How is Enterprise Service Management different from ITSM?

Enterprise Service Management (ESM) is the extension of IT service management (ITSM) principles, processes, and tools to non-IT departments across an organization. It takes the applicable parts of ITSM processes and makes them available for other departments like HR, Facilities, Legal, etc. Now, these departments can easily handle tasks such as facilities work orders, HR employee changes, legal document reviews, and more. ESM also aims to standardize service delivery across the organization. IT Service Management (ITSM) focuses on all internal service management processes for IT, including design, delivery, management, and incremental improvement of these services.

Why is ESM important to an organization?

Enterprise Service Management improves efficiency, productivity, collaboration, consistency, employee experience, resource utilization, changes, compliance management, continuous improvement, and decision-making, driving significant digital transformation. Departments can better streamline and automate their processes, implement standardized workflows, and reduce repetitive manual tasks. ESM offers a consistent, standardized approach across the entire organization, making it easier to manage and interact with every service provider. Centralizing knowledge and requests improves resource utilization and reduces overhead.

Is ESM only appropriate for large Enterprise companies?

While Enterprise Service Management has Enterprise in the name, it's not only beneficial for Enterprise-sized organizations. Any company that wants to standardize processes for better service delivery beyond IT benefits from an ESM mindset. Large enterprises turn to ESM as a standard new way of working because departments have become large, siloed, and segregated. However, it's easily tailored to companies of any size. Every department can benefit from more standardized workflows, better work management, and automation.

How does ESM help with security and compliance?

Enterprise Service Management, as a cultural change, can help with security and compliance requirements with centralized documentation, proper change management, audit trails of work completed, and standardized processes for any incident that occurs. Enterprise Service Management software provides technology to track who did what and when. ESM system can segregate data from other departments, including the organizational administrator of the software. Just because someone is an admin in IT doesn't mean they should have access to sensitive HR and legal records.

What's the best department to start with for Enterprise Service Management?

Choosing the best department to start implementing an ESM culture and Enterprise Service Management software with is easy when considering the following. Identify a department with well-defined processes that may not be centralized and is a high-impact department that would benefit from more streamlined processes. However, the most important factor is culture. Identify the department that is the most open to change, has the resources available to experiment with ESM, and wants to improve its department as a service provider.

Enterprise Service Management (ESM) Software

Extend proven IT service management workflows to HR, facilities, legal, marketing, and other business teams with SolarWinds^® Service Desk.

Start Free Trial

Fully functional for 30 days

Standardize service delivery

Extend ITSM beyond IT

Manage service providers

Configure each department

Protect department data

Standardize service delivery across departments

Give every service team a consistent way to receive, manage, prioritize, and report on employee requests to deliver a better employee experience.

Employees depend on many internal service providers, not just IT. SolarWinds Service Desk Enterprise Service Management (ESM) helps organizations apply a consistent service-management approach across departments. Teams can use ticket intake, queues, priorities, SLAs, reporting, automation, and service-request workflows to manage the work they provide to employees and internal customers. This creates a more familiar service experience while allowing each team to focus on its own services and processes.

Start Free Trial

Fully functional for 30 days

Extend ITSM practices beyond IT

IT teams often establish the service management processes that other departments want to adopt. With SolarWinds Service Desk Enterprise Service Management (ESM), organizations can expand from a single IT service provider to multiple department-specific service providers, including HR, Facilities, Legal, Marketing, Finance, or Security. IT can continue to manage service operations, asset management, change management, and its configuration management database (CMDB), while other departments use their own service catalogs, knowledge base content, workflows, forms, and request processes.

Start Free Trial

Fully functional for 30 days

Manage service providers from one account

SolarWinds Service Desk ESM gives organizations one Service Desk account with an organization-level tenant and multiple service-provider environments. Organization-level administrators can manage shared resources and global settings once, while department teams can manage service-provider-specific resources and configurations. This structure helps organizations create a consistent foundation for enterprise service management without forcing every department into the same intake process, service catalog, or workflow.

Start Free Trial

Fully functional for 30 days

Configure service experiences for each department

Departments do not all manage the same types of requests. SolarWinds Service Desk ESM lets service providers tailor elements of their service experience, including custom fields and custom forms, workflows, reports, dashboards, knowledge base content, service catalog items, and virtual agent interactions. HR can support onboarding and policy questions, Facilities can manage repair requests, and Legal can route contract reviews without asking every department to work from an IT-specific template.

Start Free Trial

Fully functional for 30 days

Keep department data appropriately separated

Enterprise service management requires teams to share a platform without sharing every record. SolarWinds Service Desk ESM provides data segregation and privacy between service providers, helping control what each department’s end users can see. Resources that apply across the organization can be managed at the organization level, while service-provider-specific resources are managed within that department’s environment. Access depends on assigned roles and permissions, helping departments protect sensitive information while participating in a broader service-management program.

Start Free Trial

Fully functional for 30 days

Your Whole Organization. One Seamless Enterprise IT Service Management Solution.

Facilities Service Management

Simplify how teams request, manage, and track facilities support—from maintenance and repair requests to asset tracking and vendor coordination—ensuring smooth, safe, and productive operations.

Human Resources Service Management

Give employees a clear and consistent experience across every HR touchpoint—from onboarding and offboarding to benefits and travel requests—while making HR workflows more efficient and providing a reliable policy knowledge base for quick, self-service answers.

Marketing Service Management

Help marketing teams stay focused on strategy and content by streamlining campaign requests and approvals, managing vendor relationships, and organizing content publishing workflows for greater efficiency.

Legal Service Management

Help enable legal teams to move faster while keeping compliance top of mind by using structured processes and full audit trails. Support contract and vendor management, streamline document approval workflows, and provide access to a centralized knowledge base for legal resources.

Finance/Payroll Service Management

Give finance and payroll teams the tools to handle payroll and timesheet support, manage purchase orders and invoice approvals, and oversee budget, audit, and vendor processes—delivering timely service while staying accurate and audit ready.

Security Service Management

Help security teams respond faster and reduce risks by tracking security incidents, managing access and permissions requests, and coordinating policy changes and enforcement activities.

Get More on Enterprise Service Management

Do you find yourself asking…

What is enterprise service management?
How does Service Desk support enterprise service management?
How does the CMDB support enterprise service management?
Can each department have its own service catalog and portal?
Can ESM automate workflows and approvals?
How does Service Desk protect department data in ESM?
Is ESM included with SolarWinds Service Desk?

Enterprise service management, or ESM, applies IT service management principles and workflows to service teams across the organization. Instead of limiting structured request intake, routing, approvals, service catalogs, knowledge bases, automation, and service-level management to IT, ESM gives departments such as HR, Facilities, Legal, Finance, Marketing, and Security a way to manage the services they provide to employees.

The goal is not to make every department operate like IT. It is to give each internal service provider a consistent, accessible way to receive and fulfill requests while tailoring the experience to the work that department does.

Enterprise service management, or ESM, applies IT service management principles and workflows to service teams across the organization. Instead of limiting structured request intake, routing, approvals, service catalogs, knowledge bases, automation, and service-level management to IT, ESM gives departments such as HR, Facilities, Legal, Finance, Marketing, and Security a way to manage the services they provide to employees.
The goal is not to make every department operate like IT. It is to give each internal service provider a consistent, accessible way to receive and fulfill requests while tailoring the experience to the work that department does.

“Every time someone interacts with SolarWinds Service Desk for the first time, they are surprised at how easy it is.”

Chris Comerford

CIO

Adler Planetarium

Enterprise Service Management (ESM) to support digital transformation and streamline processes across the company

Service Desk

Empower better delivery of services to non-IT business teams, such as HR, marketing, finance and others.
Unify and improve collaboration between different departments and reduce errors and downtimes.
Leverage a modern ticketing system using AI and automate monotonous and time-consuming tasks.