Case study
Blåkläder scales compliant e-invoicing across Europe with ONESOURCE Pagero
Using Thomson Reuters ONESOURCE Pagero, Blåkläder reduced invoice-related emails, onboarded customers faster, and improved visibility and control over invoice delivery across European markets
Introduction
Blåkläder is one of Sweden’s leading manufacturers of heavy-duty workwear, with production of approximately 4.5 million garments annually and a growing footprint across Europe and North America. As the company expanded its operations across multiple markets, it needed a scalable invoicing setup that could support country-specific requirements while giving teams greater control and consistency across the business. The company operates sales offices in 19 countries and distributes its products to approximately 85 countries worldwide.
60%
Reduction in invoice-related emails
95%
E-invoicing adoption in Finland
840,000
Invoices processed per year
“Today we can send a test invoice to a new customer in just a couple of hours. Before, it could take weeks to make all the developments needed to start.”
Johan Björsell
IT Business Developer, Blåkläder
Challenge: Fragmented formats, limited delivery visibility, and rising compliance demands across Europe
As Blåkläder expanded into more countries, invoicing became harder to manage consistently from market to market. Different customer requirements, local regulations, and multiple delivery methods created unnecessary complexity for finance and support teams. Email and PDF invoices were still common in some cases, but these methods gave the business limited visibility into whether invoices had reached the customer, leading to more follow-up, more manual work, and a higher risk of delays.
The challenge was especially clear when onboarding new customers or entering new countries. Blåkläder wanted one standardized output from its enterprise resource planning (ERP) system rather than maintaining many different formats for different recipients. In its previous setup, changes could take significant time and often required manual intervention or development work. That step slowed rollouts and created friction between finance, sales support, and IT.
At the same time, compliance expectations across Europe were increasing. Some countries required e-invoicing by law, while others saw growing customer demand for structured electronic invoices even where mandates did not yet apply. Blåkläder needed a partner with strong cross-border expertise, responsive support, and a standardized model that could simplify expansion while keeping the company aligned with changing local requirements.
Solution: A platform for managing invoicing across multiple countries
Blåkläder expanded its use of ONESOURCE Pagero to create a more consistent way of sending invoices across its European operations. By using the platform’s universal format, the company could send one consistent output from Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance & Operations while the platform adapts that data to the formats required by different customers and countries. This gave Blåkläder a more scalable model for markets including Sweden, Finland, Norway, Denmark, Belgium, Germany, Italy, Poland, the Netherlands, Estonia, and others.
ONESOURCE Pagero also helped Blåkläder reduce operational dependency on IT. Finance and sales support teams could manage customer delivery preferences more directly inside the ERP environment, making it easier to switch customers from PDF to e-invoicing without lengthy internal handoffs. At the same time, Thomson Reuters’ country knowledge, proactive regulatory communication, and responsive support helped Blåkläder stay ahead of new invoicing requirements and move faster when launching in new markets or onboarding large multi-country customers.
Outcomes: Up to 60% fewer invoice emails, faster customer onboarding, and stronger control over cross-border invoicing
With ONESOURCE Pagero in place, Blåkläder significantly improved the efficiency and reliability of its invoicing operations. The company reduced invoice-related emails by around 60%, cutting down on manual administration and freeing finance teams from hours of weekly follow-up. The move to more structured electronic delivery also reduced invoice failures and helped ensure invoices arrived with the right fields and references, making it easier for customers to process them automatically.
The speed of onboarding improved dramatically. What previously could take weeks of development can now move to a test invoice in just a couple of hours, helping Blåkläder respond faster to customer requirements and launch more efficiently in new countries. This faster rollout has been especially important as the business continues to grow across Europe.
Blåkläder also gained stronger control over invoice delivery and payment flow. With better traceability through ONESOURCE Pagero, the company has more confidence that invoices have reached customers, which has helped reduce back-and-forth and contributed to fewer delayed payments. In Finland alone, e-invoicing adoption increased from approximately 5 to 10% at the start of the ERP rollout to 95% within about 1.5 to 2 years. For a business sending 840,000 invoices globally each year, of which 60% are e-invoices, these improvements have created a more scalable and compliant invoicing process.
“We reduced invoice-related emails by around 60%, and we have fewer failures on invoices now than we had before. That saves our finance department hours every week.”
Johan Björsell
IT Business Developer, Blåkläder
At a glance
Industry
Clothing manufacturing
HQ region
Svenljunga, Sweden
Solutions
ONESOURCE Pagero
Year founded
1959