SharePoint vs M-Files: The Solution For AP Efficiency & Purchase Order Automation in San Jose

Creating competencies in your company operations is a pivotal first step toward digital transformation, back-office modernization, and supplying your organization an advantage in a progressively cutthroat professional sector.

Paper-based arrangements and disjointed processes with logjams make synergy, efficacy, transparency, and accountability to stakeholders quite complex.

With accounts payable digitization, you can carry out paperless arrangements into your business and expedite tasks like purchase requisitions, procurement, invoicing, payment processing, and data logging processes.

Mechanizing these types of company processes produces more proficiency in enterprise resource planning (ERP), better cost reductions, and enhanced employment of your manpower.

Within this manual, we’re evaluating a couple of the most prevalent solutions geared toward AP efficiency and purchase request mechanization: SharePoint and M-Files. Our objective is to aid you in selecting the proper solutions stack and partner so you may expand and accelerate your AP digital revamping.

But before we begin with our product assessment, let’s discuss what purchase requisition automation is and how it produces greater productivity for your AP operations.

What is Purchase Order Automation?

Purchase order automation is the concept of employing business software with artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and robotic technology to digitize the purchase requisition process and its synonymous undertakings.

By means of mechanization, purchase orders could be spontaneously transmitted to the appropriate company to begin the validation process. After, immediately after the order is confirmed, it is automatically sent to the vendor.

Although this may not appear to be significant at first glance, automating the purchasing process removes the necessity for a by-hand process, paper-based arrangements, and streamlines the standard laborious workflow.

As an example, with purchase requisition software or your Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) tool, you can develop electronic purchase requests that suppliers can acknowledge followed by having the details mechanically fused into your accounting software.

This seemingly small capability greatly simplifies the system, dramatically reduces the need for manual intervention, and therefore, amplifies productivity through your Accounts Payable division.

The Perks of AP and Purchase Order Automation

We talked about various of the advantages of AP digitization in the former portion, but to be certain that you understand, let's take these advantages apart in the simplest terms.

• Automated data entry and storage

• Greater productivity via further digitization and less manual intervention

• Greater precision on account of less physical faults

• Greater perceptibility into operations with your mechanized processes

• Current-time auditing, reporting, and analytics to continue to improve capacities

• Reformed logistics chain and vendor relationships and self-service portal

• Greater capability to oversee for safety and conformity

Since we’ve discussed what AP and electronic purchase order is, how it operates, and why it’s significant, let’s get into our software assessment on Sharepoint vs M-Files.

Microsoft SharePoint Online vs M-Files Review

In this section, we’re reviewing a fundamental breakdown between the costing and competencies of SharePoint and M-Files, followed by a deeper dive on their AP and purchase requisition digitization qualities.

Basic Price and Features Breakdown

While this chapter provides a fine standard simultaneous comparison, it doesn’t inform us on how these solutions manage workflows such as electronic purchase order. Thus in this next chapter, we’re going to do a synopsis of each tool and how it manages this significant task.

Microsoft SharePoint Overview

SharePoint is one of the more widely known and accepted enterprise content management (ECM) and DMS tools, due to its deep connection with diverse popular Microsoft programs like Excel, Outlook, and Word.

When it comes to purchase order mechanization, SharePoint sanctions you to resolve each one of the problems you may be experiencing with your existing, by-hand purchase order system.

Order Tracking

To begin, by utilizing Microsoft SharePoint and incorporating Office 365 programs, team members could track purchase requisitions at every phase from request authorizations to delivery.

Customization

SharePoint and Office 365 also enable your business to adapt your electronic purchase requisition scheme to your individual guidelines and needs.

Components you can custom tailor within SharePoint involve the template of the purchase requisition forms, multi-level approvals, role assignments, line items, and filters based on type, payment terms, location, and more.

Communication

SharePoint and Office 365 could also further connection between divisions. As soon as the PO procedure has begun, SharePoint could trigger a mechanized email to all relevant groups to inform them that the process has started and again once it’s complete.

Interactive Dashboards

A further critical aspect of digitization is the clarity into efficiency and workflow perceptibility. SharePoint enables this by authorizing you to supervise purchase order progress via an interactive dashboard.

With the dashboard system, you could oversee purchase request history among departments, view the breakdown of approval vs denial percentage, and track the position of ongoing POs.

Powerful Integrations

SharePoint also enables terrific versatility in that it can integrate with most solutions between departments for increased cooperation.

For example, if a branch submits a purchase order for a network printer; once the request is handled, SharePoint can automatically generate an entry in your finance software for the new IT asset.

Now that we’ve learned about what SharePoint is capable of in terms of helping you automate your AP tasks, let’s move on to M-Files.

M-Files Overview

M-Files is a robust enterprise content management (ECM) tool that provides both local, cloud solutions, or a hybrid version contingent on your business demands.

Its interface is derived from the Windows Explorer internet browser making it simple to learn and implement for parties that are comfortable with the Windows ecosystem.

Furthermore, M-Files offers innovative functionality that allows companies to automate workflows and processes like purchase request automation. Let’s take a look at those aptitudes.

Input

With M-Files you can gather invoices from primary or distributed locations and automate the ingestion of important data associated with your purchase request and authorization undertaking.

Data entry

In addition to the input competence, M-Files allows clients to identify and pull out information from purchase request areas to facilitate the digitization and routing process. Additionally, M-Files enables you to input any pertinent company rules, approval specifications and incorporates directory searches to help ensure veracity throughout the operation.

Matching and coding

As an advanced feature-set, M-Files may perform corresponding of POs and GL coding of non-PO billing statements in your ERP system to facilitate arrangement and routing.

Automated approvals

The M-Files platform can manage and automate as much of the authorization procedure as you desire. This includes managing, response, queues, routing, and aging reports. Any purchase request that fails the authorization process can be revised physically and then put back into the mechanization flow for validation.

Automatic storage of approved POs

Once authorization has been accepted, purchase requests can be forwarded to finance spontaneously to conclude development and storage in a primary repository.

How Wave Can Help You Implement Your Purchase Order Automation Platform in San Jose

Keeping your organization cutthroat today means simplifying your operations and uprooting the bottlenecks from your undertakings that work to diminish your efficiency and productivity. Additionally, it means selecting the right business tools to complete your calculated growth objectives.

At Wave, we can assist by examining the foundational elements of your organization and with step-by-step digital transformation and business system automation, reform them.

We use a consolidation of technology appertaining to your business necessities to automate your tedious workflows around collecting, organizing, and filing data so that it's simple to track down and use whenever, from wherever.

We can assist you in customizing your AP mechanization solution to satisfy your organization’s specific needs and we willingly go along with upwards of 60 industry-accepted ECM and DMS tools including OpenText, M-Files, SharePoint, and Oracle.

If you’re interested in learning more, contact us today and we can set up a time to chat.