Micro Focus is now part of OpenText. Learn more >

You are here

You are here

Buyer's guide to enterprise service management products: Types of tools and capabilities

public://pictures/susansalgy.jpg
Susan Salgy Contributing Editor
Woman typing
 

Enterprises typically start providing services with desktop productivity tools such as shared email boxes, spreadsheets, and shared folders. But the limitations of these tools soon become apparent, especially when they must support time-sensitive manual processes that require consistent, error-free execution 24/7, or when they can't generate useful metrics for troubleshooting, monitoring, or optimizing.

The resulting chaos is the root cause of many complaints about slow service, unresponsive service teams, lost requests, and delivery errors. When the business decides that's no longer acceptable, it often looks for an ESM tool.

"What the ESM tool is doing is replacing the shared email box. Nothing more complicated than that," said Charles Betz, principal analyst at the research firm Forrester. Even a basic ESM tool can overcome problems like emails getting lost, overlooked, or misrouted. "All ITSM tools could potentially be used for ESM, but only a few can go beyond a standard help desk," said Michael Pott, senior product marketing manager at Micro Focus.

Key tool capabilities

Tools are already available that can provide ESM augmented with:

  • Integrated machine learning
  • Advanced analytics
  • Enhanced platform intelligence, which refers to the boost in data-informed decision making provided by the more advanced ESM platforms 
  • AI-enabled capabilities
  • Predictive technology

All of these enhancements can help in different ways to deliver higher levels of service to employees and customers.

Vendors are also beginning to provide more non-IT modules that are designed for the services provided by departments outside of IT. You'll find new workflows and portals for HR, finance, legal, facilities, and many other functions.

What ESM platforms offer

A few ESM platforms have emerged to support this growing diversity, and, not surprisingly, they are tightly integrated with all of the individual ESM products offered by each platform vendor. But these platforms also allow you to plug in the ESM tools you may already own, and they interoperate nicely with the ESM products offered by most other vendors.

(To get acquainted with the top ESM vendors, review Forrester Wave: Enterprise Service Management, Q4 2019. Forrester analysts used 23 criteria to assess the top 15 ESM providers, and this will help you understand the kinds of offerings available to you.)

Buying strategies

When evaluating products, you need to think about how a given product fits in with the direction of the overall market, as well as how it aligns with your plans.

"Look at where you are today, think about where you want to be a year from now, and start to buy forward, but not too far forward," said Jayne Groll, CEO of the DevOps Institute. The ESM marketplace is "moving very quickly, and it's hard to predict who will be buying who, and what that might imply for your investment," she said.

Two-year planning makes the best sense from both a cost and support perspective.

It's also smart to buy tools that will work in your current environment, not things that only support your long-range plans. "If you're not in the cloud now and don't have plans to move there any time soon, don't buy something designed for the cloud just because you hope to get there in five years," advised Groll.

It's far better to buy something that will deliver a win for you today and help you get into the cloud tomorrow.

Key takeaways

  • Tools are already available that can provide ESM augmented with integrated machine learning, advanced analytics, enhanced platform intelligence, AI-enabled capabilities, and predictive technology.
  • Vendors are increasingly providing department-specific ESM tools, for human resources or finance, for example.
  • Make sure any platforms you're considering platforms allow you to plug in the ESM tools you may already own and interoperate with as many other tools as possible.
  • Don't get too far ahead of yourself; think in terms of a two-year planning cycle and ensure tools can handle what you already are doing, not what may happen five years from now.

Read next: The top 5 ESM technology and market trends

Read more articles about: Enterprise ITIT Ops