Customer cases

Stena Line streamlines operations with Pagero

Stena Line is a Swedish shipping company operating ferry routes across Scandinavia, the Baltic States, the North Sea and the Irish Sea. Nine out of eleven of the company’s international subsidiaries are connected to Pagero, and all inbound invoices are received via Stena Line’s head office in Gothenburg.

E-invoicing via scanning

Stena Line’s road to e-invoicing began with scanning in 2006. “We engaged an external scanning service provider in Scandinavia and scanned all our invoices ourselves in England, the Netherlands and Poland,” says Mariana Andersson, Manager Accounts Payable at Stena Line. “The reason why we switched to e-invoicing was to get a more secure validation process, and also to reduce the risk of errors on the invoices. Our scanning provider contacted our three largest suppliers so that we could receive e-invoices from them.”

4,714

Employees

124,286

Invoice volume/year

1BSEK

Yearly turnover

“We started to cooperate with Pagero in 2009. The first thing we did was to carry out a project where Pagero contacted our suppliers to get them to start sending e-invoices to us. Pagero has helped us approach our suppliers two or three times since then and the results have been very good.”

Centralization with Pagero’s help

“A while after we initiated our partnership with Pagero, we decided to centralise all invoice management and now we handle all inbound invoices for ten of the companies in our group here in Gothenburg. The centralisation process went relatively smoothly, since we more or less work in the same way across all companies. We connected one company at a time, and everything went well.”

The reason why we switched to e-invoicing was to get a more secure validation process, and also to reduce the risk of errors on the invoices

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E-invoicing more efficient

“Our suppliers make up a very heterogeneous group of companies from many different industries. Some are ports or government agencies; others are technology, perfume or liquor companies. Since they are all so diverse and are based in countries that are in different places when it comes to e-invoicing development, we are happy to receive 24 % of our inbound invoices as e-invoices. Considering that our suppliers are scattered over vast geographical areas and which countries they are based in, we think that is that is a rather good percentage. We do, of course, want to increase our inbound e-invoice flow even more, because since we started to receive e-invoices, we have had more time to do more important things than to verify and check invoice fields and have thus been able to start to streamline our operations and become more efficient.”

Pagero Online user friendly

“In between the projects, to try to get our suppliers to commit to e-invoicing, I regularly check Pagero Online for suppliers that I can invite to send us e-invoices. It is really convenient that it is possible to search for companies in Pagero Online and add them manually. Pagero Online is as system that is very easy to work with. If I cannot add a company myself, I just contact Pagero’s Support team, and they always answer back quickly. I am very happy with our connection with Pagero and would definitively recommend them as a supplier.”

About Stena Line

Stena Line is one of the leading ferry companies in Europe with a fleet of 35 vessels and 22 ferry routes across Northern Europe. Stena Line is an important part of the European logistics network and are creating new intermodal freight solutions by combining transport by rail, road, and sea. With its extensive passenger transport operations, Stena Lines also plays an important role for tourism in Europe. The company is family owned, was founded in 1962, and is headquartered in Gothenburg, Sweden. Stena Line is part of the Stena Group, which employs about 19 000 people and has a yearly turnover of approximately 36.5 billion SEK.

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