convey the vision for ESM.  It must be emotionally compelling.  Logical arguments alone are insufficient to overcome the deep-rooted emotional responses as discussed earlier.

Leaders must talk openly about the importance of psychological safety and make it an explicit team goal.  Leaders should model  inclusive leadership by actively soliciting input, showing vulnerability, and being approachable about mistakes.  Associates have to feel safe to ask questions, experiment, and make mistakes.

The goals, expectations, and roles of the ESM initiative must be clearly communicated from the start. Leaders must define clear, mutual objectives so that everyone is working toward the same outcome.  Regularly schedule check-ins to clarify any misunderstandings and to maintain alignment as the ESM initiative evolves.

Finally, having the right person lead the ESM initiative – and having the right people engaged –  is key. Build an ESM team environment where team members feel safe to voice ideas and concerns without judgment. Encourage empathy and understanding among team members. Celebrate and reward knowledge sharing, but just as importantly, celebrate the learning that comes from failures.

Move toward a collaborative ESM initiative

Here are some suggestions for overcoming collaboration challenges and getting your ESM initiative moving in the right direction.

  • Establish the shared purpose – Why is ESM so important for the future of the organization? In his book, Start with Why, Simon Sinek wrote “people don’t buy what you do; they buy why you do it. And what you do simply proves what you believe.” [ii] Without the strong and compelling “why”, ESM efforts will not return the expected benefits.
  • Have a plan – ESM is not just extending the ITSM tool across the enterprise. ESM must be seen as a business strategy, not just a technology or IT initiative.
  • Make collaboration a personal objective – Start actively listening to others’ ideas and perspectives with empathy. This creates a foundation for trust and respect, which will open the door for more meaningful interactions and collaboration.

Effective service management is a key to success in the digital economy. But the future of service management is not within the IT department, but within the enterprise. Good ESM requires good collaboration across an organization to realize success.

[i] https://www.brighttalk.com/webcast/20429/626830

[ii] Sinek, Simon. Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action. New York: Portfolio, 2009

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Digital Transformation, ESM

Is ESM a key enabler for successful Digital Transformation?

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“Digital transformation” is a term that is often abused. Some think of digital transformation as simply moving information and data from an analog format to a digital format. Others think of digital transformation as the implementation of technologies in support of existing business models.

I think of digital transformation as the use of technologies to enable new ways of doing new business or doing existing business in dramatically new ways.

One thing that is certain –  digital transformation is key for competing in the digital economy. But it is often difficult for senior managers to commit to digital transformation efforts. First, there is the fear of the unknown. Digital transformation requires fundamental shifts in business models, culture, and processes.[i]  In other cases, it’s complacency and organizational inertia – the organization is currently successful and is reluctant to embrace the change and disruption that comes with digital transformation.[ii]

Then there are the concerns that the organization will be successful in the digital economy. According to this recent HBR.org article[iii] , many companies are falling short of achieving the expected revenue lift and cost savings goals from digital transformation efforts. Some the obstacles organizations are facing[iv] include overarching issues like organizational change management and budgetary constraints. But other challenges are more foundational. Challenges such as siloed decision-making, the inability to adapt to evolving customer needs in a timely manner, and the lack of a holistic organizational business model, are also impeding success with digital transformation.[v]

What’s in the way of digital transformation?

There are two significant obstacles to digital transformation. First, many organizations considering digital transformation are faced with having a complex technology landscape[vi]. Technology implementations have often been done in the absence of holistic business goals in mind. As result, each department within an organization has its own systems for managing its work and outcomes, leaving the organization with siloed solutions across the enterprise.

The second obstacle is the lack of a holistic strategy for competing in the digital economy[vii]. This has a cascade effect. First, it is difficult (if not impossible) to measure and optimize organizational performance. Secondly, these organizations suffer from a slower time-to-market and a reduced capability for timely responses to changing market conditions. Lastly, this results in a suboptimal customer experience.

Because of the lack of a digitally enabled business strategy and the challenges of a siloed and complex technology landscape, the customer experience is often that “the proverbial left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing”.

Digital transformation isn’t ‘technology-first’

“Technology as the solution” is a difficult cultural bias for organizations to overcome. But that is exactly what digital transformation requires.

Perhaps counterintuitively, “digital transformation” is not about taking a “ technology-first” approach to business challenges.  Digital transformation begins with the organization – what does the organization need to do to continue to innovate? Next, digital transformation is about the people – how can the organization  leverage the talents and experiences of its people to achieve this innovation.  Then, it’s about the process – how can the organization ensure that innovation and performance is measurable and enabled for continual improvement.

Once these questions are answered, then a digital transformation initiative becomes about the technology – what technologies are needed to enable the organization to best innovate, leverage the talents of its people, and enable both sustainability and growth of innovation and performance?

That’s where ESM – enterprise service management – can help.

Good ESM enables Digital Transformation

As businesses digitize and transform, an enterprise approach to managing products and services is needed. Product and services must deliver and enable an experience in addition to business outcomes and value. Organizations must remove friction from workflows and deliver an integrated approach for delivering products and services.

This is why good ESM  can be a key enabler for digital transformation. ESM is an organizational capability for holistically delivering business value and outcomes, based upon the use of shared processes, appropriate technologies, increased collaboration, and better communication across the organization. ESM, done well, enables positive customer and employee experiences, improves business agility, and enables impactful digital transformation.

But, like “digital transformation,” the term “ESM” has been mistakenly used as a catch-all term to represent extending ITSM (IT Service Management) practices across the enterprise, or to represent the purchase and implementation of department-specific “modules” within an existing ITSM tool platform.

Neither of these approaches are good ESM.

Benefits of good ESM

A critical factor for realizing true ESM is to take a value stream driven approach. Value streams identify and visualize the steps an organization takes to deliver value to a customer – and those value streams are underpinned by services delivered from across the organization. A value-stream driven approach to ESM provides numerous benefits to organizations.

  • Economies of scale – Many value streams within an organization can take advantage of solutions already in place, finding ways to lower costs.
  • Enables strategic decisioning regarding longer-term business objectives – Good ESM helps provide answers to questions like “what are our products/services?”, “who is the customer?”, and “what markets are we in/want to enter?”.
  • Opportunities for innovation – ESM can help the organization better use the unique capabilities and competences of its organization to deliver clear differentiation in the market place
  • Help organizations make good investment decisions –Through the establishment and use of an organization portfolio of products and services, the organization can make better decisions about investments. For example, an organization portfolio helps identify products and services that are no longer providing the needed value, outcomes, or experience.
  • Enhances stakeholder communications – what is being done, why it is being done, how it impacts organization revenue/value
  • Shifts service management thinking to beyond IT – Good service management helps the organization align with and meet business goals, improve visibility and communication, increase efficiency, and provide measurability of organizational performance.
  • Make better use of technology – ESM helps the organization to align first on the “why” and not the “how,” which in turn, enables the better utilization of technology.

Why good ESM can enable success with Digital Transformation

ESM done well can deliver significant benefits to organizations. But how does ESM enable success with digital transformation?

First, digital transformation impacts and affects internally facing work, not just externally facing work.  As organizations digitize and transform, they realize that workflow cuts through all parts of the organization, driving the need to become better integrated. Good ESM helps facilitate that integration.

Customer experience is perhaps the most significant driver and differentiator in the digital economy.   And that customer experience is expanding from person-to-person interactions to include person-to-technology interactions as well. Customers expect results from the organization, not friction from the dealing with the disjointed parts of the organization. Good ESM helps drive good customer experiences.

Build the foundation with ESM

Here are four suggested steps for getting started with ESM.

  • Meet with other service providers to learn how they deliver services. IT is not the only service provider within an organization. Other departments, such as HR, Finance, Facilities, and others also deliver services. Understanding how service providers deliver services helps in two ways. First, this helps identify the right opportunities for beginning ESM (ROI, benefits, problems addressed, etc.). Secondly, ESM becomes a collaborative and organizational initiative, not an IT-led project.
  • Establish communities of practice. Co-creation of value can be stimulated through communities of practice that bring together teams from across and beyond the Invite suppliers to participate in these communities, as they have subject matter expertise as well can provide an external perspective.
  • Identify and map critical enterprise value streams. Identify and visualize the cross-departmental work that is happening by focusing on customer results. Again, don’t forget about suppliers!
  • Identify opportunities to optimize and automate the workflows associated with these value streams. Automating these workflows not only will reduce any friction associated with these workflows and enhance the customer experience, it will also begin to breakdown any enterprise siloes.

True digital transformation – not just digitization – can be enabled by taking a value-stream approach to ESM. By following the suggestions above and working in an iterative way, ESM will enable success with digital transformation.

Are your digital transformation efforts struggling? Are internal workflows disjointed and ineffective? Let Tedder Consulting help! We have the expertise to both raise your service management capabilities as well as enable your organization’s digital transformation success. Contact Doug today to discuss!

[i] https://www.accenture.com/us-en/blogs/high-tech/complexity-with-tsia , Retrieved May 2024

[ii] https://hbr.org/2015/08/the-company-cultures-that-help-or-hinder-digital-transformation . Retrieved May 2024.

[iii] https://hbr.org/2023/07/the-value-of-digital-transformation  , Retrieved May 2024

[iv] https://digitalleadership.com/glossary/digital-transformation-challenges  Retrieved May 2024

[v] Ibid.

[vi] https://whatfix.com/blog/digital-transformation-challenges/ , Retrieved May 2024

[vii] Ibid.

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ESM

Three reasons why now is the right time for ESM

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Enterprise service management (ESM) is an organizational capability for holistically delivering business value and outcomes, based upon shared processes, appropriate technologies, increased collaboration, and better communication across the organization.[i]  ESM, done well, enables positive customer and employee experiences, improves business agility, and enables impactful digital transformation.

ESM is nothing new. ESM, as discussed as early as 2005, was characterized as simply extending IT service management (ITSM) practices across the organization. Since then, organizations have realized that ESM needs to be an enterprise capability and competency – not just the domain of a single department.

Effective ESM gets the entire organization on the same page. Good ESM practices reflect and support the entirety of enterprise value streams, not just the IT portions. This enables teams to have clarity around how work and value flows through the organization, and how technology underpins that workflow and enables value realization. And in the digital age, knowing how work and value flows through an enterprise provides the organization with the ability to quickly shift and react to changes in market spaces – critical for business success.

But herein lies a couple of challenges.

Many organizations are “process poor,” so there’s been little effort in defining and documenting processes, depicting how inputs are transformed into measurable outputs. Secondly, individual departments often operate in isolation or function as if they’re at least somewhat isolated from others within the organization. Organizational workflows and value streams are poorly understood, and if value streams are defined, those value stream definitions are often limited to a single department.

Three reasons why now is the right time for ESM

Why is now the right time for ESM?

  1. Digital age organizations can’t afford to have siloed departments working in isolation. Everyone within the organization must understand not only how their work contributes to success, but also the upstream and downstream impacts of their work. ESM facilitates this shared understanding of how work is done within an organization.
  2. Automation and AI adoption benefit from effective ESM. Generative AI (GenAI) could be used to generate and maintain knowledge across the organization. Capturing, generating, and maintaining knowledge is among the most tedious activities within an organization. Robotic Process Automation (RPA) and Intelligent Automation (IA) could result in improved customer experience and more resilient and efficient operations of customer-facing activities.[ii] Good ESM standardizes workflows that underpin enterprise value streams, enabling the capabilities of these and other emerging technologies.
  3. The world is mobile. Despite recent organizational return-to-work mandates, the work-from-anywhere genie is out of the bottle. And if the workforce is mobile, it only makes sense that the customers of an organization are also mobile. Both employees and customers expect a frictionless experience when interacting with systems and technologies. Again, good ESM underpins enterprise value streams and workflows that enable efficient and effective workflows and experiences for both employees and customers.

The opportunities are here – is your organization ready?

Today’s digitally driven, consumer-focused economy demands that organizations conduct business at digital speeds.  At the same time, organizations must deliver a differentiated customer experience over their competitors. And if that’s not enough, organizations must also ensure that risks have been optimized as both employees and customers interact with technology. Seems impossible, doesn’t it?

But that is what effective ESM can do for an organization. ESM, done well, results in increased operational efficiency, improved collaboration between departments, reduced costs, enhanced customer satisfaction, and the capability to adapt quickly to changing business needs. ESM helps enforce better governance and compliance. And improved service delivery resulting from good ESM enables a differentiated customer experience.

There are two critical success factors for ESM adoption.

First, implementing ESM usually involves significant changes to existing processes, roles, responsibilities, and workflows. Organizational change management becomes crucial to address resistance, communicate the benefits of ESM, and provide proper training and support to employees. Managing this organizational change effectively can pose a significant challenge. But the result will be having enabled and confident employees that are more engaged, more invested, and that have and deliver a better experience.

Effective ESM requires integrating data and systems from various departments and teams. This can be challenging due to disparate systems and legacy technologies within an organization. Ensuring smooth data and system integrations is crucial for effective ESM implementation. Taking an iterative approach provides the opportunity to “learn by doing” and realizing some quick wins, while at the same time, optimizing risk to the organization.

Get started with ESM

The sooner that organizations begin ESM adoption, the sooner the organization will realize the benefits of an integrated and responsive organization. Here are four suggestions for getting started with ESM.

  • Define your digital strategy. How will digital technologies enable the organization to achieve its mission, vision, and goals?
  • Make the business case. Document the reasons why the organization should adopt ESM. Define the specific objectives for ESM, including opportunities, benefits, financials, and risks.
  • Establish a guiding coalition. Having a group of committed people to guide, coordinate, and communicate ESM efforts is a critical early step for success.
  • Map value streams. Understanding how value moves through an organization is critical if an organization is going to elevate itself above siloed work and into true enterprise service management.

The differences between organizations that are internally siloed and those that are truly agile and integrated will only become more pronounced as technologies such as automation and AI become more mainstream in the world of digital organizations. Now is the time for ESM.

If your organization is struggling in its digital evolution, it is time to develop your digital strategy, map value streams, and adopt ESM – and we can help. Contact Tedder Consulting today to find out how.

[i] https://www.dougtedder.com/2021/02/01/esm-business-strategy

[ii] https://omdia.tech.informa.com/om019736/more-vendors-squeeze-into-the-intelligent-automation-space-as- enterprises-embrace-the-technology

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Digital Transformation

You Can’t Automate What You Don’t Understand

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The case for automating workflows is a strong one. There are plenty of reasons why organizations are looking for the right automation tools, including but not limited to:

  • Frees staff from performing tedious, high-volume, low-value tasks
  • Creates cheaper and faster process execution
  • Improves customer experience
  • Makes it easier to scale

I’m not here to argue the case of automation. When done correctly, it can achieve all those benefits above. And many organizations see success when they automate simple, one-step tasks, like password resets.

However, automation can start to feel like a catch-22, especially for those organizations who realize initial success with their simple automated tasks. That’s because they start the automation initiative by looking for the right tools. Many automation conversations in organizations are about the various tool vendors and weighing the features of each tool. And for simple automations, perhaps that’s not a bad way to make decisions.

But if you want to automate multi-step, complex workflows, the tool is the last thing you need to identify. Let’s explore how to make sure you get these multi-step automations correct.

Principles of Good Automation

1. Automation often means orchestration
The term “automation” is often used to describe things that are actually service orchestration. Automation is the act of automating a single task, like password resets. Orchestration refers to automating multi-step processes to create streamlined, end-to-end (and often inter-departmental) workflows. When determining your automation needs, be clear on whether your goal is only to automate or orchestrate.

2.Don’t automate or orchestrate “just because you can”
Every organization has plenty of workflows and tasks from which to choose to automate. But just because you can automate something doesn’t mean that you should, especially in the first stage of your automation initiatives. You want to focus your initial efforts on the tasks that:

    • Are performed on a high-frequency basis, are tedious for people to perform, but are well-defined and produce predictable results.
    • Consume a disproportionate amount of a team’s time. This may indicate that the process is not well-defined to begin with! In this case, be prepared to first invest time into process design.
    • Drive the most ROI for your business. It doesn’t make sense to spend hours and hours defining and automating a task that is only performed on an infrequent basis.

3. Everyone involved must be ready for orchestration for it to work
Creating multi-step, complex workflows almost always involve more than one team or person. You have to have everyone involved in the entire process involved and that requires a level of transparency from everyone in the organization.

Too many organizations begin automation initiatives despite having little insight into the actual steps involved in a workflow—and therein lies the problem. Those organizations are trying to automate work that they don’t understand.

Gaining Transparency is key

The solution for avoiding automation and orchestration missteps is to start by gaining transparency into the work currently being performed – before you start to automate. Here’s how:

  • Get the whole team involved. Automation and service orchestration has to be a collaborative project, or it will never work. People are often resistant to automation initiatives because they do not understand the objectives of the initiative or were not provided with an opportunity to provide feedback. To help overcome this resistance, illustrate how orchestration and automation will not only improve productivity, quality, and efficiency, but will also improve the employee experience by removing toil from daily work.
  • Identify needed business outcomes. Business outcomes are king to all else. You’re going to burn precious resources spending so much time automating tasks and orchestrating procedures that don’t result in measurable and valuable business outcomes. Before automating, first evaluate how a particular workflow achieves business outcomes
  • Understand end-to-end workflows. Does everyone on the team have a shared understanding of each step in a workflow? Is there a clear understanding of how each team contributes to that workflow? Many organizations don’t have this type of insight and it causes massive breakdowns during the execution of a process. Getting insight into the steps involved enables automation. Otherwise, attempts to automate will only result in frustration.

Once you’ve gained transparency into the current work, now you’re ready to evaluate tools. While this may require more time at the outset, doing this foundational work is key to long term success with automation.

Good automation and good service management go together

To be clear, good automation will not fix bad service management. When you try to use automation to address poor service management issues, all that happens is that you screw up faster – and automatically. And your end-users and customers immediately feel the impact of bad service management.

But when good automation is combined with good service management, watch out. Good service management helps you do more with your resources, helps you get everyone on the same page – both from the technology and the business outcomes perspectives, and helps you deliver that differentiated experience. Good service management ensures that you’re taking a holistic approach to delivering IT products and services. And when you start automation efforts by understanding how value is delivered through IT products and services – you’ll automate the things that both make sense and deliver the most value for both the organization and the user.

Tedder’s Takeaway: Why it matters

Tools alone will not make automation work. Automation is only successful when there is a shared and agreed understanding of the resulting business outcomes, combined with having transparency into how work is being done. Augmenting good service management with good automation delivers the differentiated experience for both the organization and the end-user.

Are your automation efforts stuck? Are you not realizing the benefits of service orchestration? Let Tedder Consulting help! From value stream mapping to process design and improvement, Tedder Consulting can enable automation that is both impactful and delivers a great customer experience. To learn more, schedule a free, 30-minute meeting with Tedder Consulting today!

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ITSM

Don’t Go Chasing Electrons

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One of my biggest gripes about service management is that the work of service management has become synonymous with service management tools. This has really become an Achilles heel for service management. While service management tools are useful, they typically don’t take a value and outcome-based approach to identifying and defining services.

Because of this, many IT organizations have found themselves executing superficial service mapping initiatives that hardly get the complete job done. Rather than first critically think about services in terms of the value and business objectives that must be achieved with the use of technology, they buy and implement a service management tool. Then they use the tool to chase electrons across the network, map where those electrons went and what was found, and call it done.

Here’s why chasing electrons with a service management tool to define services can be the kiss of death to any real service management success.

What Service Management Tools Actually Do

I want to be clear that I am not “anti-tool”. Good service management tools are a vital and necessary component of any successful service management initiative. But those tools only address a part of service management challenges.

In its simplest form, using a service management tool to identify services is an exercise in chasing electrons. This approach focuses on the technology and seemingly puts order to that technology… so you can keep chasing more electrons.

But it’s this use of the tools that frequently causes the biggest problems with service management within organizations. Sure, this approach will find whatever is active on the network. It will group what it finds by application or system. But it also perpetuates the perception that service management is just about the tool… and not how good service management enables and supports the outcomes and value needed by a business from its investments in and use of technology.

Network maps don’t mean much if you can’t connect them to real business outcomes. Capturing what software is found on what hardware does not articulate the business value provided by that technology. An electronic discovery will never find the people, practices, or processes involved (and absolutely critical!) in delivering services within the organization.

What you’re left with is a reinforcement of a gap between IT and the business.

The Consequences of Relying on Tools to Define Services

Here’s what happens when you implement a service management tool without doing the prerequisite work:

  • IT spends a chunk of money on an expensive tool.
  • IT spends a large amount of time and money implementing that tool.
  • Because of the investments in both time and money, IT and the business as a whole feel they need to stick with their tool, no matter if it’s actually solving their problems.
  • When the initial tool implementation is done, IT and the business think that service management work is “done” as well.

Well, it’s not “done”. In fact, it becomes an ongoing issue. And the longer businesses ignore what should be service management, what should really be defined as services, the harder it becomes to fix it. As a result, IT will keep struggling with a reputation of being technology-oriented order takers. Yes, IT does more than configuring routers, writing code, and resetting passwords…but the tools don’t demonstrate that in business terms.

At some point after implementation, IT leaders have to ask themselves, “Have the accomplishments we’ve achieved with this tool helped us improve the value proposition of technology investments for my organization?”

How IT Can Stop Chasing Electrons

Defining services in terms of value and outcomes and implementing a service management approach that is actually about the business (not the technology) isn’t an out-of-the-box solution. But if you treat it like it is, you’re going to get stuck with definitions of services that don’t reflect the business needs of the organization and a burgeoning gap between the business and IT.

  1. IT needs to define services in terms of business value and outcomes

This is a point many would prefer to ignore, but it simply can’t be ignored. You can’t shortcut your way to defining IT services – and do it the right way. Tools will come into play at a later date and they will streamline the work, but they can’t do it without the right collaboration between IT and the organization.

Doing the work to articulate how your services enable or deliver business outcomes also positions IT to evolve as the business evolves. If we’ve learned anything over the last year, it’s that the way we do business can turn on a dime and IT has to be able to adapt to the ever-changing nature of how business does business. You can get ahead of the curve by having defined services in terms of business value and outcomes, then having ongoing conversations with your business colleagues about the value and outcomes needed from investments in technology, not just the technology.

2. IT needs to define the buying criteria for tools

You have to think about the long game with IT tool investments. It’s not easy to do, but it’s what builds the solid foundation of an IT organization that contributes to the bottom line.

IT has to define its tool-buying criteria based on business needs, not what the IT industry is seemingly telling them to buy. Every business is unique and solutions aren’t one-size-fits-all. Engaging key stakeholders to understand technology needs and business goals will help create buying criteria that will shortlist the tools into those that could actually work for you.

Additionally, establishing this buying criteria can help you improve your tool implementations. Often tool vendors or consultants will want you to implement a tool following some predefined technology playbook. But in reality, the best thing for your business is likely configuring the tool differently and in a way that best fits your business.

Before investing in a service management tool, ask yourself:

  • How does this investment answer the business value question?
  • Do we understand the types of outcomes that must result from this investment?
  • Why should our business want to invest in this?
  • Are we prepared to leverage the functionality of the tool?

Don’t Short Cut It

Tools are often marketed as an easy shortcut for your service management issues. But you have to think of investments in service management tools like running a marathon. A service management tool is like having a really good pair of running shoes. It can enable you to succeed. But if you haven’t done a pre-marathon training program, having good running shoes will only get you a few miles into the race – and then you will find yourself struggling. Good shoes alone will not help you complete the marathon.

Just like in running a marathon, you have to do the necessary work ahead of time to prepare yourself to win. You have to do the work to define your services in business terms, ensure you understand and can deliver the needed business outcomes, and that the work your team is doing is aligned with the business. Then, implement your tool and it will work better in the long run!

Good service management is not just about opening a ticket. It’s not just about resolving an issue or implementing a change. It is about how people, processes, and technology work together in a repeatable, measurable, and holistic way to consistently enable business outcomes and value realization by the entire organization. If service management isn’t doing this for your organization, I can help. Contact Tedder Consulting today.

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ESM

Want ESM? Start with VSM

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Enterprise Service Management (ESM) has been gaining traction over the last few years — and for good reason.  With technology driving businesses forward these days, organizations must be able to holistically drive value to the bottom line of the business. And ESM can help them do just that.

The question is where to start with ESM? How can you implement ESM into your organization so that it actually sticks? While there are multiple approaches for implementing ESM initiatives, there’s one tool that you might already be using that can form the foundation for good ESM. 

Why Is ESM Important?

Enterprise Service Management is an organizational capability for delivering value in the form of products and services by facilitating outcomes leveraging the resources of the entire organization in a holistic manner.

It’s important to acknowledge that ESM is not just simply extending IT Service Management (ITSM)  into the enterprise. You can’t just take your ITSM tools and workflows and apply them across the organization- and expect success. Instead, ESM is about integrating everyone’s activities within the organization and managing those workflows holistically.

So why is ESM so important?  Because organizations are now digital.

Technology plays a role in all parts of every organization.  Businesses have become so reliant on technology to deliver products and services that it is impossible to separate the business process from the technology.   Therefore, it only makes sense that digital organizations adopt ESM.

Barriers to ESM

But organizations face challenges in adopting ESM.  Perhaps the most significant of these challenges are silo behavior and a lack of understanding of how work flows through the organization.

Organizations can’t afford to have siloed departments working in isolation.  Everyone within the organization has to understand not only how their work contributes to success, but also the upstream and downstream impacts of their work.  

The best way to identify and break down silos and understand how work flows through the organization is value stream mapping.  

What are Value Stream Maps?

Value stream maps represent the internal, end-to-end view of how information, products, and value flows through the organization.

A value stream is the sequence of activities required to design, produce, and deliver a good or service to a customer, and it includes the dual flows of information and material.

An organization will likely have several different value streams.  And in only very rare occasions do value streams not cross department boundaries. However, the people that work within those departments may not recognize or even be aware of that.  

A value stream map allows people to visualize the steps and corresponding data flow of how departments interact, which is what makes value stream mapping so powerful.  A well-formed value stream map identifies where there is friction or waste, such as bottlenecks, missed hand-offs, and ineffective processes, within a value stream.  A value stream map is a great tool for aligning organizations on how work gets done and where there are opportunities for improvements.  When done correctly, a value stream map is a powerful tool for breaking down and eliminating silo behavior within an organization.  

How do Value Stream Maps enable good ESM?

So how do value stream maps enable Enterprise Service Management?

Well, even without maps, value streams already exist in every organization. But they might not be well-understood or the steps involved in the value stream may not be documented. Some members of the organization may not understand their role or contribution within a value stream. 

Value stream maps illustrate how everyone contributes to a value stream, but also what activities and people depend upon those contributions for achieving their own contributions.  Miss a step, or if a step doesn’t happen as expected, and the value stream breaks down. And when a value stream breaks down, not only is the organization impacted, but the customers of the organization are impacted as well. 

This is where good ESM helps. 

Good ESM delivers the repeatable, consistent, and measurable workflows and underpinning technologies that support the work done within value streams. 

Value stream mapping also helps organizations avoid what I call “enterprise silo management”.  Enterprise silo management results when organizations take a technology-first approach to ESM.  Examples of “enterprise silo management” include approaches like providing access to the ITSM tool to colleagues outside of IT for logging and tracking tickets. Or an organization has purchased specific “modules” for its ITSM tool or provided separate instances of its ITSM for use by a non-IT department, such as HR or Facilities.  In many cases, this results in no end-to-end, cross-departmental views of the flow of information, work, and value.   In fact, these approaches only reinforce departmental boundaries and cause friction within the organization…the opposite of what effective value stream maps would illustrate. 

Start ESM with VSM

Effective ESM connects the parts of the enterprise together to create a better working environment and deliver improved results. After a year of remote work with many organizations still grappling with how to deal with hybrid work environments and higher customer expectations, businesses are feeling the pressure to find better ways of working.  Progressive organizations recognize that each part of an organization must be part of those better ways of working and contribute for organizational success. 

ESM is a holistic approach that will improve the effectiveness and efficiency of any organization. 

But to do ESM well means starting first with identifying and understanding how the work flows through the organization.  Value stream mapping illustrates how work and value flows through an organization.  With this information, CIOs can begin to build their business case for ESM and gain buy-in from other leaders. 

Starting ESM implementation with value stream mapping is a powerful start that will set your business apart today and in the future. 

 

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ESM

Read This Before Investing in an Enterprise Service Management Tool

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Are you considering Enterprise Service Management (ESM)? There has never been a better time to get started. A 2019 EMA study found that 87% of organizations surveyed already had some level of ESM underway so by implementing ESM, you’re keeping up with the competition. And you’re improving your employee and customer experiences to boot.

Before you go investing in a flashy tool, it’s important to recognize that ESM isn’t just extending ITSM into the enterprise. I believe that ESM is a business strategy that can drive your organization into the future for years. So it’s important you approach ESM implementation the right way. Rushing into it and just buying some tool on the market is a surefire way to have your ESM implementation end badly.

So before you invest in an ESM tool, there are a few things you need to address.

Prep the C-Suite

It’s possible that your C-Suite is in the mindset that a new tool will be the ultimate solution for your organization. They might be pushing you to identify and invest in a tool quickly. You will need to communicate that taking the following steps will lay the needed groundwork for the tool so that your onboarding process is quicker and you can start seeing results and revenue faster. Getting value from a tool is not instant, so whether you take the time before or after you invest in one, you’ll have to take that time. The benefit to doing the work before you invest in technology is that you will avoid investing in the wrong tool.

Confirm the rest of the organization involved and onboard
According to a McKinsey report, “70 percent of change projects fail because management is unable or unwilling to help employees embrace the change.” So it’s essential that people are involved in ESM before you invest in a tool. I want to reiterate that ESM is not about extending ITSM into the rest of the enterprise – it is about how work and value flow through an organization, and how technology supports that workflow. Therefore, other departments and teams need to understand how ESM will benefit them.

There are many benefits of ESM for other departments. ESM offers transparency to every department bringing clarity to every project and eliminating finger-pointing and cross-department blame. Just as an example, a 2018 HDI survey found that 52% of organizations who had implemented ESM saw an increase in employee satisfaction and 75% of organizations saw an increase in productivity.

You may need to identify a specific departmental initiative as an example to illustrate how ESM will work. Be willing to answer any questions that come up from these other departments. For ESM to succeed, you need them to champion it.

Audit your existing workflows.

Most organizations are too concerned with the implementation of the tool and fail to put any effort into the design of processes, measurements, and continual improvement—things that are critical for ESM success.

Your ESM tool is not going to be the magic missing piece. It’s not something you can just switch on and instantly everything will change. Tools can only automate or facilitate what is already defined and working. If you try to use a tool to improve a workflow that is already broken, then your ESM tool isn’t going to work very well.

Before you start pricing out tools, you first need to audit your existing workflows. For each workflow, you need to ensure the right people are involved, that the technology is working as it should and that there are no gaps in service delivery.

Creating value stream maps can be beneficial during these audits. Value stream maps provide a visual, holistic view of the entire workflow and how materials, information, and value flow through the organization to the end-user. It’s going to be the best way for you to understand how and where technology can improve efficiency or quality and increase value.

It’s essential you don’t skip this step because it’s only by having a full view of your workflows that you can identify the right tool that will fit those workflows. You want the tool to enable the workflow, not the other way around.

Audit your tools

You don’t need to reinvent the wheel when looking for your ESM tool — in fact, you might not need to invest in a new ESM tool at all. Many organizations have service management tools that they aren’t using to the fullest capability because they haven’t done the work regarding r people and processes.

You may find after speaking with other departments and auditing your existing workflows that you’re not using your existing tools in the most optimal ways. You may find that existing tools have more features and functions you can use to improve your workflows.

The point is that technology is third in line of importance behind people and processes. Once you have your people and processes on the same page, the technology is the easy part.

Start Small

To effectively implement ESM, you may need to start small and try applying ESM principles to one initiative with one department. This can be an easy way to give the organization a win and demonstrate what ESM looks like in practice so other department leaders and the C-Suite have a tangible example to rely on.

Identify a project from a team that is already a supporter of IT or one that has a good working relationship with your team. This is going to help ease distrust and make implementation easier. Once you have one win under your belt, you can start promoting that win within the organization and continuing to implement ESM into other projects even before spending a dime on a piece of software!

ESM Is Worth the Investment

Enterprise Service Management is a business strategy that can increase revenue, improve efficiency, cut costs and improve the experiences of both users and employees. But ESM isn’t an overnight miracle. It’s a strategy and like any strategy, it will require optimization after you implement it. The only way to optimize is to have a clear vision of where you are starting. Doing this work will make it easier to optimize and to get more from your ESM investments.

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