SharePoint vs M-Files: The Platform For AP Efficiency & Purchase Order Automation in Lubbock
Generating competencies in your company workflows is a critical opening step toward digital transformation, back-office innovation, and giving your business an edge in an increasingly cutthroat professional industry.
Tangible operations and disjointed workflows with bottlenecks make collaboration, efficacy, visibility, and responsibility to stakeholders quite difficult.
By means of accounts payable mechanization, you could achieve cloud-based arrangements into your organization and streamline duties like purchase requisitions, payment processing, procurement, invoicing, and data input workflows.
Mechanizing these kinds of company operations creates more proficiency in enterprise resource planning (ERP), better expenditure cuts, and reformed utilization of your manpower.
In this manual, we’re examining two of the most popular platforms geared toward AP proficiency and purchase requisition mechanization: SharePoint and M-Files. Our objective is to aid you in selecting the proper solutions stack and cooperate so you may develop and speed up your AP digital revamping.
But before we begin with our product assessment, let’s do a quick review of what purchase request digitization is and how it generates further efficiency for your AP workflows.
What is Purchase Order Automation?
Purchase order automation is the concept of utilizing business software with robotic technology, artificial intelligence (AI), and machine learning (ML) to mechanize the purchase order operation and its related tasks.
Through digitization, purchase requisitions may be mechanically transmitted to the appropriate company to start the authorization procedure. Later, immediately after the request is authorized, it is mechanically transmitted to the merchant.
Though this may not look like much at first glance, automating the purchasing operation removes the need for a by-hand process, materialized systems, and streamlines the often laborious workflow.
For example, with purchase request software or your Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) tool, you can create automated purchase orders that suppliers can acknowledge and then have the details spontaneously integrated into your accounting platform.
This presumably small ability greatly expedites the system, dramatically diminishes the need for by-hand meddling, and consequently, enhances proficiency through your Accounts Payable department.
The Benefits of AP and Purchase Order Automation
We covered a number of the gains of AP digitization in the preceding portion, but just to make sure you get the idea, let's break these benefits down in absolute terms.
Automated data logging and storage
Enhanced competence with extra digitization and less human meddling
Greater accuracy on account of less human error
Greater visibility into procedures with your automated tasks
Real-time auditing, reporting, and analytics to continue to improve efficiencies
Improved distribution process and merchant relationships and self-service portal
Improved capability to monitor for safety and compliance
Since we’ve discussed what AP and electronic purchase order is, how it works, and why it’s important, let’s start our platform evaluation on Sharepoint vs M-Files.
Microsoft SharePoint Online vs M-Files Review
Coming in this portion, we’re examining a basic breakdown between the costing and competencies of SharePoint along with M-Files, and then an extensive review on their AP and purchase request automation potential.
Basic Price and Features Breakdown
While this chapter presents a fine standard neck-and-neck evaluation, it doesn’t educate us on how these solutions handle processes namely electronic purchase order. So in this following section, we’re providing a synopsis of each program and how it handles this essential undertaking.
Microsoft SharePoint Overview
SharePoint is one of the most prominent and established enterprise content management (ECM) and DMS solutions, because of its strong association with diverse prevalent Microsoft tools like Outlook, Word, and Excel.
As it relates to purchase requisition mechanization, SharePoint enables you to resolve the entirety of issues you may be confronting with your current, manual purchase order scheme.
Order Tracking
To begin, by employing Microsoft SharePoint and integrating Office 365 tools, personnel could track purchase requisitions at every stage from request authorizations to delivery.
Customization
SharePoint and Office 365 also enable your company to tailor your automated purchase request scheme to your particular instructions and requirements.
Components you can individualize within SharePoint comprise of the layout of the purchase request forms, line items, multi-level approvals, role assignments, and filters appertaining to payment terms, location, type, and more.
Communication
SharePoint and Office 365 can also promote communication among sectors. When the PO process has begun, SharePoint could actuate a mechanized email to all relevant groups to alert them that the process has begun and once more when it’s complete.
Interactive Dashboards
A further significant aspect of automation is the insight into efficiency and workflow visibility. SharePoint provides this by authorizing you to supervise purchase requisition progress through an interactive dashboard.
Via the dashboard framework, you can monitor purchase requisition history among sections, see the breakdown of approval vs denial percentage, and track the state of existing POs.
Robust Integrations
Furthermore, SharePoint provides great versatility in that it can work with with most programs across departments for improved collaboration.
Such as, if a division submits a purchase order for a network printer; once the requisition is handled, SharePoint can mechanically generate an entry in your finance tool for the new IT asset.
Now that we’ve learned about what SharePoint can do in terms of assisting you in automating your AP workflows, let’s continue to M-Files.
M-Files Overview
M-Files is a vigorous enterprise content management (ECM) tool that presents both on-premise, cloud solutions, or a hybrid variant determined by your business requirements.
Its interface is modeled off the Windows Explorer web browser making it easy to figure out and execute for teams that are accustomed to the Windows ecosystem.
Furthermore, M-Files offers state-of-the-art functionality that empowers companies to automate operations and processes suchlike purchase order automation. Let’s examine those competencies.
Input
With M-Files you can acquire invoices from primary or allocated areas and mechanize the gathering of essential data related to your purchase requisition and confirmation processes.
Data entry
As a continuation of the input capability, M-Files enables clients to pinpoint and withdraw data from purchase requisition fields to promote the digitization and transmission process. Additionally, M-Files allows you to input any pertinent organizational codes, validation details and incorporates database searches to assist in ensuring precision across the process.
Matching and coding
As an advanced functional scope, M-Files can execute corresponding of POs and GL coding of non-PO statements in your ERP system to facilitate structure and transmission.
Automated approvals
The M-Files platform can manage and mechanize as much of the authorization procedure as you want. This involves managing, queues, routing, response, and aging records. Any purchase request 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
After validation has been issued, purchase orders can be forwarded to finance spontaneously to wrap up development and storage in a central repository.
How Wave Can Help You Implement Your Purchase Order Automation Solution in Lubbock
Keeping your business fierce these days involves simplifying your processes and uprooting the hindrances from your systems that mitigate your efficiency and productivity. Additionally, it requires choosing the right business solutions to accomplish your tactical growth aims.
At Wave, we can help by examining the fundamental aspects of your organization and through incremental digital conversion and company system automation, reform them.
We apply a consolidation of technology in accordance with your business requirements to digitize your tedious processes around collecting, regulating, and registering data so that it's uncomplicated to find and access whenever, from any location.
We can be of assistance in individualizing your AP digitization solution to fulfill your company’s specific requirements and we willingly collaborate with over 60 industry-recognized ECM and DMS tools including OpenText, M-Files, SharePoint, and Oracle.
If you’d like to discover more, reach out today and we can schedule a time to chat.