SharePoint vs M-Files: The Tool For AP Proficiency & Purchase Order Automation in Washington
Creating efficiencies in your company processes is a crucial first phase toward digital switch-over, back-office modernization, and granting your company an upper hand in a progressively aggressive professional sector.
Paper-based arrangements and fragmented workflows with bottlenecks make collaboration, efficacy, visibility, and responsibility to shareholders notably complex.
With accounts payable automation, you can carry out cloud-based arrangements into your company and expedite tasks like purchase requisitions, invoicing, payment processing, procurement, and data entry tasks.
Mechanizing these types of business operations generates more proficiency in enterprise resource planning (ERP), higher expenditure cuts, and reformed application of your manpower.
Within this handbook, we’re evaluating a couple of the most prevalent solutions designed for AP efficiency and purchase order automation: SharePoint and M-Files. Our objective is to aid you in selecting the right tech stack and cooperate so you could develop and expedite your AP digital transformation.
But before we begin with our product assessment, let’s discuss what purchase order mechanization is and how it creates higher productivity for your AP workflows.
What is Purchase Order Automation?
Purchase order automation is the process of utilizing business tools via artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and robotic technology to digitize the purchase order operation and its synonymous undertakings.
Through automation, purchase requests may be spontaneously transmitted to the fitting team to initiate the validation procedure. Then, once the requisition is authorized, it is mechanically forwarded to the supplier.
Though this may not seem like much at first read, digitizing the procurement process eliminates the necessity for a manual process, paper-based systems, and simplifies the usual laborious workflow.
As an example, with purchase request software or your Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) platform, you can produce digital purchase orders that suppliers can acknowledge and then have the details automatically fused into your accounting tool.
This seemingly minuscule capability greatly simplifies the process, dramatically diminishes the requirement for manual intervention, and therefore, enhances efficiency inside your Accounts Payable department.
The Perks of AP and Purchase Order Automation
We covered several of the benefits of AP automation in the previous section, but just to make sure you get the idea, let's break these benefits down in the simplest terms.
Automated data logging and storage
Greater efficiency through more digitization and less by-hand intervention
Greater reliability because of less manual blunders
Greater perceptibility into operations through your automated processes
Current-time reporting, analytics, and auditing to continue to improve capacities
Improved logistics process and supplier connections and self-service portal
Greater ability to regulate for safety and amenability
Since we’ve gone over what AP and purchase order automation is, how it works, and why it’s vital, let’s start our product assessment on Sharepoint vs M-Files.
Microsoft SharePoint Online vs M-Files Review
Within this section, we’re examining a basic analysis between the pricing and capabilities of SharePoint as well as M-Files, followed by a deeper dive on their AP and purchase requisition automation capabilities.
Basic Price and Features Breakdown
While this chapter presents a good conventional simultaneous evaluation, it doesn’t inform us on how these tools manage tasks namely digital purchase order. Therefore in this next chapter, we’re providing an overview of each solution and how it administers this essential task.
Microsoft SharePoint Overview
SharePoint is one of the most recognized and endorsed enterprise content management (ECM) and DMS solutions, due to its strong association with different prevalent Microsoft tools like Excel, Outlook, and Word.
In the context of purchase order digitization, SharePoint allows you to handle all the problems you may be experiencing with your existing, by-hand purchase order scheme.
Order Tracking
To start, by using Microsoft SharePoint and combining Office 365 applications, team members could track purchase requests at all phase from request approvals to delivery.
Customization
SharePoint and Office 365 also enable your organization to tailor your electronic purchase order scheme to your individual directions and requirements.
Elements you may personalize within SharePoint include the format of the purchase order forms, multi-level approvals, role assignments, line items, and filters appertaining to type, payment terms, location, and more.
Communication
SharePoint and Office 365 could also promote connection among departments. When the PO process has begun, SharePoint can actuate a programmed email to all respective parties to notify them that the procedure has begun and once more when it’s accomplished.
Interactive Dashboards
Another significant component of automation is the clarity into productivity and workflow visibility. SharePoint provides this by permitting you to oversee purchase requisition progress through an interactive dashboard.
Through the dashboard system, you could oversee purchase requisition history across divisions, view the evaluation of approval vs denial percentage, and follow the position of existing POs.
Vigorous Integrations
Furthermore, SharePoint offers superb flexibility in that it can integrate with most programs across departments for improved cooperation.
For example, if a department delivers a purchase order for a network printer; once the requisition is processed, SharePoint can mechanically develop an entry in your finance software for the new IT resource.
Now that we’ve seen what SharePoint can do in terms of helping you automate your AP tasks, let’s continue to M-Files.
M-Files Overview
M-Files is a powerful enterprise content management (ECM) system that presents both on-site, cloud solutions, or a hybrid adaptation contingent on your business requirements.
Its interface is modeled off the Windows Explorer internet browser making it simple to figure out and implement for teams that are comfortable with the Windows ecosystem.
Furthermore, M-Files offers advanced functionality that enables companies to automate operations and processes suchlike purchase request automation. Let’s examine those aptitudes.
Input
With M-Files you can capture invoices from main or assigned sites and digitize the collection of significant data linked to your purchase order and confirmation undertaking.
Data entry
In addition to the input competence, M-Files empowers customers to pinpoint and withdraw details from purchase requisition fields to facilitate the digitization and transmission process. Moreover, M-Files allows you to input any appropriate company codes, confirmation details and contains archive searches to assist in ensuring precision throughout the process.
Matching and coding
As a cutting-edge feature-set, M-Files may execute matching of POs and GL coding of non-PO billing statements in your ERP operation to streamline arrangement and delivery.
Automated approvals
The M-Files system can regulate and mechanize as much of the confirmation workflow as you wish. This involves handling, queues, routing, response, and aging accounts. Any purchase request that flunks the validation process can be amended by hand and then restored into the digitization flow for authorization.
Automatic storage of approved POs
After authorization has been granted, purchase requests can be forwarded to finance automatically to conclude processing and storage in a central repository.
How Wave Can Help You Implement Your Purchase Order Automation Platform in Washington
Holding your company fierce these days means streamlining your operations and eliminating the impasses from your workflows that decrease your proficiency and productivity. It also requires picking the appropriate business solutions to complete your calculated growth aims.
At Wave, we can help by studying the essential elements of your company and with incremental digital transformation and company system automation, reform them.
We apply a blended set of solutions appertaining to your business necessities to digitize your repetitive processes around collecting, organizing, and filing data so that it's uncomplicated to find and use whenever, from wherever.
We can assist you in customizing your AP digitization tool to fit your company’s precise demands and we willingly collaborate with upwards of 60 industry-acknowledged ECM and DMS tools including SharePoint, OpenText, M-Files, and Oracle.
If you’re ready to learn more, contact us today and we can schedule a time to chat.