Julien’s Auctions: from four systems to one connected operation
Invoices issued in under an hour. Warehouse searches reduced from hours to a minute. Four core back-office systems consolidated into one. And greater capacity to keep increasing auction volume without adding headcount at the same rate.
Julien’s Auctions is the auction house to the stars. Based in Gardena, California, and supported by a hundred of employees, the business produces high-profile auctions across the film, music, art and sports markets, attracting collectors, investors, fans and enthusiasts from around the world. Its sales have featured iconic artefacts and collections connected to Marilyn Monroe, John Lennon, Ringo Starr, Lady Gaga, Banksy, Cher, Michael Jackson, Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra, Jimi Hendrix, Pelé and many more.
As Julien’s grew, the technology supporting the business developed around individual systems chosen for specific functions, alongside solutions built internally and connected where possible. Over time, that created a fragmented back-office environment in which cataloguing, finance, inventory and client information often sat in separate places.
When growth starts exposing the gaps
Initially, even the search for new technology was narrowly focused. Mackenzie Flight, General Manager at Julien’s, was looking for an inventory system and considered around eight different inventory or adjacent platforms. But the wider operational problem soon became difficult to ignore. Inventory, cataloguing, finance and client information were spread across independent systems that did not reliably communicate with one another.
The consequences travelled through the business. Catalogue information could be amended in one system without the change appearing in another. Finance teams were duplicating work across buyer invoicing and consignor settlements.
The pressure was particularly visible behind the scenes. New processes and systems were being introduced without always giving every downstream team the same view of how they fitted together. Warehouse, administration and finance teams were often left bridging those gaps manually.
- "There was confusion because changes were being made, or new systems or processes were being implemented and there was no connection. […] We were all working twice as hard so that it looks okay on the surface." Mackenzie Flight, General Manager, Julien’s Auctions
That level of manual effort became increasingly difficult to sustain as the auction calendar grew. More sales meant more uploading, downloading, checking and re-entering the same information, increasing the pressure on finance and warehouse teams.
Bringing the operation together
The decision to adopt Artisio expanded the original inventory project into a broader restructuring of the back office.
Julien’s moved consignment management, inventory, cataloguing, client information, finance and post-sale processes into Artisio while retaining Basta as its live and timed auction provider. The integration between Artisio and Basta allows catalogue information and subsequent changes to flow between the systems without teams repeatedly exporting spreadsheets, downloading images and updating the same information in different places.
- Flight summarised the change simply: "We went from four systems down to one with Artisio."
That integration ability also reaches individual workflows. Julien’s uses DocuSign to generate consignment agreements, with terms and reserves defined in Artisio and carried through to finance. Previously, the team needed to audit the sale manually to confirm that those details were correct before closing. Keeping the information connected reduces many of those repetitive checks while keeping the relevant terms and reserves visible throughout the process, supporting data security and due diligence while reducing the risk of errors.
For Flight, that ability to keep information moving through the business is the defining benefit: "Honestly, my favourite thing about Artisio is the connectivity."
Faster invoicing and faster payment
The clearest measurable impact has been in finance.
Before Artisio, invoicing an entire sale could take hours and sometimes more than a day because of the architecture supporting the process. Julien’s can now close a sale and have invoices reaching clients in less than an hour.
- "We're getting paid quicker because we can invoice quicker. The faster the invoices go out, the more payments we've seen." Mackenzie Flight, General Manager, Julien’s Auctions
The simpler workflow has also reduced pressure on finance. Invoicing no longer relies on the same complicated sequence of manual steps and, with the appropriate permits access, other members of the team can manage the process whenever required. As Flight put it: "Even I can now invoice a sale."
Transactional communication around payment and shipping has improved as well, helping the post-sale process work more smoothly for both the Julien’s team and their clients.
The warehouse has seen an equally practical change. Finding an item could previously take hours or even a full day. With locations correctly recorded and stock scanned, Flight says it can now take around a minute.
Supporting a faster auction cadence without matching it in headcount
For Julien’s, the wider return becomes particularly significant when measured against the pace at which the business is operating.
Flight estimates that, under the previous architecture, finance could have required around three additional people to support the increasing workload where one may now be sufficient. She equated the difference between those two roles to approximately 80 staff hours each week. She also believes further warehouse headcount would have been required to keep pace with the same growth.
- Brian Schulte, Director of Information Systems at Geller, put the relationship between the technology and Julien’s auction cadence plainly: "With the pace of auctions as we're doing now, we wouldn’t have been able to do it without Artisio."
Flight agreed that without changing the underlying processes, the alternative would have been to keep hiring people to compensate for the amount of manual data entry, uploading, downloading and checking required by the previous systems.
That is where the operational impact extends beyond individual time savings. Julien’s has created additional capacity to manage a busier schedule and a higher volume of auctions without increasing finance and warehouse headcount at the same rate.
Managing a major implementation
Changing systems across so many parts of the business naturally created concerns. Schulte entered the project with what he describes as "built-in cynicism and scepticism with any SAAS provider". His principal questions were around implementation support and the conversion of historical data.
The onboarding process included close collaboration with Julien’s team and on-site support in Gardena. Essential requirements for go-live were separated from work that could follow in a later implementation phase, helping the team keep the project focused and manageable.
- Schulte’s assessment afterwards was straightforward: "It was met and exceeded expectations."
Flight similarly describes a rollout without significant hiccups and credits both her team’s openness to change and the way questions and feedback were handled throughout implementation by the Artisio team.
- "There really hasn't been any hiccups in terms of the rollout and implementation. Our team was so open to the change. They wanted this change. They wanted to have something that made their lives easier."
For Julien’s team, trust became an important part of the process, particularly the confidence that questions would be answered directly and that issues would be acknowledged and worked through rather than avoided.
Building on a connected technology base
Julien’s continues to develop what it can do with a more connected technology environment.
Client management is one example. Before Artisio, Julien’s used multiple separate, modular systems, which collectively made up their back-office auction management solution. This led to disjoined workflows which made accessing, matching, reconciling buyer and consignor data difficult. Bringing that information together gives the team a much stronger foundation for understanding client relationships over time.
The open API is supporting further projects too. Flight describes work in which photography can flow into Artisio without the manual upload and download processes that would previously have sat behind it. Changes to catalogue information can also be pushed from Artisio through to Basta and reflected on the website within minutes.
The immediate results are already visible across the operation: fewer systems, less repetitive work, faster invoicing and payment, quicker stock retrieval and greater capacity to support an increasingly demanding auction schedule.
For Flight, the experience comes down to the combination of the software and the people responsible for delivering it:
- "It’s a combination of the product and obviously the care and the attention of Artisio team that was part of the delivery of it and onboarding of it."
Her verdict on the change itself is equally clear: "It's been great for us. It's been such a game changer for us in so many ways."
