SharePoint vs M-Files: The Platform For AP Efficiency & Purchase Order Automation in Charlotte
Generating efficiencies in your business processes is a crucial first phase toward digital transformation, back-office upgrading, and granting your business an advantage in a growingly cutthroat professional industry.
Paper-based systems and incoherent processes with logjams make synergy, efficacy, visibility, and responsibility to shareholders quite complex.
By means of accounts payable mechanization, you could carry out cloud-based arrangements into your company and expedite tasks like purchase requests, payment processing, procurement, invoicing, and data input tasks.
Digitizing these forms of organizational workflows generates more efficiency in enterprise resource planning (ERP), better cost reductions, and improved application of your manpower.
In this handbook, we’re evaluating a duo of the most famous platforms designed for AP efficiency and purchase order digitization: SharePoint and M-Files. Our objective is to assist you in selecting the proper toolset and partner so you can expand and accelerate your AP digital revamping.
But prior to beginning our product review, let’s talk through what purchase request automation is and how it produces greater efficiency for your AP workflows.
What is Purchase Order Automation?
Purchase order automation is the notion of employing business solutions through robotic technology, artificial intelligence (AI), and machine learning (ML) to mechanize the purchase requisition operation and its related tasks.
Via digitization, purchase requests may be spontaneously transmitted to the appropriate team to initiate the validation routine. After, once the order is approved, it is automatically sent to the merchant.
Though this may not look like much at first glance, digitizing the purchasing procedure removes the need for a by-hand process, paper-based arrangements, and simplifies the usual labor-intensive workflow.
As an example, with purchase order software or your Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) application, you can produce automated purchase orders that contractors can identify and then have the information spontaneously incorporated into your accounting tool.
This superficially minuscule ability significantly streamlines the workflow, remarkably reduces the need for by-hand meddling, and thus, improves efficiency within your Accounts Payable department.
The Advantages of AP and Purchase Order Automation
We covered several of the advantages of AP mechanization in the former section, but to be certain that you get the point, let's dissect these advantages in absolute terms.
Mechanized data entry and storage
Enhanced competence through extra mechanization and less manual interference
Greater precision due to less physical error
Enhanced visibility into procedures via mechanized tasks
Actual-time reporting, analytics, and auditing to uphold the development of capacities
Enhanced distribution chain and merchant relationships and self-managed portal
Greater capability to oversee for protection and conformity
Now that we’ve gone over what AP and purchase order automation is, how it operates, and why it’s vital, let’s get into our product assessment on Sharepoint as opposed to M-Files.
Microsoft SharePoint Online vs M-Files Review
Within this section, we’re reviewing a fundamental analysis between the pricing and competencies of SharePoint and M-Files, succeeded by a deeper dive on their AP and purchase request digitization qualities.
Basic Price and Features Breakdown
Although this section presents a decent conventional side-by-side evaluation, it doesn’t tell us much about how these tools manage workflows such as electronic purchase order. Therefore in this following chapter, we’re going to do an overview of each solution and how it manages this important task.
Microsoft SharePoint Overview
SharePoint is amongst the most widely known and endorsed enterprise content management (ECM) and DMS tools, because of its close relation to different famed Microsoft solutions like Excel, Outlook, and Word.
When it comes to purchase order automation, SharePoint sanctions you to resolve all the problems you could be experiencing with your existing, manual purchase requisition scheme.
Order Tracking
To begin, by employing Microsoft SharePoint and incorporating Office 365 tools, personnel may oversee purchase requisitions at every level from request approvals to delivery.
Customization
SharePoint and Office 365 also allow your organization to adapt your digital purchase order scheme to your individual directions and requirements.
Components you may personalize within SharePoint involve the layout of the purchase order forms, multi-level approvals, role assignments, line items, and filters appertaining to payment terms, location, type, and more.
Communication
SharePoint and Office 365 could also facilitate correspondence among departments. As soon as the PO procedure has started, SharePoint could trigger a mechanized email to all appropriate groups to notify them that the procedure has commenced and again once it’s complete.
Interactive Dashboards
Another significant aspect of automation is the insight into efficiency and workflow perceptibility. SharePoint provides this by authorizing you to supervise purchase requisition progress through an interactive dashboard.
Via the dashboard framework, you could monitor purchase requisition history across departments, see the evaluation of approval vs denial percentage, and track the state of POs in progress.
Powerful Integrations
Moreover, SharePoint enables superb versatility in that it can integrate with most solutions among departments for greater collaboration.
For instance, if a branch delivers a purchase order for a network printer; as soon as the order is handled, SharePoint can mechanically develop an entry in your finance tool for the new IT resource.
Now that we’ve seen what SharePoint can do in terms of helping you automate your AP processes, let’s proceed to M-Files.
M-Files Overview
M-Files is a robust enterprise content management (ECM) system that provides both on-premise, cloud solutions, or a hybrid version contingent on your company requirements.
Its interface is based off of the Windows Explorer internet browser making it simple to understand and perform for parties that are accustomed to the Windows ecosystem.
Moreover, M-Files grants state-of-the-art functionality that empowers companies to digitize workflows and processes like purchase requisition automation. Let’s take a look at those capabilities.
Input
With M-Files you may capture invoices from primary or assigned areas and automate the collection of important data associated with your purchase requisition and authorization processes.
Data entry
In addition to the input capability, M-Files enables clients to identify and extract information from purchase order fields to facilitate the digitization and transmission process. Moreover, M-Files enables you to input any appropriate company codes, approval details and incorporates archive lookups to help ensure precision during the operation.
Matching and coding
As a cutting-edge functionality, M-Files can carry out matching of POs and GL coding of non-PO statements in your ERP operation to simplify structure and transmission.
Digitized approvals
The M-Files system can manage and automate as much of the authorization workflow as you desire. This contains managing, queues, routing, response, and aging records. Any purchase requisition that fails the approval process can be amended by hand and then restored into the mechanization flow for approval.
Automatic storage of approved POs
As soon as approval has been issued, purchase requests can be transmitted to finance automatically to conclude development and storage in a primary cache.
How Wave Can Help You Implement Your Purchase Order Automation Platform in Charlotte
Keeping your business competitive today means simplifying your operations and uprooting the bottlenecks from your undertakings that mitigate your proficiency and output. Additionally, it means choosing the right business solutions to complete your strategic growth aims.
At Wave, we can be of assistance by examining the fundamental pieces of your company and via gradual digital switch-over and organizational process automation, reform them.
We use a combination of innovations based on your business requirements to mechanize your tedious workflows around gathering, organizing, and filing data so that it's easy to track down and utilize whenever, from wherever.
We can be of assistance in individualizing your AP automation tool to fulfill your organization’s precise needs and we willingly collaborate with upwards of 60 industry-accepted ECM and DMS solutions including OpenText, M-Files, SharePoint, and Oracle.
If you’d like to discover more, reach out today and we can arrange a time to chat.