SharePoint vs M-Files: The Platform For AP Productivity & Purchase Order Automation in Glendale

Generating efficiencies in your business operations is a pivotal first phase toward digital conversion, back-office upgrading, and supplying your company an edge in a growingly aggressive professional sector.

Paper-based arrangements and incoherent processes with bottlenecks make synergy, efficiency, visibility, and liability to partners very complicated.

Through accounts payable automation, you could carry out dematerialized arrangements into your organization and expedite duties like purchase requests, payment processing, procurement, invoicing, and data entry tasks.

Automating these kinds of organizational processes generates more proficiency in enterprise resource planning (ERP), higher expenditure cuts, and improved application of your manpower.

In this guide, we’re reviewing two of the most famous tools designed for AP productivity and purchase request automation: SharePoint and M-Files. Our goal is to aid you in selecting the right toolset and collaborate so you could develop and expedite your AP digital transformation.

But before we begin with our product assessment, let’s discuss what purchase requisition automation is and how it creates higher efficiency for your AP processes.

What is Purchase Order Automation?

Purchase order automation is the concept of using business software via robotic technology, artificial intelligence (AI), and machine learning (ML) to automate the purchase request system and its related workflows.

Through mechanization, purchase orders can be automatically sent to the appropriate company to start the authorization procedure. Later, immediately after the requisition is approved, it is mechanically transmitted to the supplier.

While this may not look like much at first glance, mechanizing the buying procedure abolishes the necessity for a physical process, materialized arrangements, and expedites the often labor-intensive workflow.

For example, with purchase request software or your Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) application, you can create digital purchase orders that contractors can acknowledge at which point the details automatically fused into your accounting software.

This presumably minor aptitude significantly streamlines the process, drastically reduces the demand for by-hand intervention, and thus, amplifies productivity through your Accounts Payable department.

The Perks of AP and Purchase Order Automation

We talked about various of the gains of AP mechanization in the former section, but just to make sure you get the point, let's take these advantages apart in absolute terms.

• Mechanized data logging and storage

• Enhanced productivity through further mechanization and less human interference

• Enhanced precision because of less manual faults

• Enhanced perceptibility into procedures via automated workflows

• Real-time reporting, analytics, and auditing to continue to improve capacities

• Enhanced logistics chain and merchant affinities and self-service portal

• Enhanced ability to monitor for protection and compliance

So now that we’ve gone over what AP and purchase order automation is, how it works, and why it’s significant, let’s get into our software review on Sharepoint as opposed to M-Files.

Microsoft SharePoint Online vs M-Files Review

Coming in this portion, we’re reviewing a straightforward evaluation between the rate and aptitudes of SharePoint and M-Files, and then an extensive review on their AP and purchase requisition digitization potential.

Basic Price and Features Breakdown

Although this portion gives a fine conventional neck-and-neck comparison, it doesn’t tell us much about how these solutions manage processes such as electronic purchase order. So in this next chapter, we’re giving a synopsis of each program and how it administers this significant undertaking.

Microsoft SharePoint Overview

SharePoint is one of the more recognized and accepted enterprise content management (ECM) and DMS tools, owing to its strong association with diverse prevalent Microsoft programs like Excel, Outlook, and Word.

When it comes to purchase requisition automation, SharePoint sanctions you to resolve the entirety of concerns you may be facing with your existing, physical purchase request system.

Order Tracking

To start, by using Microsoft SharePoint and integrating Office 365 tools, personnel may track purchase requests at all level from request confirmations to delivery.

Customization

SharePoint and Office 365 also allow your company to tailor your digital purchase order scheme to your specific guidelines and necessities.

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

Communication

SharePoint and Office 365 may also further correspondence between divisions. Once the PO process has begun, SharePoint could prompt a programmed email to all relevant parties to notify them that the operation has begun and once more as soon as it’s accomplished.

Interactive Dashboards

A further important element of digitization is the insight into productivity and workflow perceptibility. SharePoint delivers this by permitting you to oversee purchase requisition progress through an interactive dashboard.

Through the dashboard setup, you could oversee purchase requisition history throughout sections, see the breakdown of approval vs denial percentage, and track the position of ongoing POs.

Vigorous Integrations

SharePoint also provides terrific adaptability in that it can incorporate with most solutions across departments for improved collaboration.

For example, if a department submits a purchase order for a network printer; once the requisition is handled, SharePoint can automatically generate an entry in your finance tool for the new IT resource.

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 robust enterprise content management (ECM) solution that offers both on-site, cloud solutions, or a hybrid variant depending on your business requirements.

Its interface is based off of the Windows Explorer web engine making it easy to learn and perform for parties that are accustomed to the Windows operating system.

Moreover, M-Files grants innovative functionality that empowers businesses to automate tasks and processes suchlike purchase requisition automation. Let’s take a look at those competencies.

Input

With M-Files you could capture invoices from primary or assigned sites and automate the ingestion of essential data associated with your purchase order and confirmation workflows.

Data entry

In addition to the input competence, M-Files enables users to pinpoint and extract information from purchase request domains to expedite the mechanization and routing process. Additionally, M-Files allows you to input any pertinent company rules, approval specifications and incorporates directory lookups to assist in guaranteeing accuracy during the operation.

Matching and coding

As a cutting-edge functional scope, M-Files may perform conforming of POs and GL coding of non-PO billing statements in your ERP system to simplify arrangement and delivery.

Automated approvals

The M-Files system can regulate and automate as much of the authorization process as you want. This contains overseeing, queues, routing, response, and aging accounts. Any purchase requisition that falls short of the approval process can be revised physically and then reinstated into the mechanization flow for validation.

Automatic storage of approved POs

Once validation has been issued, purchase requests can be sent to finance automatically to finalize processing and storage in a main cache.

How Wave Can Aid You in Executing Your Purchase Order Automation Solution in Glendale

Keeping your organization cutthroat these days involves rationalizing your processes and eliminating the hindrances from your undertakings that mitigate your efficiency and output. Additionally, it involves choosing the appropriate business solutions to accomplish your strategic growth aims.

At Wave, we can help by examining the fundamental pieces of your company and with gradual digital transformation and organizational system automation, revamp them.

We apply a consolidation of technology based on your company necessities to mechanize your repetitive workflows around capturing, organizing, and filing data so that it's simple to find and utilize whenever, from wherever.

We can help you to custom-tailor your AP digitization tool to fit your company’s particular requirements and we happily collaborate with upwards of 60 industry-acknowledged ECM and DMS solutions including M-Files, SharePoint, OpenText, and Oracle.

If you’re ready to learn more, contact us today and we can set up a time to chat.