Want Better ESM Adoption? Stop Suggesting ESM
ITSM.tools, Friday, September 4th, 2026
Leading with the ESM acronym kills adoption; lead with a department's existing pain instead.
Matt Beran argues IT teams undermine enterprise service management by pitching it as a framework and an acronym to other departments.
The better approach is to help a department solve a problem it already has, examining its actual workflow and letting service management practices emerge as the answer. Genuine adoption requires the department to own the outcome rather than IT driving the initiative from outside.
He recommends starting with a single contained, already-painful problem, on the basis that once a department sees the value for itself the vocabulary stops mattering.