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How to run successful Enterprise Service Management projects

Companies are beginning to understand the benefits of digital enterprise service management (ESM) tools but struggling with implementation. Based on our experience in implementing hundreds of IT service management projects and dozens of ESM projects, here are some of our key learnings and essential tips on how to run successful ESM projects.

Enterprise service management means applying the principles of IT service management to other areas of an organisation such as HR, finance, facility management and procurement. The goal is to improve performance, efficiency and service delivery.

IT service management (ITSM), first saw light in the late 1980s when the first version of IT infrastructure library (ITIL) best practices was released. In the last 5–10 years, ITSM has expanded to more generic service management, covering other internal enterprise functions that serve the business. While implementing processes and tools for the new service areas we can apply the experience gained from four decades of ITSM.

ESM and ITSM projects are different – learn each other’s languages and prepare for a slower pace

Typically, ESM projects are run by IT people who have earlier been involved in building ITSM practices. However, there are some aspects that are specific to ESM projects. Here are a few things to which project managers, developers and tool owners should pay attention:

The seven steps of ESM project implementation

Based on our experience in implementing hundreds of ITSM projects and dozens of ESM projects, we recommend the following steps for any ESM project, in this order:

  1. Start from service portfolio definition. What services are the enterprise functions offering to employees? What kind of requests can employees make? An analysis of existing resource mailboxes can be a good source of information for your list of the most popular requests and questions.
  2. Decide on prioritization. Which requests should be implemented first? Define their fulfilment processes.
  3. After finding the most popular questions, analyse and clean up your existing information sources and start turning it into knowledge articles that give the company’s personnel answers to frequently asked questions. Agree on how knowledge management should be handled in the future – who will be responsible for updating information about different topics?
  4. Start tool implementation. We highly recommend applying service design principles at least for the portal but optimally for the whole service, which includes the portal visible to users, and backend, where support functions fulfil requests and maintain knowledge articles.
  5. Pay attention to change management. The result of your project can be a big change in the daily life of many people. Communication, user trainings and support clinics should be planned well in advance.
  6. Don’t stop activities after the first tool deployment – move it to continuous improvement Agree on a process for keeping the service request catalogue and knowledge articles up to date and always identify new requests or missing information.
  7. After manual requests implementation, analyse what can be automated. Automate where possible.

Follow an iterative approach

When it comes to the implementation, we strongly recommend following an iterative approach. Don’t try to move all functions to a new world in one go as it will be extremely complex technically. Moreover, it will be difficult to manage communication to all impacted people and ensure a successful change.

Here is one example of how to approach service catalogue implementation using iterations:

Step 1: Ensure basic capability is in place. Start implementation with a couple of processes. Define forms, architecture and communication flow with end users and other stakeholder groups. In the ESM world, there might be many more stakeholder groups involved than you’d expect. Collect feedback from both end users and fulfillers, improve architecture and communication flow.

Steps 2 and 3: Enhance and automate processes. Start mass definition of requests but do it in batches. Select a few processes in each batch, define input forms to get structured input, release requests for manual fulfilment. Analyse what can be automated from the current batch, then automate it. Meanwhile, start the second batch of the requests. Repeat.

Offer training, define owners, avoid exceptions, expect delays

Finally, here are some additional tips that may help to run your ESM projects successfully:

If you’re still not sure how to proceed, fear not. Sofigate process experts and project managers will recommend the best model for your project and help you carry it out.

Our experts can help in ESM projects with all the steps: project approach and scope planning, process definition, tool implementation, service design and organisation change management. Whether you are considering starting an ESM project or want to spar around this topic, don’t hesitate to drop us a line. We’re here to help!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Olga Antonova is a Delivery Manager at Sofigate. Olga and her team specialize in helping IT and telecom service providers. Olga has been working with processes and service management tools for the last 15 years.

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