SharePoint vs M-Files: The Tool For AP Proficiency & Purchase Order Automation in San Diego

Developing capabilities in your business operations is a crucial opening step toward digital transformation, back-office upgrading, and granting your organization an advantage in an increasingly competitive professional sector.

Tangible operations and incoherent systems with bottlenecks make cooperation, efficacy, perceptibility, and accountability to stakeholders very complicated.

With accounts payable digitization, you can implement cloud-based arrangements into your business and expedite duties like purchase orders, payment processing, procurement, invoicing, and data input workflows.

Mechanizing these types of organizational processes generates more proficiency in enterprise resource planning (ERP), better cost reductions, and enhanced utilization of your manpower.

Within this manual, we’re evaluating a duo of the most prevalent solutions geared toward AP efficiency and purchase requisition digitization: SharePoint and M-Files. Our target is to help you select the appropriate solutions stack and cooperate so you may augment and speed up your AP digital switch-over.

But prior to starting our product review, let’s do a quick review of what purchase order mechanization is and how it generates higher capability for your AP processes.

What is Purchase Order Automation?

Purchase order automation is the notion of utilizing business software with machine learning (ML), robotic technology, and artificial intelligence (AI) to mechanize the purchase requisition system and its corresponding undertakings.

Via digitization, purchase requisitions may be spontaneously sent to the fitting company to initiate the authorization process. Later, as soon as the request is confirmed, it is automatically transmitted to the merchant.

Though this may not seem like much at first read, automating the procurement process removes the need for a by-hand process, tangible schemes, and simplifies the often labor-intensive workflow.

For example, with purchase request solution or your Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) tool, you can create digital purchase orders that suppliers can acknowledge and then have the information spontaneously fused into your accounting platform.

This seemingly minuscule ability greatly streamlines the workflow, drastically diminishes the requirement for manual intervention, and consequently, improves proficiency inside your Accounts Payable division.

The Benefits of AP and Purchase Order Automation

We talked about several of the advantages of AP automation in the previous section, but just to make sure you get the idea, let's dissect these advantages in plain language.

• Automated data input and storage

• Greater competence with extra digitization and less human interference

• Greater accuracy due to less manual error

• Increased transparency into systems via digitized processes

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

• Improved logistics chain and supplier affinities and self-managed portal

• Improved capability to monitor for protection and compliance

So now that we’ve reviewed what AP and purchase order automation is, how it functions, and why it’s significant, let’s begin our software review on Sharepoint vs M-Files.

Microsoft SharePoint Online vs M-Files Review

Coming in this section, we’re reviewing a straightforward evaluation between the pricing and aptitudes of SharePoint as well as M-Files, and then an in-depth analysis on their AP and purchase order mechanization qualities.

Basic Price and Features Breakdown

Though this section presents a fine general side-by-side evaluation, it doesn’t inform us on how these solutions manage tasks namely digital purchase order. So in this next section, we’re going to do a synopsis of each program and how it manages this important operation.

Microsoft SharePoint Overview

SharePoint is one of the most prominent and established enterprise content management (ECM) and DMS platforms, owing to its deep connection with other prevalent Microsoft programs like Word, Excel, and Outlook.

When it comes to purchase request mechanization, SharePoint sanctions you to handle all the issues you could be facing with your existing, by-hand purchase request scheme.

Order Tracking

To initiate, by utilizing Microsoft SharePoint and combining Office 365 programs, personnel could monitor purchase requisitions at any phase from request authorizations to delivery.

Customization

SharePoint and Office 365 also empower your business to customize your digital purchase request arrangement to your particular directions and necessities.

Elements you may individualize within SharePoint include the layout of the purchase requisition forms, role assignments, line items, multi-level approvals, and filters based on payment terms, location, type, and more.

Communication

SharePoint and Office 365 may also promote connection across divisions. As soon as the PO procedure has commenced, SharePoint could trigger a mechanized email to all appropriate groups to inform them that the procedure has begun and once more as soon as it’s complete.

Interactive Dashboards

One more critical aspect of automation is the insight into productivity and workflow visibility. SharePoint delivers this by allowing you to oversee purchase order progress via an interactive dashboard.

Through the dashboard system, you can oversee purchase order history throughout sections, view the analysis of approval vs denial percentage, and track the state of POs in progress.

Vigorous Integrations

Furthermore, SharePoint enables great adaptability in that it can incorporate with most programs across departments for increased collaboration.

For instance, if a department presents a purchase requisition for a network printer; as soon as the request is handled, SharePoint can mechanically develop an entry in your finance solution for the new IT resource.

Now that we’ve seen what SharePoint is capable of in terms of helping you automate your AP tasks, let’s move on to M-Files.

M-Files Overview

M-Files is a powerful enterprise content management (ECM) tool that presents both on-site, cloud solutions, or a hybrid adaptation determined by your company requirements.

Its interface is modeled off the Windows Explorer web browser making it convenient to understand and implement for parties that are comfortable with the Windows ecosystem.

Moreover, M-Files provides state-of-the-art functionality that empowers companies to automate workflows and processes like purchase request automation. Let’s take a look at those aptitudes.

Input

With M-Files you can gather invoices from central or assigned locations and mechanize the collection of significant data associated with your purchase order and authorization processes.

Data entry

As a continuation of the input capability, M-Files enables users to identify and withdraw details from purchase order domains to expedite the automation and transmission process. Additionally, M-Files enables you to input any appropriate company regulations, approval terms and includes database lookups to assist in ensuring veracity across the operation.

Matching and coding

As a cutting-edge functional scope, M-Files may carry out corresponding of POs and GL coding of non-PO statements in your ERP operation to simplify structure and transmission.

Mechanized approvals

The M-Files system can control and automate as much of the approval workflow as you want. This involves overseeing, queues, routing, response, and aging reports. Any purchase request that fails the validation course can be corrected physically and then reinstated into the mechanization flow for authorization.

Automatic storage of approved POs

As soon as authorization has been issued, purchase requests can be transmitted to finance spontaneously to conclude development and storage in a primary repository.

How Wave Can Help You Implement Your Purchase Order Automation Platform in San Diego

Holding your company fierce nowadays requires rationalizing your operations and uprooting the hindrances from your workflows that work to diminish your capability and productivity. It also requires choosing the proper business tools to achieve your calculated growth aims.

At Wave, we can assist by studying the foundational aspects of your business and with incremental digital transformation and organizational process automation, transform them.

We use a consolidation of innovations appertaining to your company needs to mechanize your laborious tasks around capturing, organizing, and filing data so that it's simple to locate and access whenever, from wherever.

We can help you to custom-tailor your AP automation software to fit your company’s particular needs and we happily go along with over 60 industry-recognized ECM and DMS platforms including SharePoint, OpenText, M-Files, and Oracle.

If you’d like to discover more, contact us today and we can arrange a time to chat.