No more paper invoices

Every year, Svevia receives about 300,000 invoices, incoming paper invoices are enormously time-consuming to handle, that's nothing new. Before Svevia and InExchange started their collaboration, Svevia had a fairly decent incoming e-invoice flow of about 60%. They naturally wanted to increase that figure and contacted InExchange.

"It was mostly the large organizations that accounted for the e-invoice volume to us," says Linda Broby at Svevia. "But as technology has advanced and made it possible for all kinds of companies to send e-invoices to us, we saw no reason to continue accepting paper invoices at all."

Svevia was actually one of the first players in Sweden to clearly put an end to paper. In mid-September 2015, Svevia sent out a message to its suppliers;
"If you send us paper invoices, we will send them back"
Plain and simple.
How did it go?

"Today we are at 92% e-invoicing, there can be a lot of different reasons why you don't get started, but when we set a stop date and told them that we send back the paper invoices, then something really happened", says Beatrice.

Where we live, we still use smoke signals

Svevia has a full range of sizes of suppliers, from the small farmer who shovels snow to the large companies and municipalities.
And getting the very smallest suppliers is often the most difficult. Linda says:
"I got a phone call the other day from a man who was slightly concerned. 'E-invoice? Computers? Where we live we still use smoke signals!' For those companies that have neither a computer nor an internet connection, the self-billing service developed by InExchange is offered. The supplier simplygoes to their local Svevia office, the invoice is typed in by our staff, the supplier receives their money and we receive the e-invoice."

Smart customized solutions for the very smallest and integrated solutions for the large suppliers seems to be the recipe.
"Our large suppliers are offered integrated solutions and it is very quick to get started. Before we started working with InExchange, such integrations could take several months before our supplier could send its first invoice to us. It's a huge difference and our suppliers find it extremely smooth and easy now."

Tips for others facing the same journey?

• Provide clear information to all suppliers
• Offer suppliers customized solutions for sending
• Make sure everyone gets started, we have been extremely well helped by InExchange supplier activations

"With the changes come many positive effects. By our suppliers adopting e-invoices, we all get a smoother and more secure flow that costs us less money and time for handling", Linda concludes.

In autumn 2015, Svevia received the InExchange Mijö Award for its work on digitizing invoice management.