However, it is worth immediately distinguishing ESM from the digitization of departmental processes. ESM does not change what HR or administration do. It changes the way they manage requests, priorities, and accountability. It is the same logic that IT has been using for years in incident and request management — transferred to the level of the entire organization.
The global ESM market was valued at around USD 10.5 billion in 2024, with an annual growth rate of 18% between 2020 and 2024. This growth does not result from fashion. It results from specific operational problems that organizations want to solve.
Where the Pressure for ESM Comes From — Data Worth Knowing
The costs of unstructured internal communication are well documented. According to the McKinsey Global Institute, the average knowledge worker spends around 28% of the workweek managing email and almost 20% searching for information inside the organization. Together, this is almost half of the working week consumed by communication that, to a large extent, concerns service-related matters — requests, questions, reports — handled in an unorganized way.
A study by Interact showed that 19.8% of working time — the equivalent of one full working day per week — is lost by employees searching for information needed to complete a task. A significant part of this communication is precisely internal service-related matters: where to submit a request for equipment, who to contact about access to a system, who is responsible for repairing the air conditioning in the office.
These numbers are not abstract. They translate into a real operational cost that does not appear in any departmental report — because it is scattered across mailboxes, chat histories, and notes from phone conversations.
The Trap of Multiple Platforms — the Most Common Mistake in ESM Implementation
When organizations decide to structure internal service handling, they often make one mistake: they implement a separate tool for each department. IT has its own system. HR implements dedicated software for employee requests. Administration gets a ticketing system. Finance handles requests through a module in the ERP.
The effect is predictable: instead of one problem — communication fragmentation through email — the organization has a new problem: data fragmentation across platforms. Reporting requires consolidation from four sources. Integrations between systems cost money and require maintenance. The employee still has to know which platform to log into with their issue.
A mature approach to ESM starts from the opposite assumption: instead of adding more tools, the existing platform should be extended. If an organization has an ITSM system serving IT, the same system — with the right configuration of queues, service catalogs, and responsible groups — should serve HR, administration, and finance. One interface for employees. One source of data for management.
Three Areas Where ESM Brings the Greatest Operational Effect
HR: Onboarding as a Structured Flow, Not an Email Chain
Onboarding a new employee is a sequence of several dozen tasks spread across departments. Accounts in IT systems, application access, equipment, documents, initial training, access card. When HR and IT have to cooperate closely through a series of steps that are largely manual and prone to errors, the result is an environment in which all teams provide services, but access to them is accidental.
In the ESM model, onboarding is one flow in the system. One request automatically generates tasks for all involved parties — each with its own deadline and assigned responsibility. The status is visible to everyone. The new employee’s manager does not have to call IT to ask whether the account is already active.
Administration and Facilities: Prioritization Instead of Management by Loudness
Requests to administration and facilities have a specific characteristic: they vary greatly in urgency, and without a system, their prioritization usually follows the principle of whoever reports the problem louder. That is not management — it is reacting to pressure.
In the ESM model, every request enters the system with a category and priority. Workload is visible. Deadlines are monitored. The head of administration has hard data for the first time: how many requests came in this month, which types dominate, where the bottlenecks are. Instead of managing “by feel,” they manage based on information.
Finance: Requests With Full History and Assigned Responsibility
Requests for cost approval, access to financial systems, invoices for approval — this is a category of matters that, in most organizations, lives in email chains with many recipients and unclear responsibility for the decision.
In the ESM model, every request has a defined type, specified fields to complete, routing to the right person, and a response deadline. The full communication history is in one place. There is no need to search the mailbox — the status of the request is visible in the system to all interested parties.
What Is Needed for Effective ESM — Four Conditions
Technology alone is not enough. ESM is an organizational project that requires four elements.
A Service Catalog for Each Department
Before requests start entering the system, the organization must define what services each department provides and how it wants to handle them. What is a standard request that can be handled according to an established process? What requires escalation? What information must be collected for each type of matter? Without this conceptual work, the system will quickly fill up with unstructured requests that are no better managed than email.
Defined Service Levels
ESM without defined SLAs is a nicer mailbox. Each type of request should have a defined response time and resolution time — adjusted to the specifics of the department and the priority of the matter. HR does not handle vacation requests with the same priority as a report of access failure to a production system. The system must understand and enforce this difference.
A key element of ESM is a contact point available to all employees — one portal where an employee selects the request category, fills in the appropriate form, and tracks the status of the matter without needing to know which department the problem belongs to. This is a fundamental change in the employee experience: instead of wondering who to ask, they enter the portal and submits the request.
Organization-Level Reporting
Departments gain one place to monitor incoming work. Leaders see volume patterns and the time requests remain open, while comparing efficiency against clear solution benchmarks removes guesswork from planning. This is a change whose value is difficult to overestimate in organizations that have managed internal services for years without any data.
Where to Start — a Pragmatic Approach to ESM Implementation
Not every organization has to implement ESM in full scope from day one. A pragmatic approach assumes gradual platform expansion, starting with the area that will bring the greatest effect with the smallest organizational effort.
The most common starting point is employee onboarding — because it involves many departments at once and delivers quickly visible results. Organizations that start here build an internal argument for further extensions.
The second natural step is administration and facilities — an area with a large number of requests, usually managed so far by phone or email without any structure. The effects become visible quickly: fewer lost issues, better prioritization, the first data for reporting.
HR as a standalone ESM area usually comes third — it requires more conceptual work when defining the service catalog, but brings high value in organizations with dynamic employment growth or high employee turnover.
ESM and Automation — Where Technology Strengthens Structure
Automation of service processes is the natural next step after structuring ESM. Organizations that have well-defined queues, request types, and service levels can build automation rules that perform repetitive actions without human involvement.
Automatic assignment of a request to the right agent or group based on category and location. Status change after a defined period of inactivity. Generation of tasks for multiple departments simultaneously after an onboarding request is submitted. Escalation to a manager when the SLA approaches its limit. ESM automates repetitive coordination tasks such as request triage, routing, approval flows, and status notifications. Teams spend less time manually assigning work or following up by email, which allows them to handle growing volumes without a proportional increase in resources.
How Mint Service Desk Supports ESM
Mint Service Desk is designed as a platform supporting both IT and other departments of the organization — without the need to implement separate tools.
Service Catalog allows different request types to be defined for different departments, with appropriate forms, queues, and delivery groups.
Advanced SLA Management includes real-time monitoring and automatic escalations for every type of service and every department — which is particularly important in multi-contract and multi-branch environments.
Reporting aggregates data from all departments in one view, providing management with information that was previously unavailable.
For organizations in regulated sectors, the platform is available in on-premises and managed models — which means full control over data without giving up ESM functionality. This is particularly important where employee and operational data cannot leave controlled infrastructure.
ESM is not an IT project. It is a decision about how an organization wants to manage its own internal efficiency — and whether it wants to have data to make those decisions.
Technology is a necessary but insufficient condition. ESM delivers real value only when it is accompanied by organizational work: defined service catalogs, clear service levels, departmental involvement, and management’s readiness to manage based on data.
Organizations that approach ESM pragmatically — start with one area, expand gradually, and do not implement a separate platform for each department — achieve results faster and more sustainably. Not because they have a larger budget. Because they know where to start.
Sources
McKinsey Global Institute, Interact, AXELOS and ITSM.tools, TechnologyMatch, ManageEngine, Compucom, Joe The IT Guy, ALVAO.
