The UK’s Leading Jewellery & Watches Auctioneer

Fellows Auctioneers serve a global clientele looking for quality jewellery, watches and high-end fashion collectables. They run on average 3-4 auctions weekly, comprising of circa 600 lots each. This means that their team are processing in the region of 2,000 items a week pre-auction and a similar amount post auction as they offer worldwide shipping.

This kind of operation requires intelligent and flexible automation in the back-office environment and the front-end website to create a lean experience for their users. Working in conjunction with the team at Auction Marketer, Fellows have developed a system that automates simple processes operationally and financially, allowing them to do more with less.

How was this achieved?

Fellows decided early on (2004) to utilise the NAV architecture from Microsoft and were instrumental in developing and customising this ERP/Finance package to work for the auction industry. In 2006 they briefed Auction Marketer (then Star Digital) to begin developing a set of tools that would translate data from the NAV system into a web front end. Over time the development continued until in 2020 Auction Marketer delivered a fully automated toolset alongside a full private label web-based bidding and user my account environment for both live and timed auctions, intrinsically linked in real time to the Microsoft NAV ERP architecture.

Fast forward to 2024, and Auction Marketer worked closely with Fellows to migrate the entire architecture to Microsoft Business Central, the successor to NAV, moving their back office from on premise servers to a fully Cloud based environment. This allowed the team at Auction Marketer to further hone the integration toolset to use real time endpoints for data transfer and to extend the functionality of the auction integration.

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‍What are the benefits?

As well as including all the great ‘My Account’ functionality that Auction Marker is renowned for, the upgraded integration included some new firsts for the Auction Marketer web platform, including:

• ‍Valuation Receipts -Users that submit valuation requests now have a temporary receipt created that can easily be turned into a pre-sale contract if the seller wishes to proceed.
• ‍Digital Contracts – Users can now log into their ‘my account’ area and review and digitally sign their pre-sale contracts in realtime - speeding up, simplifying and providing the ultimate transparency for the auction consignment process.
• ‍EAV cataloguing – The web platform now fully supports‘ entity, attribute, value’ cataloguing which puts the power firmly in the hands of the auctioneer to dictate auction categories, sub-categories, filters and associated values that work for their business. Complete flexibility means that the software is now ready to work with any and multiple auction verticals with ease.
• ‍Timed Auction Clerking – With the advent of auction aggregators pushing for more timed online only auctions, we have released the ultimate timed clerking tool allowing Fellows to control their timed auctions when running alongside platforms. Easily clerk bids from aggregators into your timed auction and vice versa. Extend and reopen lots in your timed auction if necessary.
• ‍Enhanced Auctioneer Screen – Putting the important data at the auctioneers’ fingertips in real time. See the running totals for the auction with both vendor and buyer contributions. Understand each vendors performance as lots are opened and understand break even points at the lot, vendor and auction level. Works for both live in the room and timed online auctions.
• ‍Live Streaming in the Auction Catalogue – In addition to our unique home page takeover system, we’ve added the live stream and bidding view directly to the head of the auction catalogue web pages. Now users have a locked mini view of the auction taking place in real time whilst they interact with the auction catalogue web list view, creating stickier, more engaged user experiences.

Outcomes

By working closely with the experts at Fellows Auctioneers, Auction Marketer delivered a seamless upgrade to their web-based auction management system and developed new features for the integration with the Microsoft Business Central ERP and finance tools.

This allows the business to further automate and streamline processes to make the consignment journeys easier, to get better auction data in real time, to put the power of infinite cataloguing options at the auctioneers fingertips, making the online user experience better than ever. The joined-up thinking means that Fellows Private Label solution is once more the class leading example for others to follow.

‍If you are interested in finding out more, contact our sales team for a no obligation demo.