It happened during finals week.

Hundreds of students were deep into timed online exams. In the lecture halls, Wi-Fi-dependent presentations were underway. Across campus, administrators were mid-meeting, connected through Teams.

And then, the Wi-Fi just... vanished.

Screens froze. Tempers rose. Social media exploded. The IT team’s phones rang off the hook, their inboxes flooded within minutes. It wasn’t just an outage—it was a breakdown in the heartbeat of campus life.

By the time the issue was resolved, the fallout was widespread: missed exam submissions, delayed schedules, and a campus-wide loss of trust in “the system.”

But here’s what no one talks about:

Why did this feel like a surprise?

You Prepare for Everything… Except Digital Emergencies

You rehearse fire drills. You have snow day protocols, lockdown procedures, backup plans for in-person disruption. But when it comes to digital crises—network failures, cyber threats, service disruptions—many educational institutions are still reacting in real-time with duct-tape solutions.

You don’t need more Wi-Fi boosters or bigger IT teams.

You need a better system.

This is where IT Service Management (ITSM) and Enterprise Service Management (ESM) come in—not just as frameworks or toolsets, but as a shift in mindset.

ITSM Isn’t Just for the IT Department

Most schools still treat IT as a help desk—something you call when things break. But modern ITSM is about building systems of prevention, not just repair.

It’s about:

• Mapping out every digital touchpoint in the student and faculty journey
• Defining what happens when something breaks—and who does what
• Automating the repetitive so humans can focus on the critical
• Creating a knowledge base that empowers self-service instead of bottlenecks

In the context of that finals-week outage, ITSM would’ve meant:

• Real-time alerts and prioritization based on service impact
• Automated incident routing to the right teams
• Communication updates pushed out to affected users
• A root cause analysis baked into the resolution process
• Post-incident reviews that fuel continuous improvement

That’s not “tech support.” That’s infrastructure intelligence.

ESM: Because IT Isn’t the Only Service Students Rely On

Enterprise Service Management expands the discipline beyond IT—because when an incident happens, the ripple effects reach everyone:

Facilities. Registrar. HR. Security. Procurement.

Think of ESM as your digital fire evacuation plan.

It ensures every department plays its part. It connects systems that typically operate in silos. And most importantly, it makes service delivery across campus consistent, transparent, and resilient.

When ESM is in place:

• Faculty know how to escalate issues outside of IT’s scope
• Students can track the status of service requests across departments
• Institutional leaders get visibility into systemic bottlenecks
• Every “incident” becomes a chance to strengthen—not strain—the organization

Culture Shift > Tech Stack

The real story isn’t about platforms. It’s about priorities.

Educational institutions that treat ITSM/ESM as checkboxes or back-office initiatives are missing the point. These systems aren’t just about incident tickets and workflows. They’re about building a digital campus that works under pressure—just like a physical one does during emergencies.

When digital infrastructure is treated with the same respect as physical infrastructure, something powerful happens:

• Students stop seeing tech as unreliable.
• Faculty stop dreading every new software rollout.
• IT stops being the scapegoat—and starts being the strategic partner.

The Next “Fire Drill” Might Be a Cyberattack

Or a service desk crash during registration week.

Or a broken single sign-on system on the first day of term.

The question is: when that moment comes, will your institution react… or respond?

If your campus still views incident management as an IT-only issue, it’s time to evolve.

If you still rely on one team to carry the digital weight of an entire institution, you’re already behind.

Because in the modern education landscape, resilience isn’t just physical.

It’s digital.

And it’s shared.

Final Thought: Build Systems That Learn

Every IT incident is a story—of what failed, yes, but also of what could be improved, automated, clarified, or scaled.

With the right ITSM and ESM foundations, you stop firefighting. You start fireproofing.

And when the Wi-Fi goes down, or the next digital disruption hits?

You’ll already know what to do.

Because you’ve planned for it—not just with technology, but with purpose.