The Digital Enterprise Series – Part II – Enterprise Service Management

lionelberger · ‎03-25-2018

Enterprise Service Management (ESM) expands on the success of IT Service Management (ITSM), which consists of the definition, modeling, automation, monitoring, and continuous improvement of the business processes in IT that support the delivery of services. ESM’s approach is to leverage those good practices and apply them to business services.

The definition of an ESM transformation strategy, framework and program are key to the success of business services digitization. In the next section I will cover a non-exhaustive list of the components that should enable the execution of such a transformation.

ESM Transformation Strategy

I see too many customers willing to embark on digitization initiatives without being able to provide a clear strategy that answers questions such as:

Why is this digitization taking place?
What are the short/mid/long term business goals and expected benefits?
How will the benefits be measured and who will be accountable for their achievement?
Compliance: What are the standards, policies, and regulations that must be enforced?
Who are the key stakeholders and how will they be involved and managed?
How will IT and the business partner interact on this strategic transformation?
What is the targeted sourcing model and who are the strategic partners?

ESM Transformation Program

The complexity and risks of such a transformation need to be structured into a coherent program that will ensure the required activities, resources, and costs are properly controlled and managed. The fact that the delivery leverages an Agile methodology does not mean there is no need for a comprehensive program that address questions such as:

Who is the program sponsor and how much power/influence does he/she have?
What is the governance model, steering committee, and escalation path?
What are the key milestones and associated priorities, objectives, and targets?
What is the program/projects structure and associated roles and responsibilities?
What are the foundational elements that need to be put in place first?
How is people change management going to be managed (biggest source of failures)?
How will the program ensure the syncing of the people, process, organization and technology components?
Which partners will be involved, and do they have enough expertise and experience?

ESM Transformation Framework

The digitized business services will need to rely on a common ESM framework that provides the required processes, people and technology to operate. ISO, ITIL, CobIT and TOGAF are great sources of standards and best practices that can be leveraged for ESM.

ESM Processes

Most of the business services will need to rely on the following processes. While some of those will be required in a second phase while the core components need to be put in place as soon as possible to ensure success:

ESM Roles & Responsibilities

A clear definition and assigned of the roles & responsibilities is key to success. As some processes may be subject to compliance standards, policies or legislation, clear accountability needs to be assigned to people who will take leadership in the definition, execution, and continuous improvement of their area of responsibilities.

A user experience (UX) owner should be appointed to be the users’ advocate and ensure a seamless experience across services and domains. The UX owner will need to work in close collaboration with the data, services and taxonomy management process owner.
The ESM processes listed above need one assigned process owner, accountable for the appropriate design, execution and CSI of the assigned process(es).
Process managers need to be appointed in different regions depending on the size and complexity of the organization.
A training and support team may be required to assist the process owners/managers, depending on the size and complexity of the organization.
The ServiceNow platform will need to be defined as an enterprise strategic platform that supports both IT and business services and its stakeholders. The platform owner’s roles & responsibilities may need to be adjusted.
The following document provides further guidance on platform governance & operating model: Link (requires HI login first)

ESM Technology

ServiceNow plays an essential role in the ecosystem of solutions supporting digitized business processes. Here are some recommendations related to the technology:

To ensure a seamless user experience and keep cost and complexity down, the number of technologies need to be kept to the minimum.
ServiceNow should be positioned as the system of engagement and system of action per this “Employee Digital Workplace” blog: Link
Integration with the system of Records (e.g. HCM, ERP, CRM, P2P, etc.) should be planned based on E2E use cases (user journeys) and complexity vs. impact.
The definition and documentation of the high-level functional architecture should be done early in the program. The enterprise architecture should reflect those changes and the positioning of ServiceNow in the enterprise.
The aPaaS capabilities of the ServiceNow platform are often overlooked by customers. The power of the no-code/low-code application development capabilities should be leveraged to reduce the number of independent tools and the associated integration complexity.
Service design and Human-Centered Design (HCD) approaches should be leveraged to design the services based on proper understanding of the service consumer and provider needs and context.
The business processes underlying the services may need to be amended to properly support the E2E delivery of the services.
An Agile development approach should be followed and should target the delivery of frequent and smaller production releases, so users can quickly provide feedback (through pilots/lighthouse projects).

How does ESM look like in your enterprise? Have you started such a transformation, what are the best practices you can share? Please comment this article with your thoughts, reactions, disagreements and recommendations.

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Previous article: The Digital Enterprise Series – Part I – Business & Shared Services Use Cases

Next article: The Digital Enterprise Series – Part III – ESM Best Practices (coming in Q2 2018)

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- The Employee Digital Workplace

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