How Best to Sell Enterprise Service Management to Other Lines of Business

The IT service management (ITSM) world is always full of trends, and many take a long time to move from “the next big thing” to being mainstream ITSM best practices. The opportunities of enterprise service management (also known by the acronym ESM) are among these ITSM trends. It’s the use of ITSM capabilities by other lines of business – such as Human Resources (HR), Facilities, Finance, and Legal – to improve their respective services, operations, experiences, and outcomes.

Enterprise service management has seen the initial interest of over a decade ago turn into something different in recent years. What started as a “quick fix” for the need for process-enabling technology in other lines of business moved to sharing service management best practices before seeing its adoption accelerate because of the global pandemic. This latter change was caused by the corporate need for digital transformation, specifically the business-process digital enablement element.

But what if your IT organization still needs to sell enterprise service management to other lines of business? To help, this blog offers advice on how best to position what can be seen as ITSM capabilities as the solution to the digital enablement needs of other lines of business.

1 – Be careful about using IT-created terminology

The term “enterprise service management” will mean little to other lines of business. Neither will much of the ITIL-created process terminology, such as incident and problem management. Instead, enterprise service management needs to be described and positioned differently to better sell its value to other lines of business, including corporate service providers such as HR, Finance, Facilities, and Legal.

The inappropriateness and marketability of “enterprise service management” to other lines of business shouldn’t surprise IT professionals. Many of them already knew its lack of sell-ability (as a name) after the global pandemic accelerated the adoption of enterprise service management, with 2022 Axelos research finding that the terms “service management” or “digital transformation” were more likely being used within organizations (than enterprise service management).

But even these preferred names can be misleading. Other lines of business probably don’t want service management. While the term digital transformation might be considered too broad for the digital enablement, provided by the shared ITSM tool capabilities, lines of business need to improve their operations and outcomes.

It’s also highly likely that the other lines of business are looking for the improvements that ITSM tools (and any of the ITSM best practices they adopt) bring, making digital enablement (or something similarly outcome-focused) far more suitable name for what IT has traditionally called enterprise service management.

2 – Explain the benefits of enterprise service management using terms that resonate

The elevator pitch for enterprise service management can be something akin to “better, faster, cheaper.” However, line of business leadership will still want to understand more.

In explaining the benefits of enterprise service management, they are similar to those for ITSM adoption and include:

• Operations optimization using best-practice digital workflows and other digital capabilities such as self-service, with this amplified through new artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled capabilities
• Employee and customer experience improvements
• Employee productivity improvements – this is for the service provider and the employees they serve
• Faster operations and outcome delivery
• Cost reductions – this is for the line of business and the wider organization
• Better insight into performance across operations, outcomes, and improvement opportunities.

These generic benefits will be best articulated using line-of-business examples and terminology. For example, digital workflows allow HR personnel to work collaboratively with other lines of business on employee onboarding tasks (perhaps while geographically distanced). This speeds up operations and outcome delivery, reduces costs, and provides better experiences with greater insight into task status and issues. Importantly, these operationally-focused benefits will resonate more with line of business leadership than simply explaining the popular ITSM capabilities such as incident and problem management.

3 – Get corporate funding for enterprise service management

Enterprise service management will save the lines of business money. However, there will also be upfront costs that need to be borne. These costs relate to various areas, including additional ITSM tool licensing, process design work, and implementation efforts.

Similarly to the old management quip, “I don’t have time for a time management course,” line of business leadership might struggle to fund enterprise service management in their area (despite the promised benefits). So, making enterprise service management a centrally-funded project or program helps to remove this barrier to take-up. It also reduces the likelihood of suboptimal decision-making being caused by line-of-business financial restrictions.

4 – Don’t sell a one-size-fits-all approach to lines of business; embrace the differences

Enterprise service management offers the ability to standardize service and support capabilities, using a single tool or platform, across different lines of business. However, it’s important to recognize that each line of business will have its own areas of uniqueness. For example, HR has its own language (with “cases” used instead of “tickets”), some HR processes will require higher levels of employee data security than others, and HR will likely have different operational and improvement priorities versus other lines of business.

Hence, the uniqueness and needs of the individual lines of business need to be catered for when planning for enterprise service management. From the outset, the affected lines of business must be involved, defining their areas of uniqueness as part of the overall corporate approach (to enterprise service management). This involvement helps to sell (or gain buy-in to) enterprise service management and identify the need for line of business changes to meet specific needs.

5 – Remove as many potential buy-in “blockers” as possible

Imagine the conversation. An IT leader is selling the opportunity of enterprise service management to line-of-business personnel when someone says, “Hold on, our employees hate using the IT self-service portal. Why would we want to offer that to our customers?” It will never help with line-of-business buy-in when line-of-business employees and leadership are unhappy with what’s being “sold.”

So, while this type of scenario doesn’t directly affect the selling of enterprise service management, it’s essential to do as much as possible to avoid potential buy-in “blockers.” For example, ITSM practices should be ensured to work sufficiently well before being offered to other lines of business as a “better way of working.” Not every potential blocker will be identified upfront, but the more that can be removed before the “selling starts,” the better. If you want to know more about how best to sell enterprise service management to other lines of business, please contact our team.  

Frequently Asked Questions