Enterprise service management (ESM) is a category of business management software—typically a suite of integrated applications that a service organization uses to capture, manage, save and analyze data critical to their service business performance.
ESM provides an integrated view of core service business processes, often in real-time, using common databases. ESM systems track business resources—people, parts, assets—and the status of customer commitments: service requests, orders, repairs, and SLAs. The applications that make up the system share data across various departments (customer service, technical support, sales, field service, etc.) that use the information for their work. ESM facilitates information flow between departments and coordinates activities with external resources involved in the service business process.
Enterprise service management is also a term used to sometimes generically describe the use of Service processes and technologies across an organization. It is meant to be a broader term (like ERP and EAM) in contrast to IT Service Management which only concerns the management of IT Services. Companies like IFS and ServiceNow are examples of software vendors with ESM solutions.
History
The term has been used to describe the success that a number of organisations have had in using the Best Practice advice, found in frameworks such as ITIL, TOGAF, and others, for company wide service design and operation.
One early example of using service management Best Practice, initially evolved in IT, was uses ITIL to rethink facilities management.