SharePoint vs M-Files: The Platform For AP Proficiency & Purchase Order Automation in Atlanta
Developing efficiencies in your company operations is a critical opening stage toward digital conversion, back-office upgrading, and giving your company an advantage in a growingly aggressive professional landscape.
Concrete arrangements and disjointed processes with bottlenecks make collaboration, productivity, visibility, and accountability to stakeholders quite difficult.
By means of accounts payable automation, you may implement cloud-based operations into your company and expedite duties like purchase requisitions, payment processing, procurement, invoicing, and data input tasks.
Mechanizing these kinds of organizational workflows generates more proficiency in enterprise resource planning (ERP), better cost savings, and enhanced application of your manpower.
Within this manual, we’re evaluating two of the most famous platforms geared toward AP efficiency and purchase order mechanization: SharePoint and M-Files. Our goal is to help you select the right toolset and partner so you may augment and expedite your AP digital transformation.
But prior to starting our product review, let’s do a quick review of what purchase order digitization is and how it generates higher productivity for your AP processes.
What is Purchase Order Automation?
Purchase order automation is the concept of employing business tools with machine learning (ML), robotic technology, and artificial intelligence (AI) to automate the purchase order process and its synonymous workflows.
Through digitization, purchase requests could be mechanically sent to the fitting party to begin the authorization procedure. After, as soon as the order is approved, it is automatically transmitted to the supplier.
Although this may not appear to be significant at first glance, automating the purchasing process eliminates the requirement for a by-hand process, paper-based systems, and simplifies the usual laborious workflow.
As an example, with purchase order software or your Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) application, you can develop electronic purchase orders that vendors can acknowledge and then have the data automatically integrated into your accounting tool.
This presumably minor aptitude greatly simplifies the system, remarkably reduces the need for by-hand meddling, and therefore, enhances proficiency through your Accounts Payable section.
The Perks of AP and Purchase Order Automation
We discussed various of the benefits of AP automation in the preceding portion, but just to make sure you understand, let's take these advantages apart in absolute terms.
Automated data logging and storage
Enhanced efficiency via more automation and less manual intervention
Enhanced reliability because of less manual faults
Greater visibility into procedures through your automated tasks
Current-time auditing, reporting, and analytics to uphold the development of efficiencies
Enhanced logistics chain and merchant connections and self-managed portal
Improved capability to regulate for safety and compliance
So now that we’ve gone over what AP and electronic purchase order is, how it functions, and why it’s vital, let’s start our platform review on Sharepoint versus M-Files.
Microsoft SharePoint Online vs M-Files Review
In this portion, we’re reviewing a basic breakdown between the rate and aptitudes of SharePoint and M-Files, and then an extensive review on their AP and purchase order digitization capabilities.
Basic Price and Features Breakdown
Although this section provides a good conventional neck-and-neck evaluation, it doesn’t educate us on how these tools handle tasks namely electronic purchase order. Therefore in this succeeding chapter, we’re providing a synopsis of each tool and how it administers this essential operation.
Microsoft SharePoint Overview
SharePoint is amongst the most recognized and established enterprise content management (ECM) and DMS tools, owing to its close relation to diverse popular Microsoft programs like Excel, Outlook, and Word.
As it relates to purchase order automation, SharePoint allows you to address the entirety of problems you might be confronting with your existing, physical purchase request system.
Order Tracking
To start, by employing Microsoft SharePoint and combining Office 365 tools, staff could monitor purchase requisitions at any stage from request confirmations to delivery.
Customization
SharePoint and Office 365 also empower your company to tailor your digital purchase order system to your specific guidelines and necessities.
Elements you can custom tailor within SharePoint include the format of the purchase request forms, multi-level approvals, role assignments, line items, and filters appertaining to location, type, payment terms, and more.
Communication
SharePoint and Office 365 can also facilitate communication across departments. When the PO procedure has begun, SharePoint could actuate a mechanized email to all appropriate teams to inform them that the process has begun and once more when it’s carried out.
Interactive Dashboards
Another significant component of mechanization is the foresight into productivity and workflow transparency. SharePoint enables this by permitting you to oversee purchase requisition progress with an interactive dashboard.
Through the dashboard setup, you can track purchase request history among sections, see the analysis of approval vs denial ratio, and monitor the state of ongoing POs.
Vigorous Integrations
Moreover, SharePoint offers great adaptability in that it can incorporate with most programs among departments for improved cooperation.
Such as, if a division delivers a purchase requisition for a network printer; when the requisition is handled, SharePoint can automatically develop an entry in your finance software for the new IT asset.
Now that we’ve seen what SharePoint can accomplish in terms of helping you automate your AP processes, let’s continue to M-Files.
M-Files Overview
M-Files is a powerful enterprise content management (ECM) solution that provides both on-premise, cloud solutions, or a hybrid variant depending on your organizational demands.
Its interface is modeled off the Windows Explorer web engine making it simple to understand and perform for teams that are accustomed to the Windows interface.
Furthermore, M-Files provides state-of-the-art functionality that enables organizations to automate workflows and processes like purchase order automation. Let’s study those competencies.
Input
With M-Files you could gather invoices from main or distributed locations and digitize the gathering of significant data linked to your purchase order and authorization processes.
Data entry
In addition to the input aptitude, M-Files empowers clients to distinguish and pull out data from purchase order fields to expedite the digitization and routing process. Moreover, M-Files enables you to input any appropriate company regulations, validation details and includes directory lookups to help ensure precision across the procedure.
Matching and coding
As a cutting-edge functional scope, M-Files may execute corresponding of POs and GL coding of non-PO invoices in your ERP system to facilitate arrangement and routing.
Mechanized approvals
The M-Files system can manage and mechanize as much of the confirmation procedure as you desire. This includes handling, response, queues, routing, and aging records. Any purchase requisition that falls short of the authorization course can be corrected physically and then reinstated into the mechanization flow for validation.
Automatic storage of approved POs
Once authorization has been issued, purchase orders can be sent to finance spontaneously to finalize processing and storage in a main repository.
How Wave Can Aid You in Executing Your Purchase Order Automation Solution in Atlanta
Keeping your company cutthroat today requires simplifying your operations and removing the hindrances from your undertakings that decrease your proficiency and productivity. Additionally, it requires picking the right business tools to complete your calculated growth aims.
At Wave, we can help by examining the foundational pieces of your company and through gradual digital switch-over and company process automation, revamp them.
We use a blended set of innovations appertaining to your company requirements to mechanize your tedious workflows around gathering, regulating, and registering data so that it's simple to locate and use whenever, from wherever.
We can help you to custom-tailor your AP mechanization software to fit your business's precise demands and we willingly work with over 60 industry-acknowledged ECM and DMS platforms including M-Files, SharePoint, OpenText, and Oracle.
If you’re interested in learning more, connect with us today and we can schedule a time to chat.