Evolving from ITSM to ESM in the age of AI with Doug Tedder

Few C-suite leaders understand the natural evolution from traditional ITSM to true enterprise service management (ESM) as intuitively as Doug Tedder. As principal of Tedder Consulting and an IT thought leader with more than 25 years of experience, Doug has seen first-hand how ESM empowers organizations to deliver real business value and leverage the skills and talents of the entire team — not just one department.

“Enterprise service management isn’t just about spreading IT to the rest of the company,” explains Doug. “That’s a pretty narrow approach. What we need is people- and process-focused workflows across the entire organization. IT only looks at things from the end-user perspective, and even then, it’s not from a full delivery or support standpoint.”

I had an insightful discussion with Doug, where he went all-in on ESM – the exciting (and tricky) shift from ITSM, the curveballs CIOs will have to face, and how GenAI is redefining ESM.

From ITSM to ESM: Why the shift?

Doug starts by pointing out that one of the biggest mistakes companies make is treating ESM like an IT project rather than a broader business initiative. Companies often think it’s just about setting up an enterprise service desk, but this quickly turns into what he calls a “catch and release” system — just taking requests and forwarding them to different departments without real collaboration.

At that point, you’re not doing ESM, you’re just managing silos, and non-existent workflows outside of IT.

It shouldn’t be all hand-me-down knowledge, or word-of-mouth learning coming from the veteran in the department. To truly harness the power of enterprise service management, we need to have a clear understanding of how work flows from start to finish. Doug Tedder, Principal of Tedder Consulting

This lack of bottom-up involvement often translates into enterprises skipping the most important step to ESM rollout– define your enterprise goals, and business use cases with C-suite buy-ins, establish KPIs to measure outcomes, and map how the rollout affects every team and resource involved.

Doug firmly believes that a real shift to ESM happens when organizations prioritize people and workflows instead of “slapping an ESM tool” in place and calling it a day. We can certainly design stunning user-friendly websites and impressive portals using state-of-the-art tools, but if the backend systems aren’t in place, we’re just putting on a facade without any real substance.

ESM implementation isn’t a one-and-done kind of fix; it’s an ongoing effort. You need sustained funding backed by a solid business case, team-wide resource commitments, and continuous improvement. The team we begin with for ESM adoption might not be the same one that ends up seeing it through.

Enabling ESM success with AI

Imagine an IT ecosystem that serves as a one-stop shop for managing service and support requests for all employees and end-users. Instead of sending users to different portals for IT, HR, or other departments, a Slack-based AI assistant can report user issues, create an onboarding/offboarding workflow with HR, and partner with security to create a unique user ID and request management. Doug believes this is the future of service management, all thanks to GenAI.

For him, AI is a “means” for tackling the major obstacles to ESM adoption with hyper-personalized interactions, and real-time contextual enterprise knowledge management.

Knowledge is everywhere — flowing through Slack, in conversations with end users, surfacing in meetings, and on phone calls. However, it’s neither consolidated nor readily available. GenAI can help organizations not only capture that knowledge by bringing together disparate sources like HRM, Okta, or IDPs but also make sense of it.

It’s no shocker that personalization generally takes a backseat in service management. Typically, we sort people into categories and listen for keywords to guide our support. But with GenAI, Doug can analyze historical data and current interactions to understand user context while staying on top of regulatory compliance.

AI can help us fine-tune our conversations and support based on each person's context — like their previous issues with an asset. That can be a tough task for a human agent, but an AI assistant can easily tackle it, even for repetitive, manual tasks like password resets.

Doug warns that it’s not enough to just ramp up ESM adoption for a successful rollout. “We need to demonstrate numbers and ROI that resonate with the C-suite.” Think about increased productivity, cost-time benefits, and experience improvement stemming from broken silos.

What’s not going to change?

Doug is an AI pacifist at heart, so the idea of AI replacing humans in IT feels like a distant dream — almost impossible. But that’s not the only thing that holds steady during this tech-driven ESM shift.

What doesn’t change is our need to be people-focused. Empathy and emotional connections are essential. AI isn’t there yet; it doesn’t grasp feelings the way humans do, and who knows if it ever will? Just because AI works for one company doesn’t mean it’ll work for us.

According to Doug, good process design is something AI just can’t take over. Sure, AI is advanced, but it lacks a granular understanding of the ins and outs of an organization. “Just look at onboarding and offboarding new hires,” Doug shares. “Each organization has its own method, so we have to develop processes that suit our needs. That’s not going to change.”

AI is a powerful ally, but having strong critical thinking skills and business acumen — knowing how people, processes, and technology work together — will always be key to delivering real value. That’s a truth that remains constant.

It was an absolute delight speaking to Doug and if you’re looking to accelerate AI-powered ESM, listen to our entire conversation here.