By analogy with ITSM (IT service management), the service approach is called Enterprise Service Management - enterprise service management. We tell what it is, how it works, and why business needs it.
What is Enterprise Service Management
Let's start with an example. The marketing department needs a targetologist. The manager writes a letter to the HR department, calls by phone or leaves a note. What happens next? Perhaps a specialist in the human resources department will quickly post a vacancy, in a couple of days will schedule several interviews, and in a week the newly-made targetologist will start work.
But it happens differently. A day passes, a second, a week, and the HR department is silent. The marketing manager has to call, write, go in and remind him of his task several times. HR specialists are busy because the logistics department is recruiting a whole staff of couriers, and it is not clear what is the priority task. Letters fly over couriers' vacancies, calls are made, appointments are made, and the hands of a targetologist do not reach.
This is a traditional scenario with the classical approach to managing the company, and not only in the human resources department. In place of HR, there could well be a logistics department, and the selection of a targetologist can be replaced by a search for a transport company for a new direction, for example, deliveries from China.
An analogy can be made with any direction, and nothing will change: priorities are blurred, timelines are stretched, results are unpredictable. And the company is not working as efficiently as it could.
But the same situation, but with a service approach to managing the company. When there is a need for a targetologist, the marketing manager sets the HR department a task in the overall system, describes the requirements for the candidate, sets priority. The HR specialist accepts the task and processes it in order of priority. Information about all actions and movements is entered into the system.
The marketing manager sees that the process is on, understands when the result will be. The HR specialist does not forget about the task and acts in accordance with the prescribed processes and priorities. As a result, the personnel department always knows what, how and when to do it, and the marketing department receives the right specialist on time. So, in a simplified version, we showed how Enterprise Service Management (ESM) works.
Enterprise Service Management - an approach to managing the activities of company departments, aimed at improving the efficiency of the business as a whole.
The term Enterprise Service Management appeared when the ideas, principles and tools of IT Service Management (ITSM) began to extend to the departments and processes of companies.
Recall that ITSM is a service approach to managing IT services in companies. Over 30 years of use, it has proven its effectiveness. The essence of the approach is focusing on the final goal that the consumer of the IT service pursues, and not on processes and technologies. At the same time, consumers are understood as customers of the company and employees of departments.
IT services, or services, help organize the work of IT according to the needs of the business. This is all that employees and the company use to solve problems: e-mail, office applications, 1C, computers and office equipment, servers and networks.
Yes, the same tools, technologies and infrastructure. But with the service approach, the IT service does not focus on installing a new server, but on ensuring that all interested employees get uninterrupted and quick access to the right systems and can solve problems without being distracted by technical problems. This is how ITSM works.
Enterprise Service Management transfers the service management approach to other parts of the company. If the HR service needs to find a targetologist, specialists see their task not as “posting a vacancy, selecting candidates, conducting interviews”, but as “providing a new employee to the marketing department”. In the same way, the functions and processes of other units are transformed.
Consider principles and tools that extend service management beyond IT
What principles and tools of ITSM are used in other divisions
Implementing ITSM in companies is usually based on ITIL best practices. They are designed and described for the IT industry, and in their pure form, they cannot be applied to other departments and processes. But a number of tools adapt to the characteristics and needs of specific companies.
Model "customer - supplier"
It employs IT services in companies that have implemented ITSM.
The IT department, as a supplier, and employees and company departments, as a customer, use IT resources. This model can be applied in other departments of the company.
In our example, with the search for a new employee, the marketing department acts as the customer of the service, and the HR service as the supplier. Or an employee who needs a 2-NDFL certificate is a customer, and the accounting department that issues it is a supplier.
Service Request and Service Desk Management
In the IT sphere, Service Desk processes requests from departments and employees for service, for example, creating a workplace, increasing system performance, installing a program, etc.
Request management ensures their high-quality and operational processing: filtering, prioritization, appointment of responsible, etc.
Using service management in other divisions, we adapt Service Desk to their needs. The essence of introducing Service Desk and query management is to create a single platform for processing internal company requests. Where they will set priorities, assign responsible, redirect calls to another department.
This approach makes the interaction between departments and employees effective: each interested participant sees at what stage the appeal is and can predict (or know for sure) the timing.
Self Service Portal
In ITSM, this tool is used so that users solve some of the IT-related tasks on their own. Professionals can use the freed up time for tasks that cannot be done without them. In practice, a self-service portal can be an information system in which there are answers to frequently asked questions and instructions for solving problems that do not require specialized knowledge.
Consider the work of this tool on the example of the personnel department. The HR service has to deal with repeated requests for processing and instructing new employees when they need to fill out template documents. In order not to waste time issuing forms, they are placed on the self-service portal.
Incident management
Incidents in IT are abnormal situations that affect the workflow — equipment breakdown, data loss, software failures. But incidents also happen in other parts of the company. For example, in the logistics department there may not be machines for urgent delivery.
The incident management process involves the creation of a list of contingencies and instructions for resolving them. Clarity and sequence of actions help to fix the problem faster and with less loss.
By analogy with the considered principles, processes and tools, other ITSM methods are adapted to the needs of different departments of the company.
What will this give the business
Implementing a service approach to managing services in even one IT department requires time and money. What can we say about the whole company. The larger the enterprise, the more resources are needed and the more complicated the implementation process. To decide on such a reorganization, the business needs to understand what it will get on the way out. Here are a few positive changes for companies that have implemented service management beyond IT services, according to the HDI and Samanage research .
Increased productivity. The basis of ITSM and ESM is the formalization and standardization of processes. Thus, the service approach provides stable quality, predictable terms and results of business services. When departments and employees have algorithms for each task and service, they don’t need to spend time searching for solutions - terms are reduced, productivity is growing. In addition, ESM automates part of the processes and reduces the load due to self-service portals, which also positively affects productivity.
Employee satisfaction is growing. Here, qualitative changes occur in two directions at once. When an employee acts as a service provider, he acts in accordance with the prescribed processes, without spending energy on finding solutions, performs work faster and without unnecessary emotions. In the position of the customer, he always knows at what stage his request is, when and what result will be output. The working atmosphere in the team becomes calmer, disputes and mutual claims between departments disappear.
Data availability. ESM involves the creation of unified information systems and databases. As a result, each interested employee and department will have quick access to the necessary information, contacts, reports, documents.
Improving the quality of customer service. When the company has clearly debugged work processes, the quality of customer service improves - orders and requests for technical support are processed faster, goods are delivered on time.