SharePoint vs M-Files: The Platform For AP Productivity & Purchase Order Automation in Raleigh
Generating efficiencies in your business processes is a pivotal first step toward digital transformation, back-office innovation, and granting your organization an advantage in a growingly aggressive professional sector.
Paper-based operations and incoherent workflows with bottlenecks make cooperation, efficiency, visibility, and accountability to partners very complicated.
With accounts payable automation, you can implement cloud-based operations into your business and simplify duties like purchase requisitions, invoicing, payment processing, procurement, and data logging tasks.
Digitizing these types of company processes produces more capacity in enterprise resource planning (ERP), greater cost savings, and reformed application of your manpower.
In this guide, we’re reviewing a duo of the most popular tools geared toward AP productivity and purchase order automation: SharePoint and M-Files. Our goal is to assist you in selecting the right tech stack and collaborate so you can develop and speed up your AP digital transformation.
But prior to beginning our product analysis, let’s discuss what purchase request automation is and how it generates higher capability for your AP workflows.
What is Purchase Order Automation?
Purchase order automation is the process of utilizing business tools with artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and robotic technology to digitize the purchase requisition operation and its related workflows.
Via digitization, purchase orders can be mechanically forwarded to the fitting company to begin the authorization procedure. After, as soon as the order is confirmed, it is instinctively sent to the vendor.
Though this may not appear to be significant at first glance, digitizing the buying process abolishes the requirement for a manual process, materialized arrangements, and streamlines the usual laborious workflow.
For instance, with purchase request software or your Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) application, you can produce automated purchase requisitions that suppliers can identify followed by having the details mechanically fused into your accounting tool.
This seemingly small capability substantially expedites the workflow, remarkably reduces the demand for manual meddling, and thus, improves proficiency through your Accounts Payable division.
The Perks of AP and Purchase Order Automation
We discussed various of the benefits of AP mechanization in the former portion, but to be certain that you get the idea, let's break these benefits down in plain language.
Mechanized data logging and storage
Improved competence with extra automation and less manual intervention
Improved accuracy due to less human error
Increased visibility into procedures through your mechanized workflows
Current-time auditing, reporting, and analytics to continue to improve efficiencies
Enhanced distribution process and vendor affinities and self-operated portal
Greater ability to regulate for protection and amenability
Now that we’ve discussed what AP and digital purchase order is, how it operates, and why it’s important, let’s begin our platform assessment on Sharepoint versus M-Files.
Microsoft SharePoint Online vs M-Files Review
Within this portion, we’re reviewing a fundamental breakdown between the pricing and aptitudes of SharePoint and M-Files, succeeded by an extensive review on their AP and purchase request automation capabilities.
Basic Price and Features Breakdown
Although this section provides a fine standard side-by-side evaluation, it doesn’t tell us much about how these solutions handle tasks such as digital purchase order. Therefore in this succeeding portion, we’re going to do an overview of each program and how it handles this essential task.
Microsoft SharePoint Overview
SharePoint is one of the more prominent and endorsed enterprise content management (ECM) and DMS platforms, due to its deep connection with other popular Microsoft tools like Word, Excel, and Outlook.
As it relates to purchase requisition mechanization, SharePoint sanctions you to handle the entirety of issues you may be facing with your current, by-hand purchase request system.
Order Tracking
To start, by employing Microsoft SharePoint and incorporating Office 365 tools, staff could monitor purchase orders at every phase from request confirmations to delivery.
Customization
SharePoint and Office 365 also empower your company to customize your digital purchase requisition system to your particular guidelines and requirements.
Aspects you can personalize within SharePoint include the format of the purchase requisition forms, role assignments, line items, multi-level approvals, and filters appertaining to payment terms, location, type, and more.
Communication
SharePoint and Office 365 may also facilitate communication among sectors. When the PO procedure has started, SharePoint could prompt an automated email to all relevant groups to inform them that the procedure has started and again once it’s accomplished.
Interactive Dashboards
One more critical element of digitization is the foresight into productivity and workflow perceptibility. SharePoint provides this by permitting you to monitor purchase request progress via an interactive dashboard.
Through the dashboard setup, you can track purchase order history throughout departments, see the evaluation of approval vs denial percentage, and follow the state of ongoing POs.
Robust Integrations
SharePoint also provides terrific versatility in that it can integrate with most tools across departments for increased collaboration.
Such as, if a division submits a purchase request for a network printer; as soon as the order is handled, SharePoint can mechanically generate an entry in your finance solution for the new IT resource.
Now that we’ve seen what SharePoint can accomplish in terms of assisting you in automating your AP processes, let’s move on to M-Files.
M-Files Overview
M-Files is a robust enterprise content management (ECM) solution that provides both on-site, cloud solutions, or a hybrid adaptation determined by your organizational requirements.
Its interface is based off of the Windows Explorer web engine making it convenient to figure out and implement for parties that are accustomed to the Windows ecosystem.
Additionally, M-Files provides advanced functionality that empowers businesses to automate tasks and processes like purchase request automation. Let’s examine those competencies.
Input
With M-Files you may acquire invoices from central or distributed sites and digitize the collection of significant data related to your purchase request and authorization processes.
Data entry
As a continuation of the input competence, M-Files empowers customers to pinpoint and pull out data from purchase request fields to promote the mechanization and conveying process. Furthermore, M-Files permits you to input any appropriate company codes, validation terms and incorporates archive searches to help ensure veracity throughout the process.
Matching and coding
As a state-of-the-art functionality, M-Files can execute conforming of POs and GL coding of non-PO statements in your ERP system to facilitate structure and routing.
Mechanized approvals
The M-Files platform can regulate and digitize as much of the confirmation process as you desire. This includes overseeing, response, queues, routing, and aging reports. Any purchase request that flunks the authorization process can be corrected manually and then reinstated into the digitization flow for approval.
Automatic storage of approved POs
As soon as authorization has been issued, purchase requests can be transmitted to finance mechanically to conclude handling and storage in a central repository.
How Wave Can Help You Implement Your Purchase Order Automation Solution in Raleigh
Keeping your business cutthroat today involves simplifying your operations and uprooting the impasses from your workflows that work to diminish your efficiency and productivity. Additionally, it involves selecting the proper business tools to achieve your strategic growth goals.
At Wave, we can help by analyzing the fundamental elements of your organization and through step-by-step digital conversion and business process automation, revamp them.
We apply a consolidation of innovations appertaining to your organizational necessities to automate your repetitive processes around gathering, organizing, and filing data so that it's uncomplicated to locate and access at any time, from anywhere.
We can help you to custom-tailor your AP automation tool to satisfy your business's precise requirements and we happily go along with upwards of 60 industry-recognized ECM and DMS solutions including M-Files, SharePoint, OpenText, and Oracle.
If you’re interested in learning more, reach out today and we can arrange a time to chat.