Why ESM is rising on the 2026 agenda

Across industries, leaders are refining their priorities for the next stage of service evolution. Enterprise service management (ESM) is becoming a top strategic focus. DataIntelo reports that the ESM market is projected to grow at a 17.2% CAGR from 2025 to 2033 (DataIntelo, Enterprise Service Management Market Research Report, 2024).

Interest is accelerating because organizations want fewer silos, a better employee experience, and the same IT-level service delivery extended beyond ITSM to non-IT functions like HR, Finance, Facilities, Legal, and other service areas.

With capabilities such as service catalogs, automated workflows, self-service, and knowledge management—now increasingly powered by AI—ESM enables teams to standardize processes, reduce friction, and improve the overall service experience across the enterprise.

Where ESM adoption falters

According to the Gartner® How to Build a Successful Enterprise Service Management Program report¹¹ ,   45% of leaders cite maximizing their ITSM investment as the biggest benefit of ESM. Yet many organizations struggle to realize that value. Despite best intentions, many ESM initiatives begin as tool-first deployments:

• Configure a portal
• Add a few modules
• Build a handful of workflows
• Hope adoption follows

The result is scattered projects, uneven ownership, and a platform that still feels like an IT tool dressed up for other departments.

Many organizations misinterpret extending ITSM practices as a copy-and-paste exercise. However, each business function operates with different regulatory obligations, approval paths, vocabularies, and working norms. HR evaluates risk differently than Finance. Facilities manages physical-world dependencies that IT rarely encounters. Legal works within timelines and requirements that cannot be compressed into IT turnaround targets.

When differences are overlooked, ESM efforts come up short, and non-IT teams begin to view ESM as little more than an IT-shaped ticketing system. These early missteps can create resistance, slow adoption, and undermine the credibility of ESM.

ESM isn’t a tool decision—it’s a business strategy

A successful ESM program takes the proven strengths of ITSM—structured processes, governance, service catalogs, automation, AI, continuous improvement—and applies them thoughtfully across the enterprise.

Implementing such programs starts with clearly defined goals, strong leadership sponsorship, and measurable outcomes. They also require a shared service taxonomy, explicit ownership of cross-functional processes, governance that extends ITSM discipline to non-IT teams, and alignment on the employee service experience across functions—all before any tooling decisions are made. These fundamentals prevent teams from automating inconsistent processes and ensure the platform is used to solve the right problems.

Example of a real-world ESM implementation

Shannon Bell, EVP and CIO at OpenText, recently shared results from an internal ESM rollout—a program designed as an operating model change rather than a technology project.

What was put into place:

• CIO-level sponsorship to establish enterprise-wide direction and accountability
• HR as the first partner, selected for its clear service demand and readiness
• Measurable goals: improve employee experience, reduce ticket volume, and expand self-service

How progress was measured:

• CSAT scores
• Ticket reduction
• Growth of self-service engagement

Results, one year later:

• Global CSAT increased from the low 80s to 92%, driven by streamlined SLA tracking and simplified ticket management.
• The unified service experience expanded from HR to 500+ teams and 22,000 employees, supporting more than 30,000 monthly requests each month.
• The organization reduced operational costs, simplified processes, and gained greater visibility into service performance.
• Top example: HR automation use case removed 20,000 repetitive tickets, freeing 5,000 human hours—that’s 625 workdays reclaimed from repetitive tasks and redirected toward high-value work.

These are results ESM can deliver when the operating model is clear and tools serve a defined purpose.

ESM maturity starts with foundations, not features

True ESM maturity begins long before a system goes live. When the foundations are clear, the technology finally has something worth scaling. Organizations that invest early in defining services, ownership, decision rights, and cross-functional governance see faster adoption, cleaner automation, and stronger service outcomes.

To learn more about how to build an ESM operating model that scales, visit our webpage.

1) Gartner, How to Build a Successful Enterprise Service Management Program, Siddharth Shetty, Chris Laske, Hideo Yoneda, Andrew Miljanovski, 21 February 2025

GARTNER is a registered trademark and service mark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally and is used herein with permission. All rights reserved.

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