SharePoint vs M-Files: The Tool For AP Efficiency & Purchase Order Automation in Toledo
Developing capabilities in your company processes is a critical opening phase toward digital transformation, back-office innovation, and supplying your business an edge in an increasingly aggressive professional industry.
Paper-based arrangements and disjointed systems with bottlenecks make synergy, efficiency, visibility, and accountability to partners notably complicated.
By means of accounts payable digitization, you could carry out dematerialized systems into your organization and expedite workflows like purchase requisitions, invoicing, payment processing, procurement, and data entry processes.
Automating these forms of business workflows creates more capacity in enterprise resource planning (ERP), greater cost savings, and enhanced application of your manpower.
Within this handbook, we’re examining a duo of the most popular solutions designed for AP efficiency and purchase request automation: SharePoint and M-Files. Our target is to assist you in selecting the proper tech stack and collaborate so you can develop and speed up your AP digital transformation.
But before we begin with our product analysis, let’s discuss what purchase requisition mechanization is and how it produces further efficiency for your AP operations.
What is Purchase Order Automation?
Purchase order automation is the notion of employing business tools with machine learning (ML), robotic technology, and artificial intelligence (AI) to automate the purchase request operation and its synonymous undertakings.
Via mechanization, purchase requests could be spontaneously sent to the relevant party to initiate the authorization routine. Then, immediately after the order is confirmed, it is instinctively transmitted to the merchant.
Although this may not seem like much at first read, automating the procurement operation abolishes the need for a physical process, paper-based arrangements, and streamlines the usual labor-intensive workflow.
As an example, with purchase requisition software or your Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) platform, you can create electronic purchase requisitions that contractors can identify at which point the details automatically fused into your accounting tool.
This superficially minor ability substantially simplifies the process, remarkably lessens the demand for human intervention, and therefore, improves proficiency inside your Accounts Payable section.
The Perks of AP and Purchase Order Automation
We covered a number of the benefits of AP digitization in the former section, but to guarantee that you understand, let's break these benefits down in the simplest terms.
Mechanized data logging and storage
Greater productivity through extra mechanization and less human interference
Improved precision because of less physical error
Enhanced perceptibility into operations via automated tasks
Current-time auditing, reporting, and analytics to continue to improve performances
Reformed supply chain and merchant relationships and self-service portal
Enhanced ability to regulate for safety and conformity
Since we’ve discussed what AP and electronic purchase order is, how it operates, and why it’s important, let’s begin our software assessment on Sharepoint versus M-Files.
Microsoft SharePoint Online vs M-Files Review
Coming in this portion, we’re examining a straightforward analysis between the costing and aptitudes of SharePoint along with M-Files, followed by an in-depth analysis on their AP and purchase order digitization potential.
Basic Price and Features Breakdown
Although this portion gives a good conventional neck-and-neck evaluation, it doesn’t tell us much about how these programs manage processes namely purchase order automation. So in this next portion, we’re going to do an overview of each solution and how it handles this essential task.
Microsoft SharePoint Overview
SharePoint is one of the most prominent and endorsed enterprise content management (ECM) and DMS tools, owing to its close relation to diverse popular Microsoft solutions like Word, Excel, and Outlook.
As it relates to purchase requisition digitization, SharePoint sanctions you to address the entirety of concerns you may be experiencing with your existing, by-hand purchase requisition scheme.
Order Tracking
To start, by employing Microsoft SharePoint and integrating Office 365 tools, team members can track purchase requests at any level from request confirmations to delivery.
Customization
SharePoint and Office 365 also allow your company to customize your electronic purchase requisition arrangement to your particular instructions and requirements.
Elements you could personalize within SharePoint comprise of the layout of the purchase request forms, multi-level approvals, role assignments, line items, and filters attributed to type, payment terms, location, and more.
Communication
SharePoint and Office 365 may also further connection among divisions. As soon as the PO operation has begun, SharePoint may trigger a programmed email to all appropriate teams to notify them that the procedure has begun and once more when it’s accomplished.
Interactive Dashboards
Another critical aspect of mechanization is the clarity into efficiency and workflow transparency. SharePoint enables this by allowing you to monitor purchase requisition progress through an interactive dashboard.
With the dashboard framework, you may oversee purchase requisition history across divisions, view the breakdown of approval vs denial proportion, and follow the status of existing POs.
Vigorous Integrations
Furthermore, SharePoint provides terrific versatility in that it can work with with most programs among departments for improved cooperation.
Such as, if a branch delivers a purchase requisition for a network printer; as soon as the order is actioned, SharePoint can mechanically produce an entry in your finance software for the new IT asset.
Now that we’ve discussed what SharePoint is capable of in terms of helping you automate your AP workflows, let’s move on to M-Files.
M-Files Overview
M-Files is a powerful enterprise content management (ECM) solution that presents both on-site, cloud solutions, or a hybrid version contingent on your organizational needs.
Its interface is based off of the Windows Explorer web browser making it simple to learn and perform for parties that are comfortable with the Windows interface.
Moreover, M-Files provides advanced functionality that allows businesses to digitize workflows and processes suchlike purchase requisition automation. Let’s examine those competencies.
Input
With M-Files you could gather invoices from central or allocated locations and automate the gathering of important data associated with your purchase request and confirmation processes.
Data entry
As a continuation of the input competence, M-Files enables users to distinguish and extract details from purchase request fields to expedite the automation and conveying process. Furthermore, M-Files enables you to input any relevant business codes, approval specifications and includes database searches to help ensure precision during the process.
Matching and coding
As a cutting-edge functional scope, M-Files may carry out matching of POs and GL coding of non-PO invoices in your ERP operation to facilitate structure and delivery.
Digitized approvals
The M-Files platform can control and automate as much of the authorization process as you desire. This contains managing, routing, response, queues, and aging reports. Any purchase request that fails the approval procedure can be revised by hand and then reinstated into the automation flow for validation.
Automatic storage of approved POs
Once approval has been granted, purchase requisitions can be sent to finance spontaneously to finalize development and storage in a primary database.
How Wave Can Assist You in Enforcing Your Purchase Order Automation Tool in Toledo
Holding your organization cutthroat these days involves rationalizing your operations and removing the impasses from your systems that mitigate your efficiency and output. Additionally, it means choosing the proper business tools to accomplish your tactical growth objectives.
At Wave, we can assist by analyzing the foundational aspects of your organization and via gradual digital conversion and organizational process automation, transform them.
We use a blended set of solutions appertaining to your organizational requirements to digitize your laborious tasks around gathering, regulating, and cataloging data so that it's uncomplicated to find and use whenever, from wherever.
We can assist you in customizing your AP digitization software to satisfy your organization’s precise needs and we happily collaborate with over 60 industry-accepted ECM and DMS platforms including OpenText, M-Files, SharePoint, and Oracle.
If you’re ready to learn more, contact us today and we can arrange a time to chat.