SharePoint vs M-Files: The Solution For AP Productivity & Purchase Order Automation in Garland

Developing efficiencies in your business processes is a crucial initial phase toward digital switch-over, back-office upgrading, and supplying your organization an upper hand in an increasingly aggressive professional landscape.

Tangible systems and disjointed workflows with impasses make synergy, productivity, visibility, and accountability to partners very complicated.

With accounts payable digitization, you could carry out dematerialized arrangements into your company and streamline workflows like purchase requests, payment processing, procurement, invoicing, and data input processes.

Automating these forms of company operations generates more capacity in enterprise resource planning (ERP), greater cost reductions, and reformed employment of your human resources.

In this manual, we’re reviewing a couple of the most popular tools used for AP efficiency and purchase requisition automation: SharePoint and M-Files. Our goal is to assist you in selecting the appropriate solutions stack and cooperate so you can develop and accelerate your AP digital revamping.

But before we begin with our product assessment, let’s talk through what purchase order automation is and how it generates further capability for your AP operations.

What is Purchase Order Automation?

Purchase order automation is the notion of utilizing business tools via machine learning (ML), robotic technology, and artificial intelligence (AI) to digitize the purchase request system and its related workflows.

Through mechanization, purchase requisitions can be spontaneously transmitted to the appropriate party to initiate the validation process. Later, immediately after the request is approved, it is mechanically forwarded to the supplier.

Though this may not appear to be significant at first glance, mechanizing the buying procedure abolishes the requirement for a physical process, materialized arrangements, and expedites the often laborious workflow.

As an example, with purchase requisition solution or your Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) application, you can produce digital purchase orders that suppliers can acknowledge at which point the data automatically fused into your accounting tool.

This superficially minuscule ability greatly expedites the workflow, remarkably reduces the requirement for human interference, and thus, amplifies efficiency inside your Accounts Payable department.

The Benefits of AP and Purchase Order Automation

We talked about several of the gains of AP digitization in the previous chapter, but just to make sure you get the point, let's dissect these advantages in the simplest terms.

• Mechanized data logging and storage

• Enhanced competence via extra digitization and less by-hand interference

• Enhanced reliability on account of less physical faults

• Enhanced perceptibility into procedures through your automated workflows

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

• Reformed distribution network and supplier connections and self-managed portal

• Greater ability to oversee for security and conformity

Since we’ve reviewed what AP and digital purchase order is, how it works, and why it’s significant, let’s get into our product evaluation on Sharepoint as opposed to M-Files.

Microsoft SharePoint Online vs M-Files Review

Within this section, we’re examining a straightforward analysis between the costing and capabilities of SharePoint and M-Files, followed by an in-depth analysis on their AP and purchase request mechanization potential.

Basic Price and Features Breakdown

While this portion presents a good standard side-by-side evaluation, it doesn’t inform us on how these solutions administer workflows like purchase order automation. Therefore in this following section, we’re giving a summary of each tool and how it handles this essential undertaking.

Microsoft SharePoint Overview

SharePoint is one of the most prominent and endorsed enterprise content management (ECM) and DMS solutions, because of its strong association with other prevalent Microsoft solutions like Outlook, Word, and Excel.

As it relates to purchase order mechanization, SharePoint allows you to handle all the problems you might be experiencing with your existing, manual purchase request scheme.

Order Tracking

To initiate, by using Microsoft SharePoint and combining Office 365 applications, personnel can oversee purchase requests at every level from request authorizations to delivery.

Customization

SharePoint and Office 365 also allow your business to customize your automated purchase request arrangement to your specific guidelines and needs.

Aspects you can custom tailor within SharePoint include the format of the purchase order forms, multi-level approvals, role assignments, line items, and filters attributed to type, payment terms, location, and more.

Communication

SharePoint and Office 365 may also facilitate correspondence between sectors. As soon as the PO process has begun, SharePoint could trigger a programmed email to all respective parties to notify them that the procedure has commenced and once more as soon as it’s carried out.

Interactive Dashboards

Another important component of digitization is the clarity into productivity and workflow visibility. SharePoint provides this by permitting you to oversee purchase requisition progress through an interactive dashboard.

Via the dashboard system, you may monitor purchase order history across departments, distinguish the breakdown of approval vs denial percentage, and monitor the status of existing POs.

Robust Integrations

Moreover, SharePoint provides superb adaptability in that it can incorporate with most programs among departments for increased synergy.

Such as, if a department presents a purchase requisition for a network printer; once the order is processed, SharePoint can automatically produce an entry in your finance solution for the new IT asset.

Now that we’ve learned about what SharePoint is capable of in terms of assisting you in automating your AP tasks, let’s continue to M-Files.

M-Files Overview

M-Files is a vigorous enterprise content management (ECM) tool that presents both local, cloud solutions, or a hybrid variant depending on your business needs.

Its interface is modeled off the Windows Explorer internet browser making it convenient to understand and perform for teams that are accustomed to the Windows interface.

Furthermore, M-Files provides advanced functionality that empowers companies to automate operations and processes suchlike purchase order automation. Let’s study those capabilities.

Input

With M-Files you could acquire invoices from central or allocated locations and mechanize the collection of significant data related to your purchase requisition and confirmation workflows.

Data entry

In addition to the input competence, M-Files empowers users to pinpoint and withdraw details from purchase requisition fields to expedite the mechanization and conveying process. Furthermore, M-Files enables you to input any appropriate business rules, approval specifications and contains directory lookups to assist in guaranteeing veracity during the operation.

Matching and coding

As an advanced functionality, M-Files could execute corresponding of POs and GL coding of non-PO billing statements in your ERP procedure to simplify arrangement and transmission.

Digitized approvals

The M-Files system can manage and automate as much of the confirmation workflow as you wish. This includes handling, queues, routing, response, and aging accounts. Any purchase requisition that fails the validation procedure can be amended by hand and then put back into the automation flow for authorization.

Automatic storage of approved POs

As soon as approval has been granted, purchase orders can be transmitted to finance spontaneously to wrap up development and storage in a primary cache.

How Wave Can Aid You in Executing Your Purchase Order Automation Tool in Garland

Holding your company cutthroat nowadays requires simplifying your procedures and uprooting the bottlenecks from your systems that decrease your efficiency and output. Moreover, it requires picking the appropriate business solutions to accomplish your tactical growth goals.

At Wave, we can assist by analyzing the essential aspects of your business and through incremental digital conversion and business workflow automation, transform them.

We apply a blended set of technology based on your organizational requirements to mechanize your repetitive workflows around gathering, organizing, and cataloging data so that it's uncomplicated to find and utilize whenever, from wherever.

We can help you to custom-tailor your AP mechanization software to satisfy your business's particular needs and we happily go along with upwards of 60 industry-recognized ECM and DMS platforms including M-Files, SharePoint, OpenText, and Oracle.

If you’re ready to learn more, reach out today and we can set up a time to chat.