Running an online marketplace like Auctionet isn’t straightforward. They work with 78 auction houses across Europe and have sold over 3 million items through their platform, everything from antique furniture to fine art. On top of that, they offer transport for every item sold, no matter where the buyer is in the world. With so many moving parts, there are a lot of stakeholders involved and even more daily processes to keep running smoothly.
Since launching in Sweden in 2011, Auctionet has helped auction houses focus on what they do best, while they take care of logistics, customer service, marketing, and finance. Within ten years, houses from the UK, Germany, and Spain were actively using the platform, listing over 20,000 items daily. By 2024, those numbers had nearly doubled.
Today, they run three logistics centers in Sweden, one in the UK and one in Germany, and they're supported by a network of collection points across Europe.
The Challenge
One of the biggest challenges for Auctionet was managing the unpredictable flow of goods to their logistics centers. With such a wide range of items arriving from multiple auction houses, often at short notice, it wasn’t always easy to forecast or plan ahead. This caused temporary hold-ups in the logistics flow, making it harder to move sold items onward as quickly as they would have liked. Items remained longer than expected before being transported which made delivery times less predictable for the end customer.
The Approach
Auctionet got in touch with us to get a clearer picture of the inefficiencies in their end-to-end flows. Through our training programs and digital transformation platform, both managers and employees were brought into the process. Together, they mapped out the full flow from item arrival to final delivery and pinpointed where bottlenecks occurred. With everyone involved, they were able to have more open, constructive conversations and start making real improvements. By making changes to steps within their flow, they were able to reduced the delivery time significantly.
Delivery time reduced from 17 days to 7
This decrease in delivery time made a noticeable difference across their day-to-day operations: