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ITSM has been a benchmark for how enterprises are supposed to manage the processes, activities, and delivery of IT Services. With frameworks like ITIL – ITSM was able to significantly influence our thought process on how to manage our Service Desks and manage IT service delivery for the better part of the last decade or more. Many products also emerged that enabled the implementation of ITSM and its various components – like incident management, problem management, change management, asset management, etc.

Read about 21 Must-Know ITSM Terms and Terminologies

Is ITSM enough?

Although ITSM did solve many issues – it experienced issues with cost (ROI), implementation, and adoption issues. Most of all – ITSM was focused on only solving IT Services issues. Most enterprises today are powered by knowledge and technology- and it defiantly goes beyond IT Services. In a typical month, an employee might have 1 issue or need for which he/she seeks IT Services, but they need some other supports much more frequently?

What is the other kind of support that the employee seeks?

1. Other service desks – Employees might have need/question/issue related to HR, Finance, facilities, project management, DevOps, Sec-DevOps, specific business unit, etc. ITSM does not provide guidance for other areas – and it will be folly to replicate ITSM kind of complexity I other Service Desk.
   
   
2. Enterprise knowledge and employee questions – Employees seek answers daily about many questions that they face during their work-day. The questions and issues might range from policies, procedure, business flow, process knowledge, application knowledge, etc. Here are some examples of the issues -
   
   
3. Process related information- “How do I re-issue a check” OR “How often do I need to do a dynamic scan of my application”
   
   
4. Simple repetitive task - “I need access to marketing database”
   
   
5. Policy question – “What are the leave carry-over policy difference this year”
   
   
6. Upskilling – “I want to learn about the new Loan origination system that we are implementing”
   
   

Typically, this is not something that an L1/L2 support can help an employee with. An enterprise might have a knowledge management tool that is updated and frequently used (both are improbable) or experts in each of these areas to support these questions (this is more likely, and not the best use of expensive resources).

The study by IDC reveals below facts in KM-

• Employees spend 15% to 35% of their time looking for relevant information
  
  
• Only 21% of respondents find the information they needed 85% to100% of the time
  
  
• 40% of corporate users reported that they cannot find the information they need to do their jobs on their intranets.
  
  
• 90% of the information found on the intranet is unstructured and the amount of information employees navigate is increasing despite having KM systems
  
  

McKinsey has also reported that employees spend 1.8 hours every day—9.3 hours per week, on average—searching and gathering information.

It is fair to summarize that ITSM focuses on a narrow slice of employee support. This slice – while important is not all that an employee needs. Just as we discovered almost a decade ago that a Service Desk is much more than a ticketing system – I think it is also time to realize that employee support is more than ITSM. 2020 was a year when we collectively learned this especially due to remote working.

I will add one more color to this analysis – and this is coming directly from some C.I.O.s who are our clients. “There is an increased reluctance among business owners to spend more money on just ITSM. It is the reluctance to spend more money on a system that only solves IT issues – and with questionable ROI. However, they are more than happy to spend money on a technology solution that solves their problems and issues.” Something for all of us to think about?

What next? What is ESM?

Before we jump into the solution – let us try to write up the “specs” and “wish-list” for a replacement for ITSM. (We are going to get this list started – but would love to see what you want to add – please free to add in the comments section)

1. Multiple Service Desk or Enterprise-wide focus: While IT Services will remain the star of the show – there will be multiple “structured” service desks available to employees. The functions that never “structured” their service desk – like Finance or facilities – might also start to do so if it becomes very easy to do so.  
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2. A single window or Integrated Service Desk: Although there will more Service Desks – employees will interact with a single-window. Hopefully, we will not make the same mistake that was made earlier when kept all service desk, support, knowledge, and self-service assets in a different location. All Service Desk will also follow a similar recognizable, intuitive pattern to ensure the employee is not baffled by our smarts and good intentions. 😊 One clear option (that resolve.ai leverages) is MS Teams.  
   
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3. Knowledge-as-a-Service: Although knowledge management was always a part of ITSM, we all know that the knowledge management of an ITSM system was mostly used by agents – and very rarely by the employees. For knowledge needs beyond IT – sometimes enterprises invested in traditional knowledge management tools – which again were not used by employees due to accessibility, interface, user experience, and many other reasons. Knowledge and Service Desk and complementary and together solve the larger issue of employee support. One cannot survive without the other. The new enterprise employee support will embrace this concept.  
   
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4. Cultivate self-service culture: In the context of multimodal/omnichannel engagements with end-users, enterprises are trying to cultivate the self-service culture through incentives, gamification, etc. Self-service or even better – “Auto-resolutions” are here to stay.  
   
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5. Feedback loop and continuous improvement: Focus on continuous improvement was one of the great features of ITSM – and that needs to be incorporated in this new employee support model.  
   

While there might be slightly different items in the wish-list for different enterprises – one thing is clear. The approach to employee support is changing – and quickly. The concept of E.S.M. (or enterprise service management) represents the requirements and needs of an enterprise that is enumerated above.

What is Rezolve.ai’s A.I.E.S.M. model?

At Rezolve.ai, we like to describe our employee support model as A.I.E.S.M or AI-powered ESM. Why A.I.E.S.M and not just E.S.M.? It is because we are in an era of AI and our product is created from the ground up in an AI appreciative architecture. We believe, when the employee needs information or help – it should be available within minutes and not hours. This is possible in today’s context only by leveraging AI.

Advent and maturing of A.I. in employee support has simplified the delivery of E.S.M. objectives and promises. AIESM will usher in an era of service intelligence wherein the focus will shift away from operations to designing, managing & automating the enterprise services.

Do you have any questions about ESM? Feel free to reach out.