Listen to Atlassian State and Local Channel Manager, Shayla Sander, talk about implementing enterprise service management and what it could mean for your agency.
Roberto Musso: Welcome to the Atlassian Advantage podcast series. Here's our next episode, Enterprise Service Delivery.
Sean O'Sullivan: Hi everyone. I'd like to thank you all for joining us again today for our latest podcast discussing enterprise service delivery with Atlassian. My name is Sean O'Sullivan, the Sales Director of the Atlassian team at Carahsoft and I'm joined today by Atlassian State and Local Channel Manager, Shayla Sander. Shayla, thank you so much for joining us today.
Shayla Sander: Hi Sean. My pleasure.
Sean O'Sullivan: Yes, we're very excited to have you here. So the team at Carahsoft often receives a lot of questions from public sector customers asking about the benefits of adopting enterprise service management and how Atlassian technology can help their agency unleash their full potential. So, for our discussions today, let me start by asking this first question here. I think we should make clear what we're talking about. So, if you could, Shayla, what is the difference between ITSM, ITIL and ESM?
Shayla Sander: Well, ITSM is a deliberate way of managing and delivering service in the IT org and to its customers. It strategy does not inherently apply to organizational processes beyond IT. ITSM can incorporate one or several different frameworks. Most of those are the detailed practices inscribed in ITIL, formerly known as the IT Infrastructure Library. ITIL is a standard that organizations use to establish integration within their overall strategy while delivering value and maintaining a standard minimum level of competency. ITIL also demonstrates the importance of planning, implementing, and measuring and supporting continuous improvement. Inspired by the ideas of strategy, enterprise service management broadly brings these service management strategies to the rest of the business, applying them to teams beyond IT. So, solutions based in enterprise service management track business resources, everything from people, parts and assets as well as the status of service requests, orders, repairs and more.
Sean O'Sullivan: So then are the goals between ESM and ITSM just the same?
Shayla Sander: Kind of. The goals of ITSM are really around service design, service transition, and service operation. ESM is the idea of using these goals to support business needs and to increase user satisfaction. So, enterprise service management encompasses the processes or the mandates that may not be necessary with an IT service management.
Sean O'Sullivan: Right. Okay. So, then we've got agencies who are figuring out how to best go about their ESM strategies. What are some of the benefits for getting this kind of thing implemented?
Shayla Sander: Well, ESM is growing with more large scale agencies embracing the theories. Many software and technology providers like Atlassian are aligning with ITSM to provide better solutions, making it easier for IT and non-IT business units to take advantage of these systems. The benefits of ESM will depend on widely how it's implemented.
So, common benefits to implementing ESM across many organizational processes and departments would include improving user productivity. So, easy ticket tracking processes to enable teams to respond to requests more quickly. This leaves their inboxes and our minds less cluttered. There's also the benefit of eliminating waste. So, mapping and defining processes helps define activities, resources and more by how much value they add. Enhancing visibility and control and increasing user satisfaction are also benefits in implementing enterprise service management process.
Sean O'Sullivan: So then Shayla, tell me why implement an enterprise service management process and not some other business process framework?
Shayla Sander: Well because enterprise service management expands on the principles of ITSM and it can be attractive for several different reasons. The first is proven benefits. ITSM processes are well established and they're supported by comprehensive tools and when properly implemented, they're proven to provide greater accountability and control, increased capacity and efficiency, and to facilitate strategic business planning. Other reasons include simplified buy-in because IT departments already understand, use and maintain these systems on a daily basis. Buy-in from other IT stakeholders is a little more straightforward.
Likewise, you'll have a detailed analysis of the benefits IT has gained from the ITSM process, making it easier to create a robust business case for the change. Other benefits include the latest technology. Nobody is more demanding of software than the IT department. And this means ITSM vendors are typically evolving their offerings faster and incorporating the latest technology to provide additional benefits ahead of other niche system providers. Lastly, there's integration. Using a common tool eliminates the expense and time required for integration between various systems and tools. Benefit of this should not be underestimated. The stumbling block for many it projects and often the costs of costly disjointed legacy systems is a lack of integration, right? This acts as a barrier to adopting new technology, prevents the development of a cohesive and overarching business view. It can ultimately inhibit business growth.
Sean O'Sullivan: Okay. All right. All right. So, I'm sold then on the enterprise service management and getting started. Now I guess this is the more complicated part. How can an agency initiate and implement ESM principles and the tools?
Shayla Sander: Well, ESM is unique in that each team that adapts its theories and practices can customize it exactly to their service delivery. Still, initiating the implementation of ESM could be very tricky. Some of the tips to help justify or ease the transition include, justify the need for enterprise service management in your agency's terms. Indicate where you can save money, reduce workloads, and improve efficiencies leading to an overall increase in business efficiency. Each department owns its ESM rollout. It's no longer just an IT project, right?
So, while ESM has a historical context in IT teams, it's not up to IT teams to implement the system for company functions. Each team must embrace what ESM can do for them specifically. And it's important to recognize that ESM is not only about implementing a tool or a software system.
And then differences are welcomed, there's no one size fits all approach to service management that'll be appropriate for all agencies. Some teams may require more automation while others might require more flexibility. And the biggest thing is to share your success across all of the teams that you can get visibility across these projects. Taking advantage of enterprise service management theories and practices will lead to the continuous and long term development of flexibility and continuous improvement, both of those who employ ESM principles and the users and customers who will benefit from them. Starting in the right place really is key.
Sean O'Sullivan: Okay, got it. So just to recap here, based off what you're saying, ESM can really be applied in various ways. So, that's really going to depend on the agency and the use case, right? So, how does someone choose the right place to start implementing ESM?
Shayla Sander: Yeah, that's a great question. So, non-core business units are a good place to start. In particular, anybody who receives a high volume of requests on the same topic over and over again, or a team that delivers time sensitive requests that need tracking and management ... if there's a team that's perhaps acting as a gatekeeper within a certain process, providing approvals, frequently providing standard reports or field requests for information. Some typical business functions or services that are provided via ESM could include human resources. So, if somebody requests for leave or a change to their health plan, perhaps they need training or have a salary inquiry or you're onboarding a new employee. These are all processes that live really well within the enterprise service management framework. Other areas include purchasing and procurement, accounting and finance, facilities and building services. Legal, for example, you can imagine the review and approval of documents and the requests for standard contracts and forms can get kind of repetitive, right? And there's a timestamp associated with that deliverable. Those are all processes that do really, really well with an enterprise service management.
Sean O'Sullivan: Got it. So, clearly there are plenty different ways to get started. There's a lot of great advice here when it comes to taking into account your ESM strategy. I really appreciate it, Shayla, where do you suggest our listeners go to then to learn more about enterprise service management and how they can support the government agencies?
Shayla Sander: Sure, so we have an enterprise service management blog live on atlassian.com. Sean, I know that we're working in conjunction with your team as well, so the hopes is after this there'll be plenty of resources that you can leverage to implement ESM within your organization.
Sean O'Sullivan: Perfect suggestion, Shayla, thank you so much for your time today and valuable insights. This was really, really beneficial for our listeners. Please check out Shayla's suggestions and the resources on our Atlassian Advantage website. You can contact us anytime via email atlassian@carahsoft.com or give us a shout, (833) 547-2468. I hope everyone stays healthy and stay safe and we'll talk to you soon. Thanks.