However, with the advent of new technologies and business trends, such as GenAI, Cloud adoption, Data proliferation, Service Management transformation will also undergo significant changes to align with changing business outcomes. Following are the key Service Management trends that industry should watch out for in the next couple of years.

1. Organiza

tion Change Management will take a main stage from ITSM technical deployment:
ITSM implementation has traditionally hugely focused on technology configuration and deployment with comparatively limited focus on Organization Change Management aspects such as Trainings, Org. readiness, business enablement etc. 

However, with improved maturity of Service Management platforms like ServiceNow and availability of newer technologies such as GenAI, technical implementation should get completed in few days or weeks. On the other hand, with increased focused on Service experience, OCM will become more prominent for Service Management transformation programs. 

The below figure shows how potentially the shift will happen between technical deployment and OCM functions.

2. Service Management for industry verticals: All along, Service Management has been a horizontal function with no specific best practices for industry verticals. There have been few exceptions such as OSS/BSS stack for Telcos but largely there are no specific guidelines & best practices framework for industry specific service management processes.

However, companies have started focusing on processes and solutions that cater specifically to their business and that is resulting in product vendors launching industry specific solutions such as for financial Services (FSO), Telcos (Telecom Service Management, etc.).  This area will continue to expand and Service Management should eventually align with specific industry need and not just a generic of guidelines. 

3. Data Monetization: With the large amount of valuable data (CMDB configuration items, Assets, Foundation data, Business Services, etc.) managed in platforms, Service Management function will focus on monetization data that can be leveraged by business functions and large organization programs. As an example, for a large network upgrade program, data regarding network services and its linkages for business services and potential impact can be extremely useful. Instead of reinventing the wheel, business programs can subscribe of data offerings provided by Service Management to save additional efforts and cost. 

4. Enterprise Asset Management: With the expansion of Service Management to transform business processes, there has been a shift in the scope of Asset Management services in large organizations. IT Asset Management framework has already expanded to start managing enterprise Assets. This expansion will continue with Enterprise Asset Management becoming prominent function to manage end-to-end organization assets.

5. Service Integration & Management Automation: SIAM (Service Integration & Management) & Automation has been around for several years to harmonize and integrate processes for Service provider integrations. However, there is a lack of a single enterprise automation platforms that can define Service Management processes, benchmark maturity, integrate multiple variants of processes and provide scorecards for managing SIAM functions. There are still significant dependencies on manual process definitions and use of multiple disparate platforms to manage end-to-end SIAM functions. There should be focus on building an enterprise SIAM platform to provide an integrated and unified service experience despite multiple service providers delivering separate set of services.   

6. New technologies adoption will accelerate in maturing Service Management: With increased pressure on CxOs to drive innovation, adoption of newer technologies will accelerate such as IoT for discovering and automating machinery workflows, AR/VR for field service management, GenAI for platform build, Knowledge discovery, etc. 

7. Environmental, social, and corporate governance:  With organizations making ESG a top priority in company’s charter and several mandatory compliance regulations around the corner, it is expected for ESG to become a key part of Organizations’ Service Management strategy and Service Management will spear head driving definition and adoption of ESG initiatives.

8. Cost Takeout: There is never before focus on cost optimization across all Organziation’s functions and Service Management plays a key role in Modernizing IT while ensuring practices are deployed for cost savings. We expect there will be in increased investments in programs that can help organizations save cost be it License Management to reduce software spend, or increased AI led automation to improve productivity, self-service / Chatbots to reduce Service Desks cost, etc.

9. Observability: Organization are becoming more proactive in managing alerts and possible disruption. With the availability of modernized telemetry solutions and continued attention to reduce outages, Observability solutions will continue to be a top priority for CIOs. 

10. Increased focus on Service Experience: Enhancing user experience has been a continued focus of Service Management for last several years and this trend is expected to further accelerate. Business users’ expectations from IT are nothing less than the seamless UI experience that they get from interacting with modern platforms. This will ensure Service Experience theme will get further acceptance and acceleration and organization will continue to invest in UI / UX initiatives, building user personas, modernizing Service Management interfaces, simplifying processes and driving adoption.