Continuing our series of reviews of our previous podcasts, highlighting the nuggets of brilliant advice and information they contain.
This week’s focus is on Shane Carlson’s episode, on how an end user’s experience can build consistency across the piece.
The former prison guard
Shane Carlson’s journey into IT started perhaps in the most unlikely of places, as a prison guard.
“I took this job it was with the state at the time, they had good benefits and decent pay. I studied to be break more into the technical world.
“The interesting part of it is you learn so much about humans, and how humans behave in an environment like that. And I always tell people, it’s a microcosm of society at large. You’ve got every walk of life.
“The only thing that separated, many of us who had the keys and were on the outside of the upper cells was one decision.”
ESM – Waypoints on the journey
Each podcast, Barclay and Ian explore what Enterprise Service Management means – and Shane was no exception.
To him, ESM has been talked about for 20 years or more but, as with anything in this little corner of the industry, there are lots of different ways of looking at it and describing it.
“Services in general, are something that can be consistently delivered at their core. It’s someone over here on the left with a need, and someone over here on the right, with a capability to deliver for that need.
“The messy part in the middle is where we figure out how do we connect that person with that need to the person who’s capable of supporting that need.”
ESM is not a single tangible thing, but rather a series of waypoints on a journey – imagine several organisations all delivering a form of service, and the aim is to be consistent about that from the end-user point of view.
“The HR world call this moments that matter, someone that has a need, and we want to make sure that they can one go to the same place to get that need met, have a consistent experience, whether they need something from it from facilities, from legal from finance, from HR, anyone in that 17 groups of people who are fulfilling a need for that employee, we want to make it easy for them.”
Global Business Services
IT seems to have found itself front and centre in this emergence or evolution of service management.
“They’re sitting here, taking requests from facilities, HR and legal and finance and all these places to house these things, or implement a piece of technology that these groups have individually bought or in many cases coming to IT and saying, ‘Hey, I know you have this tool that you use to track work and enable things, can we use that too’ so I think it’s been for the most part, very opportunistic.
When put like that it seems so obvious, and yet we all know from experience that this is not the case.
Tribal languages
Shane explains: “It comes down to the fact that we all speak different languages. in HR, they think of their interactions on a case basis. In facilities. It’s a problem in finance, it’s a request, and it it’s either an incident request, or something else. And I think because we all speak different tribal languages, it’s been very difficult to coalesce around a single concept of service and how services delivered until very recently.”
Who are the champions?
If people have a hard time getting something as simple as a password reset, then it can be difficult for an IT organisation to speak with credibility outside of itself.
That credibility comes from a trusted source, with a proven capability to deliver on other business critical things.
So we find ourselves coming back to end-user experience – HR are becoming the champions of the employee experience (think onboarding, leavers, etc).
“A lot of organisations have gotten to the point where they actually appoint someone who’s responsible for some form of transformation. They’re the ones who become the champions for this concept of let’s transform these legacy work patterns, these legacy ways of working into something that’s it’s much more user friendly, from an employee point of view from a partner point of view, etc.”
Key Takeaways
ESM is not a new thing: The concept has been around for a couple of decades, but with the advance of technology, and also as a result of business changes during the pandemic, organisations look to manage across the business better.
Improve the experience – the moments that matter: The reason why HR is often at the forefront of change is that they look at the overall experience. People are more likely to come along on the journey if their overall experience has not been one of frustration and pain,
The desire to change and transform is critical: Put aside departmental priorities and look at a common goal of the organisation.
Experience architecture: Have someone in your organisation who is responsible for looking at how your end users experience technology, and making sure that for similar user journeys, you have similar experiences.
Listen to Shane on the Enterprise Digital Podcast
Connect with Erika via X (formerly Twitter) @ITSMPundit or find him on Linked In.
The Enterprise Digital Podcast is a regular discussion on all matters related to Enterprise Service Management and Digital Transformation. The hosts are Barclay Rae and Ian Aitchison, who share and discuss their thoughts on the converging worlds of technology, service management, people and management, business and corporate development, governance, automation and more… Regular guests will be invited to try and get a word in …
Listen to the podcasts on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Google Podcasts.
