Rethinking ROI: Why Right-Sized ESM Is the Future
For years, Enterprise Service Management (ESM) has been positioned as a strategic investment designed to streamline operations, centralise services, and deliver long-term efficiency gains across the business. The model was clear: invest heavily upfront, commit to a large platform, and forecast transformational ROI over multiple years. But for many organisations, that promised return has never fully materialised.
The ROI Myth: Big Investment, Limited Return
The traditional approach to ESM often required large-scale, upfront platform investments and multi-year transformation plans with rigid and restrictive licensing agreements.
However business priorities are shifting faster than implementation timelines, Internal capacity to support large initiatives is often overestimated and leadership changes or changing priorities derail the original roadmap.
The result - organisations are left with expensive, under utilised platforms and a business case that remains completely unrealised.
The Lock-In Problem
As technology evolves, locking into a single platform or vendor over multiple years no longer makes sense. Modern enterprise organisations need flexibility to adopt new tools, scale in response to real-world demand, and pivot as needs change. Legacy ESM models with rigid licensing, monolithic structures, and slow implementation cycles leave you stuck with tools that no longer fit.
Right-Sized ESM: A Modern, Agile Approach
Modern SaaS-based ESM platforms offer a fundamentally different model, one that prioritises suitability over scale, and value over theory. These platforms enable organisations to start small and scale by prioritising targeted use cases in IT, HR, or Facilities within weeks, not months, thereby delivering more immediate value.
- Maintain agility – Evolve workflows and service models as the business changes
- Avoid lock-in – Benefit from modular architectures and flexible licensing
- Preserve optionality – Avoid being trapped by a single technology stack as new capabilities emerge
This approach isn't just more cost-effective, it’s more sustainable. It supports real-time learning, incremental improvement, and investment that reflects actual business needs.
From Forecasted ROI to Realised Value
Executives are shifting focus. Instead of betting on five-year ROI projections, they're asking:
- How quickly can we demonstrate value?
- Are we only paying for what we actually use?
- Can our service management approach evolve with us?
Right-Sized ESM answers these questions. It moves organisations from unbridled exuberant ambition (and cost) to practical, real-world impact, without the financial and operational drag of legacy models.