SharePoint vs M-Files: The Platform For AP Proficiency & Purchase Order Automation in Chandler

Developing competencies in your company workflows is a crucial first stage toward digital conversion, back-office upgrading, and giving your business an upper hand in a progressively aggressive professional landscape.

Paper-based arrangements and fragmented systems with bottlenecks make collaboration, productivity, transparency, and responsibility to shareholders notably complicated.

Through accounts payable digitization, you may carry out dematerialized operations into your organization and simplify tasks like purchase orders, procurement, invoicing, payment processing, and data entry tasks.

Mechanizing these kinds of organizational processes creates more capacity in enterprise resource planning (ERP), better expenditure cuts, and improved employment of your personnel.

In this handbook, we’re reviewing two of the most popular platforms designed for AP proficiency and purchase requisition mechanization: SharePoint and M-Files. Our goal is to assist you in selecting the appropriate solutions stack and cooperate so you can expand and accelerate your AP digital switch-over.

But prior to beginning our product analysis, let’s do a quick review of what purchase request automation is and how it generates greater efficiency for your AP workflows.

What is Purchase Order Automation?

Purchase order automation is the concept of utilizing business tools through machine learning (ML), robotic technology, and artificial intelligence (AI) to automate the purchase request system and its synonymous workflows.

Through automation, purchase orders can be spontaneously forwarded to the appropriate team to start the validation routine. Then, once the order is confirmed, it is mechanically transmitted to the merchant.

Though this may not look like much at first glance, digitizing the buying procedure eliminates the need for a physical process, materialized systems, and streamlines the often time-consuming workflow.

For instance, with purchase requisition software or your Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) application, you can produce automated purchase requisitions that vendors can comprehend followed by having the information automatically fused into your accounting tool.

This seemingly minor aptitude significantly streamlines the workflow, dramatically reduces the demand for human meddling, and consequently, amplifies efficiency within your Accounts Payable section.

The Perks of AP and Purchase Order Automation

We talked about several of the advantages of AP digitization in the former portion, but to be certain that you understand, let's break these benefits down in the simplest terms.

• Automated data input and storage

• Greater competence with more automation and less human meddling

• Greater accuracy on account of less manual blunders

• Increased visibility into procedures via mechanized workflows

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

• Reformed logistics network and vendor connections and self-service portal

• Improved ability to oversee for protection and conformity

Since we’ve discussed what AP and digital purchase order is, how it works, and why it’s significant, let’s begin our platform review on Sharepoint vs M-Files.

Microsoft SharePoint Online vs M-Files Review

In this section, we’re reviewing a straightforward evaluation between the costing and aptitudes of SharePoint as well as M-Files, and then a deeper dive on their AP and purchase requisition digitization potential.

Basic Price and Features Breakdown

Although this portion provides a good general neck-and-neck analogy, it doesn’t tell us much about how these programs administer workflows namely digital purchase order. So in this following section, we’re giving a synopsis of each solution and how it handles this significant undertaking.

Microsoft SharePoint Overview

SharePoint is one of the most prominent and established enterprise content management (ECM) and DMS tools, due to its close relation to diverse prevalent Microsoft programs like Word, Excel, and Outlook.

When it comes to purchase order automation, SharePoint enables you to resolve each one of the problems you might be confronting with your present-day, physical purchase request system.

Order Tracking

To initiate, by using Microsoft SharePoint and integrating Office 365 applications, staff could oversee purchase requests at all level from request confirmations to delivery.

Customization

SharePoint and Office 365 also empower your business to adapt your electronic purchase order arrangement to your particular instructions and needs.

Components you can personalize within SharePoint involve the format of the purchase requisition forms, line items, multi-level approvals, role assignments, and filters appertaining to payment terms, location, type, and more.

Communication

SharePoint and Office 365 may also promote correspondence between departments. Once the PO process has commenced, SharePoint could prompt a mechanized email to all relevant parties to inform them that the process has commenced and once more as soon as it’s complete.

Interactive Dashboards

A further significant aspect of mechanization is the insight into efficiency and workflow perceptibility. SharePoint provides this by allowing you to monitor purchase order progress through an interactive dashboard.

With the dashboard setup, you can monitor purchase requisition history among sections, view the analysis of approval vs denial proportion, and track the status of POs in progress.

Robust Integrations

Furthermore, SharePoint enables great flexibility in that it can incorporate with most solutions among departments for greater synergy.

For example, if a division presents a purchase requisition for a network printer; as soon as the requisition is processed, SharePoint can automatically develop an entry in your finance tool for the new IT asset.

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

M-Files Overview

M-Files is a vigorous enterprise content management (ECM) tool that provides both on-premise, cloud solutions, or a hybrid adaptation depending on your company requirements.

Its interface is derived from the Windows Explorer web engine making it simple to figure out and execute for departments that are used to the Windows interface.

Moreover, M-Files provides innovative functionality that allows businesses to digitize workflows and processes such as purchase request automation. Let’s study those competencies.

Input

With M-Files you can acquire invoices from main or distributed areas and digitize the collection of important data related to your purchase order and authorization workflows.

Data entry

As an extension of the input aptitude, M-Files enables customers to pinpoint and pull out details from purchase requisition fields to promote the automation and conveying process. Additionally, M-Files enables you to input any pertinent company regulations, validation terms and incorporates directory lookups to assist in ensuring veracity during the operation.

Matching and coding

As a cutting-edge feature-set, M-Files could carry out corresponding of POs and GL coding of non-PO invoices in your ERP operation to facilitate arrangement and transmission.

Digitized approvals

The M-Files solution can regulate and digitize as much of the approval workflow as you want. This involves overseeing, queues, routing, response, and aging reports. Any purchase requisition that fails the authorization course can be corrected physically and then restored into the digitization flow for approval.

Automatic storage of approved POs

Once validation has been issued, purchase requests can be transmitted to finance spontaneously to conclude development and storage in a primary cache.

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

Holding your company cutthroat nowadays requires simplifying your procedures and eliminating the impasses from your systems that work to diminish your proficiency and output. Moreover, it involves selecting the proper business solutions to complete your strategic growth aims.

At Wave, we can be of assistance by examining the foundational elements of your business and with gradual digital transformation and business process automation, reform them.

We utilize a combination of technology based on your business needs to mechanize your repetitive processes around capturing, regulating, and cataloging data so that it's uncomplicated to track down and use at any time, from anywhere.

We can help you to custom-tailor your AP digitization solution to fit your business's specific requirements and we gladly work with upwards of 60 industry-recognized ECM and DMS solutions including M-Files, SharePoint, OpenText, and Oracle.

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