Building a Unified Digital Ecosystem for Fine Art Logistics

Customer Overview

Our client is a premium logistics company specializing in the movement and storage of fine art and collectibles across all sizes and mediums, supported by a purpose-built fine art logistics software ecosystem. They work with museums, galleries, collectors, auctioneers, and interior designers, offering comprehensive services that include crating, packing, transportation, delivery, and installation. Each artwork demands specialized handling, precision packing, and secure transport to maintain its condition and value — requirements that generic logistics systems cannot adequately support without dedicated art logistics management software. The company also provides dedicated storage facilities for high-value and climate-sensitive items. Their operations span across the UK, the US, and Europe, including both local and international moves.

Project Overview

To manage high-value and sensitive artworks, while mitigating risk, our client needed control over every step of the logistics process, from pickup and packing to storage and delivery —through a centralized fine art logistics software platform. However, their operations relied on manual coordination, paper-based records, and fragmented communication between field teams and managers, limiting real-time visibility and accountability across fine art movements. They needed full visibility for managers to track on-ground activity, manage crews, and ensure timely, high-quality job completion, along with a 360-degree digital view of items collected and delivered through a secure artwork tracking system. To bring efficiency, transparency, and accountability across their fine art logistics operations, they approached TenUp to design a scalable and reliable digital system.

Challenges

The client’s fine-art logistics operations faced many inefficiencies, leading to delays, accountability gaps, and reduced service quality.

• Manual, paper-based processes led to delays, inconsistent documentation, and frequent rework, making it difficult to scale fine art logistics operations securely.
• Managers lacked real-time visibility into item movement and crew activity, limiting progress tracking, proactive issue resolution, and customer response during fine art transportation. Poor time and resource tracking caused inefficiencies and wage calculation issues.
• Condition reports were often incomplete, leading to higher insurance claims and disputes over damage responsibility.
• Lack of proof of work or a verifiable digital audit trail made it difficult to validate how, when, and by whom sensitive items were handled.
• Communication between managers and on-ground teams was fragmented, causing missed instructions and quality lapses in specialized handling.
• Customers using storage facilities had no visibility into their stored items and relied on paper records or manager communication for updates. Moving or item access requests were handled offline, adding delays and manual effort.
• Customers got no real-time status updates of their items during moves or installations, reducing trust and weakening the premium experience expected from a fine art logistics provider.

Solution

TenUp built an integrated fine art logistics software ecosystem, combining a web portal for managers and customers with a mobile app for field crews, ensuring real-time data flow across every stage of fine-art logistics.

• Built a web portal that fetches data from the third-party system used by managers to assign jobs to crew and updates the manager’s dashboard with all scheduled jobs.
• Developed a mobile app that pulls job and special handling details from the third-party system via API and enables crews to perform tasks digitally, while capturing all activities (packing, unpacking, loading, unloading) to generate logs and audit trails.
• Enabled a communication module in the mobile app, allowing crew members to share real-time in-transit and on-the-job updates with customers and managers.
• Enabled end-to-end artwork traceability using unique QR codes across artworks, packaging boxes, transport vehicles, and warehouse handovers, delivering real-time location tracking and a verifiable audit trail.
• Integrated Gen AI and Vision AI into the mobile app to help crew members capture item images and generate AI-powered condition reports, ensuring precise documentation and significantly reducing insurance claim risk.
• Generated proof of work by digitizing the customer review form in the mobile app, enabling crews to capture digital sign-off and feedback after completing a job, and integrating photos, signatures, and timestamps into the manager’s dashboard.
• Built job summaries in the web portal to update managers and customers on job progress, items collected, special handling details, and pending pickups. Managers also got task durations and time spent per job updates for wage calculation.
• Digitized warehouse handover forms in the mobile app, ensuring smooth coordination and transparency between logistics and warehouse teams.
• Enabled a digital storage view in the web portal for customers to access item images, details, and condition reports, and submit digital requests for tasks such as moves, temporary installations, or returns after display.

Benefits

• Cut reporting delays by over 70% by enabling real-time visibility into field operations through centralized fine art logistics software dashboards.
• Insurance disputes dropped by nearly 50% with AI-driven condition reports, digital proof of work, and verifiable handling records.
• Automated crew tracking improved resource utilization, driving ~25% higher workforce efficiency.
• Customer trust strengthened through transparent fine-art logistics updates and verifiable records.

Technology

• Flutter
• Realm
• OpenAI
• Claude 3.5
• MongoDB
• Firebase Analytics
• Amazon Redshift
• Amazon S3
• Amazon Recognition
• Amazon SQS
• Amazon Lambda
• Tableau
• MySQL
• OpenSearch
• Java & JVM Frameworks

Industry

• Logistics