What is IT Service Management (ITSM) in plain English?

IT Service Management (ITSM) is the discipline of designing, delivering, operating, and improving IT services in a structured and repeatable way. Instead of handling issues ad hoc through emails or chat messages, ITSM provides defined processes for how services are requested, fulfilled, supported, and measured.

In practice, ITSM focuses on treating IT as a set of services provided to the organization, rather than a collection of technical tasks. This includes managing incidents, service requests, changes, approvals, and service levels with clear ownership and visibility.

ITSM is commonly implemented using a dedicated platform that acts as the system of record for requests, workflows, approvals, and performance metrics.

What is the difference between a Help Desk, a Service Desk, and ITSM?

A Help Desk typically focuses on reactive support, such as fixing incidents or answering user questions. Its scope is usually limited to ticket intake and basic resolution.

A Service Desk expands on this by acting as a single point of contact for users, managing not only incidents but also service requests, access requests, and communications related to IT services.

ITSM goes further by defining the end-to-end processes behind those interactions, including workflows, approvals, SLAs, reporting, and continuous improvement. In this sense, a service desk is a function, while ITSM is the operating model behind it.

What is Enterprise Service Management (ESM), and how is it different from ITSM?

Enterprise Service Management (ESM) is the practice of extending ITSM principles and tools beyond IT to other departments such as HR, Facilities, Finance, Legal, or Security.

While ITSM focuses on IT services, ESM applies the same structured approach—requests, workflows, approvals, SLAs, and reporting—to non-IT services. The goal is to provide a consistent service experience across the organization.

ESM typically requires a platform that supports cross-department workflows, shared governance, and multiple service catalogs while still allowing teams to operate independently.

Is InvGate Service Management an ITSM tool or an ESM platform?

InvGate Service Management is designed to support both IT Service Management (ITSM) and Enterprise Service Management (ESM) use cases.

It provides core ITSM capabilities such as incident management, request fulfillment, approvals, and SLA tracking, while also allowing organizations to model services for non-IT departments using the same platform.

This dual focus enables organizations to start with IT and expand into ESM without adopting a separate tool or redesigning their service processes.