01
Stand-alone asset tools waste millions and hide the real estate
How we overcame it: One unified asset graph across HW, SW, SaaS and cloud — reconciled continuously by the Discovery Agent, with a confidence score on every record.
← Selected Work07 · Enterprise · Agentic AI
Inventa · 2026 · Enterprise IT Asset Management
Reduce IT asset cost & riskwith agentic AI.
A UX case study on collapsing seven stand-alone asset tools into one calm canvas — where AI agents watch every hardware, software and SaaS asset for waste, expiry and risk, and asset managers make one decision instead of chasing ten spreadsheets.
Role
Lead UX
Domain
ITAM · Agentic AI
Scope
Discover → Design
Year
2026
Problem
Organisations waste millions on stand-alone asset tools. Silos hide the real estate. Renewals, compliance and end-of-life slip through gaps — turning ITAM into a firefight, not a strategy.
Approach
A three-move framework — Consolidate, Automate, Optimize — supported by a fleet of role-scoped AI agents that watch, reason and act on every asset from procurement to retirement.
Outcome
One canvas, one truth: 75% higher app utilization by product type, 100% on-time EOL retirement, and up to $30M saved by optimizing software and closing security vulnerabilities.
On this page
Inventa is a concept UX study for an agentic IT asset management platform. It reframes ITAM as a decision surface, not a database — asset managers arrive to a home screen of prioritized actions drafted by AI agents, each grounded in live data across hardware, software, SaaS and cloud. The goal is simple: fewer tools, less waste, lower risk, and every dollar of technology spend traceable back to a business outcome.
The Vision
Consolidate. Automate. Optimize.
01
Consolidate
Collapse redundant tools, close visibility gaps, and reduce technical debt with one lifecycle model across hardware, software and SaaS.
02
Automate
Let AI agents drive alignment across ITAM, security and finance — automating compliance checks, renewals, reclamation and retirement.
03
Optimize
Maximise the value of every technology investment — prioritising spend against business goals, not last quarter's spreadsheet.
Process
Two phases · one agentic spine
A grounded Discover → Design cadence, framed around a simple question: which decisions should a human still make, and which should an AI agent draft, defend or execute?
Phase 01
Discover
Understand the estate, the operating rhythm and the risk surface — before drawing a single screen.
- Analyst brief & solution audit (ServiceNow, Flexera, ITAM peers)
- 12 stakeholder interviews — ITAM, SecOps, Finance, CIO
- Estate mapping across HW, SW, SaaS & cloud
- Lifecycle & renewal calendar review
- 3 real customer stories (incl. InfoSpan 600k+ asset estate)
- Agentic AI capability & guardrails review
Phase 02
Design
Turn discovery into a coherent, testable, agent-aware surface.
- Task flows & agent choreography maps
- Iterative wireframes for 3 personas
- Agent-first interaction patterns (draft · defend · execute)
- 48 hi-fidelity screens across web & mobile
- Trust & explainability system for every AI action
- Roadmap dashboard aligning spend to business goals
12
Stakeholder interviews
5
Personas
4
Journey maps
6
AI agents
48
Hi-fi screens
3
Customer stories
Problem Statements & How We Overcame Them
Six blockers.
Six breakthroughs.
Interview transcripts distilled into six recurring blockers — each one traceable to a design move in Inventa.
02
Data and operating silos leave visibility incomplete and inaccurate
How we overcame it: A single lifecycle model, shared by ITAM, security and finance — every asset has one owner, one status and one auditable history.
03
Technology investments drift from business strategy, adding cost and risk
How we overcame it: A Portfolio Agent ties every dollar of spend to a business goal on a live roadmap dashboard — re-prioritisation happens in the tool, not in a slide.
04
Publisher compliance evaluations are slow, manual and error-prone
How we overcame it: The Compliance Agent assembles evidence packs on demand — entitlements, usage and provenance for any publisher, exportable in one click.
05
End-of-life assets and CVEs slip through, creating silent risk
How we overcame it: The Risk & EOL Agent watches EOL dates and vulnerability feeds, triggering retirement and patch workflows automatically with a signed audit record.
06
Teams welcome automation but distrust anything they can't explain
How we overcame it: Every agent action carries an evidence panel — signals, policies and precedents — with guardrails, thresholds and named human approvers.
Who we designed for
Five personas, one shared canvas
ITAM sits at the intersection of finance, security, operations and procurement. Inventa had to serve all of them without forcing any one team into someone else's mental model.
IT Asset Manager
Owns the asset lifecycle end-to-end. Lives in spreadsheets, publisher portals and reconciliation reports.
Needs
- Single view of HW, SW & SaaS
- Automated reconciliation
- Publisher compliance evidence
CIO / IT Leader
Answers to the CFO on tech spend and to the CEO on risk. Wants outcomes, not tickets.
Needs
- Portfolio-level KPIs
- Risk exposure at a glance
- Spend aligned to business goals
Security & Compliance Lead
Chases end-of-life assets, unpatched software and shadow SaaS. Every miss is an audit risk.
Needs
- EOL & vulnerability signals
- Compliance evidence trail
- Automated retirement workflow
Procurement / Finance Partner
Approves renewals, negotiates contracts, models scenarios. Needs numbers they can defend.
Needs
- Renewal & utilization data
- Scenario & TCO modelling
- Vendor consolidation signals
Service Desk / IT Ops
Provisions and reclaims devices and licenses daily. Wants zero-touch where possible.
Needs
- Reclaim & reassign workflows
- Employee self-service
- Agent-driven task queue
Research findings
What 12 interviews surfaced
The same six patterns kept appearing — across industries, estate sizes and maturity levels. Each one re-scoped a design decision.
Silos
“Nobody owns the whole estate”
HW, SW, SaaS and cloud each live in a different tool, a different team and a different fiscal cycle. Nobody can answer ‘what do we own?’ in one query.
Waste
“We pay for what we don't use”
Idle licenses, over-provisioned SaaS and forgotten cloud resources routinely account for 20–30% of software spend.
Risk
“EOL assets slip through”
End-of-life hardware and unpatched software linger for months after retirement dates — a silent, growing vulnerability surface.
Compliance
“Audits are a fire drill”
Publisher true-ups require weeks of manual reconciliation across five systems. Evidence is assembled after the fact, never continuously.
Alignment
“Spend isn't tied to strategy”
Technology investments are approved line-by-line, not against business outcomes. The portfolio drifts from the plan.
Trust
“Automation feels risky”
Teams welcome AI help but need explainability, guardrails and a human-in-the-loop for anything that touches contracts or production.
Screens · deep dive
The product, screen by screen.
Five flagship surfaces of Inventa — each shown at full desktop fidelity, then unpacked below in the pain-point gallery.
01
Asset Catalog
I can't see what we actually own.
One unified catalog with source, status and utilization on every card — reconciled by the Discovery Agent.
02
Onboarding Workflow
Onboarding a new joiner takes days.
A visual, agent-choreographed workflow — LaptopAgent, LicenseAgent, CredentialAgent — handing off with a full audit trail.
03
Agent Model & Chat
I don't know what the agent will actually do.
Every agent exposes its model, first-message mode, system prompt and live cost/latency — inspectable in one panel.
04
Provisioning
Provisioning fails silently and nobody notices.
First-class provisioning config with ordered fallbacks, asset tracker binding and inline health signals.
05
Analytics
I can't defend the spend to Finance.
A live matrix — total allocation minutes, allocations, spend, cost per allocation — with per-agent trend charts.
Screens · user pain points
Nineteen surfaces. Nineteen pain points. Nineteen fixes.
Each Inventa screen was designed against a specific quote from the interviews. The pain came first — the screen is the answer.
01 · Asset Catalog
“I can't see what we actually own.”
Hardware, software and SaaS live in different tools. Coverage gaps and duplicates hide the real estate.
How Inventa fixes it
One unified catalog with source, status and utilization on every card — reconciled by the Discovery Agent.
02 · Onboarding Workflow
“Onboarding a new joiner takes days.”
Laptop, licenses, credentials and access are ordered across four tools and three tickets. Handoffs stall.
How Inventa fixes it
A visual, agent-choreographed workflow — LaptopAgent, LicenseAgent, CredentialAgent — handing off with a full audit trail.
03 · Agent Model & Chat
“I don't know what the agent will actually do.”
Automation feels like a black box. Teams need to see the persona, the prompt and the guardrails before they trust it.
How Inventa fixes it
Every agent exposes its model, first-message mode, system prompt and live cost/latency — inspectable in one panel.
04 · Provisioning
“Provisioning fails silently and nobody notices.”
Fallback paths, provider outages and drift live in tribal knowledge — until a joiner shows up without a laptop.
How Inventa fixes it
First-class provisioning config with ordered fallbacks, asset tracker binding and inline health signals.
05 · Analytics
“I can't defend the spend to Finance.”
Utilization, cost and allocation numbers live in three exports. Renewals arrive without a story.
How Inventa fixes it
A live matrix — total allocation minutes, allocations, spend, cost per allocation — with per-agent trend charts.
06 · AI Search
“Finding anything means opening five tabs.”
Agents, dashboards, integrations and teams each live in their own list. Cross-navigation is broken.
How Inventa fixes it
One command-K style AI search over actions, recents and every page — with keyboard shortcuts for power users.
07 · Templates · Clone
“Every new agent starts from zero.”
Provisioning rules, prompts and tool bindings get re-authored per agent — inconsistent and slow.
How Inventa fixes it
Clone-a-template flow: name, first member and description, then reuse across any agent in seconds.
08 · Global Prompts
“Tone and policy drift across agents.”
Identity, purpose and guardrails get copy-pasted between agents — and slowly diverge with every edit.
How Inventa fixes it
Global Templates for prompt, identity and purpose — one source of truth applied across every conversation node.
09 · Credentials
“Credentials expire and audits catch us.”
Phone numbers, API keys and provider credentials rotate on their own clocks — hard to see, easy to miss.
How Inventa fixes it
Credential detail view with activation state, usage trends and inline configuration — one place to renew and audit.
10 · Conversational Ops
“I can't wait for a dashboard to load an answer.”
Ops leads need cost, license and risk answers in seconds — not another BI ticket or exported CSV.
How Inventa fixes it
A chat surface that runs multi-step tool calls (get/license, allocations, savings) and returns a defensible summary with numbers.
11 · Integrations
“Nothing talks to anything.”
Provisioning, model and identity providers live in disconnected consoles; wiring them is a services project.
How Inventa fixes it
A provider gallery split by role — Provisioning vs Model — with one-click pairing and status per integration.
12 · Monitors
“I only find out something broke from a team chat DM.”
Agent health, allocations and category drift are invisible until a stakeholder complains.
How Inventa fixes it
A live monitor grid with status, category and per-agent counters — bulk status changes and alerts in one place.
13 · Profile & Account
“Account controls are buried and scary.”
Password resets, org membership and destructive actions like account deletion hide in separate legacy screens.
How Inventa fixes it
One calm settings surface — password rotation, org context and typed-confirmation delete — guardrailed by design.
14 · Squad Setup
“Spinning up a new squad takes a week.”
New agent teams require org tickets, seat assignments and prompt copies before anything can run.
How Inventa fixes it
A two-field "Assigning your Team" modal — squad name plus first member — creates the workspace instantly.
15 · Call With Variables
“I can't test an agent with real employee context.”
Dry runs use static prompts, so bugs only surface in production allocations with real users.
How Inventa fixes it
"Call With Variables" injects dynamic values (name, company, asset) into a live agent call before rollout.
16 · Handoff Canvas
“I don't know which agent picks up when.”
Handoffs between LaptopAgent, LicenseAgent and CredentialAgent are hidden in code, not visible to ops.
How Inventa fixes it
A canvas view of every agent card with tools, handoff tools and live assigned/pending counts on each node.
17 · Tool Scripts
“The agent says the wrong thing on voicemail.”
Fallback scripts for provisioning, voicemail and exceptions are edited in code and forgotten.
How Inventa fixes it
A structured Provisioningmail Script editor — default message, custom script or silent skip — with beep deflection.
18 · Tool Library
“I don't know what tools even exist.”
Query, Transfer, Handoff, Send Text and third-party integrations live in scattered docs and code.
How Inventa fixes it
A single Tool Library — Core + Integration — with icons, categories and inline "Create Tool" to bootstrap fast.
19 · Escalation Paths
“Edge cases dead-end in the agent flow.”
"User wants to cancel appointment" or "speak to human" branches are undocumented and inconsistent.
How Inventa fixes it
Labeled edges on the handoff canvas make every escalation path explicit — cancel, speak-to-human, retry — auditable at a glance.
Agentic workflow
Six agents, one control room
Each agent owns a narrow slice of the lifecycle. Together they watch, reason, draft an action and route it to the right human — with a full audit trail behind every decision.
01
Agent
Discovery Agent
Continuously reconciles HW, SW, SaaS and cloud sources into one canonical asset graph.
→ Flags missing, duplicate or shadow assets
02
Agent
Utilization Agent
Correlates entitlements with actual usage across every product type and user cohort.
→ Drafts reclaim & downsize plans
03
Agent
Compliance Agent
Watches publisher contracts, license terms and audit clocks in real time.
→ Assembles evidence packs on demand
04
Agent
Renewal Agent
Models renewal scenarios against usage, roadmap and negotiation history.
→ Proposes buy · negotiate · consolidate
05
Agent
Risk & EOL Agent
Tracks end-of-life dates, CVEs and vendor advisories against the live estate.
→ Triggers retirement & patch workflows
06
Agent
Portfolio Agent
Aligns technology spend to business goals in a live roadmap dashboard.
→ Suggests re-prioritisation moves
Interaction contract
Draft · Defend · Execute
Draft
Every agent proposes an action with the evidence, the impact and the confidence attached.
Defend
Humans inspect the lineage — which signals, which policies, which precedents drove the recommendation.
Execute
One click routes the action through the right workflow: reclaim, renew, retire or escalate.
Design tenets
The five principles behind every screen
Agentic UX only works if trust is designed in from the first frame. Every wireframe was scored against these five tenets.
01
One estate
Hardware, software, SaaS and cloud share one lifecycle model — no more parallel truths.
02
Explainable
Every AI recommendation shows its evidence, its confidence and the policy behind it.
03
Human-in-loop
Anything that touches contracts, retirement or production requires a human approval.
04
Outcome-first
Screens surface the decision, not the data — the dashboard says ‘do this’, not ‘look at that’.
05
Auditable
Every action, agent and approval leaves a timestamped, exportable trail for audit and finance.
Information architecture
Sitemap · taxonomy · agents
The IA is organised around decisions, not tables. Every branch answers a question a real ITAM leader asks in a real week.
Inventa ├── Control Room · today's prioritised actions across agents ├── Estate · Hardware · Software · SaaS · Cloud │ ├── Asset detail · lineage · lifecycle · usage · risk │ └── Reconciliation · sources · conflicts · confidence ├── Agents · Discovery · Utilization · Compliance · Renewal · Risk · Portfolio ├── Workflows · Reclaim · Renew · Retire · Escalate ├── Compliance · Publisher contracts · evidence · audit clock ├── Roadmap · Spend vs. business goals · scenarios ├── Reports · Executive · Finance · Security └── Administration · Sources · Policies · Roles · Guardrails
Key features
Where Inventa becomes disruptive
Eight capabilities that, together, change what enterprises expect from an IT asset management surface.
01Tenet · One estate
Unified asset graph
A single canonical model reconciling HW, SW, SaaS and cloud from every discovery source. One asset ID, one lifecycle, one truth.
02Tenet · Outcome-first
Control Room home
The home screen is a prioritised list of agent-drafted decisions — not a dashboard of charts. Every card is one click away from action.
03Tenet · Explainable
Evidence panel on every action
Signals, policies and precedents are stacked next to each recommendation. Reject with a reason and the agent learns.
04Tenet · Automate
Publisher compliance auto-pack
Compliance Agent assembles a full evidence pack for any publisher on demand — usage, entitlements, provenance, versioning.
05Tenet · Automate
EOL & vulnerability retirement
Risk Agent watches EOL dates and CVEs, opens retirement workflows automatically, and closes them with a signed audit record.
06Tenet · Optimize
Renewal scenario modelling
Renewal Agent produces buy · negotiate · consolidate scenarios with modelled TCO — ready for finance in one export.
07Tenet · Human-in-loop
Guardrails & approvals
Every automation has a policy-defined blast radius. Anything above a threshold routes to a named human approver.
08Tenet · Auditable
Roadmap-to-outcome view
Portfolio Agent ties every dollar of spend to a business goal — so re-prioritisation isn't a fight, it's a click.
Customer story · inspiration
InfoSpan: 600,000+ assets, one platform
Problem
Growth outran the tools
Rapid acquisitions left InfoSpan with 600k+ IT assets managed in silos across disconnected legacy systems — no full visibility of what was owned or its status.
Solution
One platform, one lifecycle
A secure, scalable canvas to manage the growing estate — with automated workflows stitching ITAM, security and finance together.
Value
Time & cost, back to the business
50% reduction in manual tasks · 25% improvement in overall productivity · ~$1M anticipated annual savings in asset costs.
Outcomes
What the redefinition delivers
75%
Higher app utilization by product type
100%
On-time end-of-life retirement
$30M
Savings on software & vulnerabilities
6
AI agents, one control room
Inventa turns IT asset management from a cost-tracking chore into a strategic surface — where agentic AI carries the reconciliation, the compliance and the renewal math, and humans decide where the portfolio should go next.