What ESM Looks Like in The Real World
Much has been written about enterprise service management – “the use of IT service management (ITSM) principles, practices, and capabilities by other business functions to improve their operations, services, experiences, and outcomes” – in the last half-decade but a key question for anyone looking to start their enterprise service management journey, or to progress it further, is “What does this actually entail for most organizations?”
When enterprise service management first came to prominence, ITIL v3 with its 26 ITSM processes was the most popular body of ITSM best practice guidance. Now there’s ITIL 4 and 34 management practices but, as you might expect based on ITIL practice/process adoption levels, it’s only a subset of ITSM or ITIL capabilities that are commonly adopted outside of IT.
To help you understand more about the current state of enterprise service management, this blog shares some insights into what enterprise service management currently looks like in the real world.
This blog by @Joe_the_IT_Guy shares some insights into what enterprise service management currently looks like in the real world. #ESM #ITSM Share on XMore organizations are using an enterprise service management approach that you might think
All of the statistics used in the blog are taken from a joint AXELOS and ITSM.tools survey and report, including that over two-thirds of organizations have already implemented enterprise service management strategies. Over half of these – 37% of organizations – are considered well advanced with their enterprise management strategy. While, on the flip side, only 11% of organizations have no plans for enterprise service management.
The level of advancement is important to understand because enterprise service management adoption can, as with ITSM and ITIL adoption, vary significantly across organizations. For example, both an organization that has only extended its ITSM capabilities to one other business function and another that has extended them to many functions can state that they’ve executed on an enterprise service management strategy.
The survey data also provided extra flavor in terms of how organizational size has so far affected enterprise service management adoption – with it initially being bought into by large organizations. For example, smaller organizations are more likely to be in the early stages of enterprise service management plus are more likely to have no plans. Whereas, the largest of organizations are the most likely to be well advanced with enterprise service management.
A survey via @ITSM_tools & @AXELOS_GBP finds that 37% of organizations are considered to be well advanced with their enterprise management strategy. Check out this & more stats in this blog. Share on XAnother interesting insight is how organizations have progressed between 2019 and 2021 – with the percentage of organizations that are well advanced with their enterprise service management strategy jumping from 7% to 37% in this time.
What organizations are using enterprise service management for
The opportunity of enterprise service management is broad and, unsurprisingly, different organizations have different business challenges or opportunities that they’re looking to address with it. The AXELOS and ITSM.tools survey found that, unlike in the early days of enterprise service management, cost reduction is not seen as a top-three driver.
Instead, enterprise service management strategies are predominantly being executed to meet the corporate needs for:
- Process standardization and optimization
- Digital transformation enablement
- Employee productivity improvement
Where organizations are using enterprise service management
Enterprise service management has traditionally been touted as a route to improve operations and outcomes in human resources (HR) and facilities teams – especially because of their ticket or case-based working practices. In 2021, however, the most common business-function uses cases for extending ITSM capabilities beyond IT are different (albeit with HR and facilities still in the mix):
- Customer service/support – 74%
- Business operations – 62%
- HR and/or learning and development – 43%
- Security – 40%
- Facilities – 31%
- Finance – 31%
Please note that the above percentages relate to the organizations that already have an enterprise service management strategy in flight.
Interestingly, when the 2021 global survey data is compared with late-2018 North American data – so while useful it’s not an “apples to apples” comparison” – the percentage growth in customer service/support use cases is roughly equivalent to the total for both HR and facilities.
The ITSM capabilities being shared with other business functions
So we know how many organizations have extended their ITSM capabilities beyond IT. We also know why. Plus, where the ITSM capabilities are being shared. This leaves one more key facet of what enterprise service management “in the wild” looks like – what’s being shared.
Returning to the fact that ITIL 4 has 34 management practices (versus ITIL v3/2011’s 26 processes), and we know that most organizations selectively choose to adopt only a subset of these for ITSM, it’s important to understand which of these practices/processes are being shared across the organization via enterprise service management strategies.
The survey found the most commonly shared ITSM practices/processes to be:
- Incident management – 78%
- Service request management – 68%
- Asset management – 66%
- Continual improvement – 66%
- Knowledge management – 66%%
- Problem management – 60%
- Change enablement – 59%
Again, please note that the above percentages relate to the organizations that already have an enterprise service management strategy in flight. It’s also important to recognize that the above list employs ITIL 4 terminology which might be alien to the 30-40% of organizations that don’t employ ITIL best practices (at least knowingly). Consequently, an organization might be sharing a certain capability, but the survey respondents answered negatively because they didn’t recognize the ITIL terminology.
Since late 2018 asset management has seen the largest jump (a close to 400% increase) in its enterprise service management adoption level (with incident management at 200%). #ITSM #ESM Share on XFinally, of this list, asset management has seen the largest jump (a close to 400% increase) in its enterprise service management adoption level, which is compared to incident management’s close to 200% increase since late-2018. This is likely more to do with the increased needs of business functions related to managing their assets than the addition of the asset management practice to ITIL 4 in early 2019. Although both reasons validate those ITSM toolsets that include asset management capabilities.
If you have any questions about how enterprise service management will help your organization’s operations and outcomes, then please let me know in the comments.
