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

Creating competencies in your business operations is a pivotal opening phase toward digital conversion, back-office innovation, and supplying your business an edge in a progressively cutthroat professional industry.

Concrete systems and incoherent systems with bottlenecks make cooperation, efficiency, perceptibility, and liability to stakeholders notably complicated.

With accounts payable automation, you can achieve cloud-based operations into your organization and simplify workflows like purchase orders, invoicing, payment processing, procurement, and data logging tasks.

Mechanizing these types of company processes creates more efficiency in enterprise resource planning (ERP), greater cost reductions, and enhanced employment of your manpower.

Included in this handbook, we’re examining two of the most popular tools designed for AP efficiency and purchase requisition automation: SharePoint and M-Files. Our objective is to aid you in selecting the appropriate toolset and partner so you may expand and expedite your AP digital revamping.

But prior to beginning our product assessment, let’s discuss what purchase order 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 solutions with machine learning (ML), robotic technology, and artificial intelligence (AI) to mechanize the purchase order system and its corresponding workflows.

Through automation, purchase orders can be mechanically forwarded to the fitting company to begin the authorization routine. Then, once the request is authorized, it is automatically sent to the vendor.

While this may not appear to be significant at first glance, mechanizing the buying procedure abolishes the necessity for a physical process, tangible schemes, and expedites the usual laborious workflow.

For example, with purchase order solution or your Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) tool, you can develop automated purchase orders that contractors can comprehend at which point the information mechanically integrated into your accounting software.

This presumably minor capability significantly streamlines the system, remarkably reduces the need for manual meddling, and consequently, improves efficiency within your Accounts Payable division.

The Benefits of AP and Purchase Order Automation

We talked about various of the advantages of AP mechanization in the former chapter, but to guarantee that you understand, let's take these advantages apart in the simplest terms.

• Digitized data logging and storage

• Enhanced competence with further mechanization and less human interference

• Improved precision because of less manual faults

• Greater perceptibility into systems through your digitized processes

• Real-time analytics, auditing, and reporting to uphold the development of efficiencies

• Enhanced logistics process and vendor connections and self-operated portal

• Enhanced aptitude to monitor for security and conformity

Since we’ve reviewed what AP and electronic purchase order is, how it functions, and why it’s vital, let’s get into our software assessment on Sharepoint as opposed to M-Files.

Microsoft SharePoint Online vs M-Files Review

Coming in this section, we’re examining a fundamental analysis between the costing and capabilities of SharePoint as well as M-Files, and then a deeper dive on their AP and purchase order digitization qualities.

Basic Price and Features Breakdown

Although this portion provides a fine conventional side-by-side analogy, it doesn’t educate us on how these solutions administer workflows namely digital purchase order. Thus in this succeeding chapter, we’re providing a synopsis of each program and how it handles this essential undertaking.

Microsoft SharePoint Overview

SharePoint is one of the most widely known and accepted enterprise content management (ECM) and DMS tools, due to its close relation to different famed Microsoft programs like Outlook, Word, and Excel.

When it comes to purchase order automation, SharePoint sanctions you to handle each one of the concerns you may be facing with your current, manual purchase request system.

Order Tracking

To start, by utilizing Microsoft SharePoint and combining Office 365 applications, team members may monitor purchase requests at every stage from request approvals to delivery.

Customization

SharePoint and Office 365 also allow your company to adapt your digital purchase request scheme to your individual instructions and needs.

Elements you could individualize within SharePoint involve the template of the purchase order forms, multi-level approvals, role assignments, line items, and filters attributed to payment terms, location, type, and more.

Communication

SharePoint and Office 365 may also further connection across departments. As soon as the PO procedure has begun, SharePoint may prompt a programmed email to all respective parties to notify them that the operation has begun and once more as soon as it’s carried out.

Interactive Dashboards

One more critical aspect of automation is the clarity into productivity and workflow transparency. SharePoint delivers this by permitting you to oversee purchase requisition progress with an interactive dashboard.

Via the dashboard system, you can oversee purchase requisition history throughout sections, see the evaluation of approval vs denial proportion, and monitor the position of existing POs.

Vigorous Integrations

SharePoint also enables great adaptability in that it can work with with most programs across departments for greater collaboration.

For instance, if a division presents a purchase order for a network printer; as soon as the requisition is actioned, SharePoint can automatically develop an entry in your finance solution for the new IT resource.

Now that we’ve learned about 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 local, cloud solutions, or a hybrid version determined by your business requirements.

Its interface is modeled off the Windows Explorer web engine making it easy to figure out and execute for parties that are comfortable with the Windows ecosystem.

Moreover, M-Files provides innovative functionality that enables businesses to mechanize operations and processes like purchase requisition automation. Let’s take a look at those aptitudes.

Input

With M-Files you can acquire invoices from main or allocated sites and mechanize the ingestion of essential data associated with your purchase requisition and authorization processes.

Data entry

As an extension of the input capability, M-Files empowers customers to identify and withdraw details from purchase order areas to facilitate the automation and transmission process. Moreover, M-Files enables you to input any relevant business codes, confirmation terms and incorporates database searches to assist in guaranteeing precision during the operation.

Matching and coding

As a state-of-the-art functional scope, M-Files can perform matching of POs and GL coding of non-PO statements in your ERP system to facilitate structure and delivery.

Automated approvals

The M-Files system can manage and digitize as much of the approval workflow as you desire. This involves handling, response, queues, routing, and aging reports. Any purchase order that falls short of the validation procedure can be amended by hand and then restored into the mechanization flow for authorization.

Automatic storage of approved POs

As soon as authorization has been granted, purchase orders can be transmitted to finance mechanically to finalize processing and storage in a main cache.

How Wave Can Assist You in Enforcing Your Purchase Order Automation Platform in Saint Paul

Keeping your business fierce nowadays means rationalizing your operations and removing the hindrances from your undertakings that decrease your proficiency and productivity. Moreover, it requires choosing the right business solutions to complete your strategic growth aims.

At Wave, we can be of assistance by examining the foundational aspects of your company and via step-by-step digital switch-over and company system automation, revamp them.

We apply a blended set of technology appertaining to your business necessities to mechanize your repetitive tasks around gathering, regulating, and filing data so that it's uncomplicated to track down and use at any time, from anywhere.

We can be of assistance in individualizing your AP mechanization software to fulfill your company’s specific demands and we willingly collaborate with more than 60 industry-accepted ECM and DMS tools 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.