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

Generating competencies in your business workflows is a crucial opening phase toward digital switch-over, back-office modernization, and supplying your business an edge in an increasingly competitive professional industry.

Concrete operations and disjointed workflows with logjams make synergy, efficacy, visibility, and liability to shareholders very difficult.

By means of accounts payable mechanization, you can achieve paperless operations into your company and streamline duties like purchase requests, invoicing, payment processing, procurement, and data input processes.

Mechanizing these types of company processes produces more capacity in enterprise resource planning (ERP), greater expenditure cuts, and improved application of your human resources.

Included in this manual, we’re reviewing a duo of the most famous platforms designed for AP proficiency and purchase request mechanization: SharePoint and M-Files. Our target is to assist you in selecting the appropriate solutions stack and cooperate so you may develop and expedite your AP digital switch-over.

But before we begin with our product assessment, let’s talk through what purchase order digitization is and how it produces higher productivity for your AP processes.

What is Purchase Order Automation?

Purchase order automation is the concept of utilizing business software through robotic technology, artificial intelligence (AI), and machine learning (ML) to digitize the purchase requisition operation and its synonymous tasks.

Via mechanization, purchase requests could be automatically sent to the relevant team to begin the approval routine. After, immediately after the order is confirmed, it is automatically transmitted to the supplier.

While this may not appear to be significant at first glance, mechanizing the purchasing procedure eliminates the requirement for a manual process, paper-based arrangements, and streamlines the usual laborious workflow.

For example, with purchase order solution or your Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) platform, you can develop digital purchase requests that suppliers can identify followed by having the data automatically integrated into your accounting software.

This presumably minuscule ability substantially streamlines the process, remarkably diminishes the requirement for human meddling, and consequently, amplifies productivity within your Accounts Payable department.

The Benefits of AP and Purchase Order Automation

We covered various of the benefits of AP automation in the previous portion, but to be certain that you get the idea, let's dissect these advantages in absolute terms.

• Mechanized data entry and storage

• Enhanced competence with extra mechanization and less manual interference

• Improved precision on account of less manual error

• Increased transparency into systems with your mechanized workflows

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

• Reformed logistics process and merchant connections and self-operated portal

• Enhanced ability to monitor for protection and amenability

Now that we’ve gone over what AP and electronic purchase order is, how it works, and why it’s vital, let’s start our software assessment on Sharepoint vs M-Files.

Microsoft SharePoint Online vs M-Files Review

In this portion, we’re examining a straightforward evaluation between the costing and capabilities of SharePoint as well as M-Files, and then an in-depth analysis on their AP and purchase request mechanization potential.

Basic Price and Features Breakdown

Although this section provides a good general neck-and-neck analogy, it doesn’t tell us much about how these solutions handle processes namely electronic purchase order. Thus in this following section, we’re providing a summary of each solution and how it handles this essential undertaking.

Microsoft SharePoint Overview

SharePoint is amongst the most prominent and endorsed enterprise content management (ECM) and DMS platforms, due to its deep connection with other prevalent Microsoft tools like Word, Excel, and Outlook.

When it comes to purchase request digitization, SharePoint sanctions you to handle all the problems you could be experiencing with your existing, manual purchase request scheme.

Order Tracking

To start, by employing Microsoft SharePoint and integrating Office 365 tools, staff can track purchase requests at any level from request approvals to delivery.

Customization

SharePoint and Office 365 also enable your company to adapt your electronic purchase requisition arrangement to your particular guidelines and needs.

Elements you can personalize within SharePoint include the template of the purchase requisition 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 connection across divisions. As soon as the PO process has commenced, SharePoint can prompt a programmed email to all respective parties to inform them that the procedure has begun and again once it’s complete.

Interactive Dashboards

Another important component of mechanization is the foresight into productivity and workflow perceptibility. SharePoint provides this by authorizing you to oversee purchase requisition progress via an interactive dashboard.

Through the dashboard framework, you may track purchase order history among sections, see the analysis of approval vs denial proportion, and follow the position of existing POs.

Powerful Integrations

Furthermore, SharePoint enables great versatility in that it can integrate with most programs across departments for greater cooperation.

For instance, if a department submits a purchase requisition for a network printer; when the request is handled, SharePoint can spontaneously generate an entry in your finance tool for the new IT asset.

Now that we’ve discussed what SharePoint can accomplish in terms of helping you automate your AP workflows, let’s proceed to M-Files.

M-Files Overview

M-Files is a robust enterprise content management (ECM) tool that offers both on-premise, cloud solutions, or a hybrid version contingent on your organizational requirements.

Its interface is modeled off the Windows Explorer web browser making it simple to figure out and implement for departments that are used to the Windows operating system.

Additionally, M-Files grants advanced functionality that empowers businesses to automate workflows and processes suchlike purchase request automation. Let’s examine those aptitudes.

Input

With M-Files you may capture invoices from central or allocated locations and automate the collection of essential data related to your purchase order and authorization undertaking.

Data entry

As a continuation of the input competence, M-Files allows customers to pinpoint and pull out data from purchase request areas to facilitate the automation and conveying process. Additionally, M-Files permits you to input any relevant company rules, approval specifications and contains directory lookups to assist in ensuring accuracy during the operation.

Matching and coding

As a cutting-edge functionality, M-Files can perform corresponding of POs and GL coding of non-PO statements in your ERP procedure to facilitate organization and delivery.

Mechanized approvals

The M-Files platform can regulate and mechanize as much of the authorization procedure as you desire. This involves overseeing, routing, response, queues, and aging accounts. Any purchase requisition that falls short of the validation procedure can be revised by hand and then reinstated into the mechanization flow for authorization.

Automatic storage of approved POs

As soon as approval has been granted, purchase requests can be forwarded to finance mechanically to wrap up processing and storage in a central database.

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

Holding your business cutthroat nowadays means rationalizing your operations and removing the impasses from your workflows that decrease your efficiency and efficacy. Additionally, it involves selecting the appropriate business solutions to accomplish your tactical growth objectives.

At Wave, we can be of assistance by examining the foundational pieces of your business and through gradual digital transformation and business system automation, reform them.

We utilize a combination of innovations appertaining to your organizational necessities to automate your tedious workflows around collecting, arranging, and cataloging data so that it's simple to locate and use whenever, from any location.

We can be of assistance in individualizing your AP automation software to fit your organization’s precise requirements and we willingly collaborate with upwards of 60 industry-accepted ECM and DMS tools including SharePoint, OpenText, M-Files, and Oracle.

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