Patent ID: 8874455

Claim:
An information management system providing a consolidated representation of a plurality of assets, the plurality of assets being physical objects associated with a plurality of disparate application systems, the system comprising: a data storage medium operable to store a plurality of global asset definitions representing enterprise-owned assets and customer-owned assets: wherein the enterprise-owned assets and the customer-owned assets are consolidated into a single repository in the data storage medium; wherein a global asset definition of the plurality of global asset definitions is stored as a record of an asset of the plurality of assets; wherein the global asset definition includes a functional specification of the asset and a physical attribute of the asset; wherein the customer-owned assets have been purchased and are owned by customers of the enterprise; wherein the single repository is administered by the enterprise; and wherein the global asset definition is transformed from an enterprise-owned asset into a customer-owned asset within the single repository; and a work management application server computer communicatively coupled to the data storage medium and providing a work flow manager operable to determine and manage the execution of a work flow associated with the global asset definition, the work flow including one or more tasks to be performed by one or more subsystems of the plurality of disparate application systems for accomplishing the functional specification, wherein the work flow spans across the plurality of disparate application systems.