Enterprise Service Management is critical for success in the new way of working

It’s clear that we all need to learn to accommodate a new way of working. While the idea of hybrid workplaces and work from home aren’t new, most organisations faced a rapid transformation as plans for a gradual transition gave way to new rules and requirements created by the pandemic. While many people thought work from home was about day-to-day productivity during the pandemic-led lockdowns, things ended up becoming far more complex as the work from home model became the new normal.

Organisations rely on an array of different services and activities to keep operating. Services like HR, finance, facilities, payroll and others still had to work even though people were suddenly distributed across multiple workplaces. However, many businesses lack an Enterprise Service Management (ESM) system that supports users wherever they are. Many organisations suddenly realised that their old ways of working were no longer fit for purpose in our hybrid workplace world.

With each business function having its own portals and systems, remote teams found themselves facing a variety of different platforms and systems to carry out day to day tasks. But businesses with an enterprise service management (ESM) system were far better placed. They have a single platform that allows staff, wherever they are, to make service requests to any team in their organisation, for those requests to be correctly routed and allocated, and have full visibility of each specific request’s status.

For example, one of the most important activities in any organisation is staffonboarding. When a new person joins, they need support from HR for their induction, legal for the employment contract, IT for system accounts and new equipment, and finance and payroll to ensure they are paid correctly. That one activity requires cooperation between multiple business functions. In the past, the process inefficiencies might have been somewhat overcome by people being in the same location. The lack of an ESM platform can make access to these services hard and affect the overall productivity.

A model for effective service management across many complex processes and domains is available and accessible in many organisations. IT service desks have been using systems, under the banner of IT Service management (ITSM), to manage incoming service requests, incidents and their workflows for many years. In that time, the systems and processes they use have matured significantly and can be used as a model across almost every aspect of an enterprise. This is where ESM’s foundations were laid.

When processes are disjointed and inefficient, the risks to the business increase. Security and privacy become a concern as data may be held in multiple places, each managed with its own rules and methods. When multiple departments each have their own tools and apps to manage their tasks and processes, there are more vulnerabilities to patch, systems to maintain and the threat surface for an attacker is far broader. An integrated ESM platform can mitigate many of those risks.

Service delivery, whether it’s the approval of a travel request, changing the bank details for payroll or onboarding a new team member all rely on complex processes with different approval cycles and the need to clearly close the loop, so the customer is aware that they have received the service they requested. ESM brings a positive, collaborative approach that gets the whole organisation working to the same goals and on the same terms and metrics. It leverages ITSM practices that are proven to provide consistency and value in areas such as HR and finance.

ESM gives employees a central portal for all their requests with the ability to track the status of an issue, with a consistent experience no matter which department they are dealing with . And rather than requiring businesses to invest in completely new systems and processes, ESM leverage investments already made in IT across other teams. ESM that is built on the foundations of an ITSM software, such as ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus, can address these problems.

The right ESM tool allows you to take advantage of a single enterprise directory that is leveraged by each different department, running its own service desk instance. That means there’s a common set of data that the entire enterprise can use rather than multiple copies that need to be managed and maintained independently. A tool such as ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus delvers service automation and centralised request portal that makes it easy for employees, to log and track requests across all departments from a single portal.

Taking an enterprise-wide view of service management that leverages the lessons learned in ITSM is a game-changer for organisations. By integrating service management across departmental silos, organisations can deliver services faster, better and more cost effectively than ever before. The ESM tool can be the difference between frustrated users and customers and being recognised as a service delivery leader.