<![CDATA[ITSM ticketing systems are usually judged by metrics such as ticket volume, resolution rate, handling time, and SLA compliance. But these numbers can mislead when a system stays busy yet no longer does what it was built for. This study examines the situation we call functional displacement: formal infrastructure drifting from routing IT services to routing accountability. We compared two medium-sized B2B distribution firms in Jakarta, alike in size and sector but run differently. Twelve informants were purposively chosen and interviewed in semi-structured sessions. Their accounts were read against six months of ticket logs, internal documents, and a four-week sample of operational WhatsApp chats. We coded the interviews thematically, cross-checked patterns across four sources, and compared formal tickets with informal coordination using two diagnostic indicators: the timing gap from 40 matched case pairs and a category representation index, checked against ticket content. On paper, both firms looked healthy, with resolution above 80 percent and strong SLA compliance, yet the meaning had shifted. In the founder-led firm, tickets were usually opened after a problem was already settled informally, mainly to prove it had been reported upward, a vertical displacement. In the professionally managed firm, tickets came early but thin on detail, marking which division reported first, a horizontal one. We propose the concept of functional displacement together with an early diagnostic framework whose signals, drawn from two cases, should be read as warnings rather than fixed standards.]]>
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