SharePoint vs M-Files: The Tool For AP Efficiency & Purchase Order Automation in Cleveland

Developing competencies in your organizational workflows is a critical opening stage toward digital switch-over, back-office upgrading, and supplying your organization an edge in an increasingly aggressive professional landscape.

Tangible systems and disjointed processes with logjams make synergy, efficacy, transparency, and liability to shareholders notably complex.

Through accounts payable digitization, you may achieve paperless operations into your organization and simplify workflows like purchase requests, invoicing, payment processing, procurement, and data entry processes.

Automating these forms of organizational processes produces more proficiency in enterprise resource planning (ERP), better cost savings, and improved employment of your personnel.

Within this guide, we’re evaluating two of the most prevalent tools geared toward AP productivity and purchase request automation: SharePoint and M-Files. Our goal is to aid you in selecting the appropriate solutions stack and partner so you may develop and accelerate your AP digital transformation.

But before we begin with our product assessment, let’s talk through what purchase requisition digitization is and how it creates greater capability for your AP workflows.

What is Purchase Order Automation?

Purchase order automation is the notion of employing business tools through machine learning (ML), robotic technology, and artificial intelligence (AI) to mechanize the purchase order process and its corresponding tasks.

Via digitization, purchase requisitions may be mechanically transmitted to the relevant company to initiate the validation procedure. Later, once the requisition is authorized, it is automatically sent to the supplier.

While this may not seem like much at first read, automating the purchasing operation eliminates the need for a physical process, tangible arrangements, and streamlines the usual time-consuming workflow.

For example, with purchase requisition software or your Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) platform, you can produce automated purchase orders that contractors can acknowledge at which point the details mechanically incorporated into your accounting software.

This superficially minor capability greatly simplifies the process, dramatically reduces the demand for human intervention, and consequently, amplifies efficiency inside your Accounts Payable division.

The Perks of AP and Purchase Order Automation

We covered various of the benefits of AP digitization in the preceding chapter, but to guarantee that you get the point, let's break these benefits down in plain language.

• Digitized data logging and storage

• Greater efficiency with further automation and less human meddling

• Enhanced reliability on account of less human faults

• Increased visibility into procedures via digitized workflows

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

• Improved logistics network and supplier connections and self-operated portal

• Enhanced aptitude to monitor for protection and compliance

Now that we’ve reviewed what AP and digital purchase order is, how it functions, and why it’s important, let’s begin our product assessment on Sharepoint vs M-Files.

Microsoft SharePoint Online vs M-Files Review

In this portion, we’re reviewing a fundamental breakdown between the rate and capabilities of SharePoint as well as M-Files, followed by a deeper dive on their AP and purchase request mechanization qualities.

Basic Price and Features Breakdown

While this chapter provides a good general neck-and-neck comparison, it doesn’t tell us much about how these tools handle tasks such as electronic purchase order. So in this next portion, we’re providing a synopsis of each tool and how it handles this important operation.

Microsoft SharePoint Overview

SharePoint is one of the more widely known and endorsed enterprise content management (ECM) and DMS platforms, because of its strong association with diverse famed Microsoft programs like Outlook, Word, and Excel.

In the context of purchase order mechanization, SharePoint enables you to address each one of the issues you could be facing with your current, by-hand purchase requisition arrangement.

Order Tracking

To begin, by utilizing Microsoft SharePoint and incorporating Office 365 tools, personnel could oversee purchase orders at every phase from request confirmations to delivery.

Customization

SharePoint and Office 365 also enable your business to tailor your digital purchase order arrangement to your particular instructions and necessities.

Components you can individualize within SharePoint involve the template of the purchase order forms, multi-level approvals, role assignments, line items, and filters attributed to payment terms, location, type, and more.

Communication

SharePoint and Office 365 could also promote communication across sectors. Once the PO process has begun, SharePoint may trigger a programmed email to all appropriate parties to alert them that the operation has started and again once it’s carried out.

Interactive Dashboards

A further critical aspect of mechanization is the clarity into productivity and workflow transparency. SharePoint enables this by allowing you to monitor purchase order progress via an interactive dashboard.

With the dashboard system, you could oversee purchase requisition history among divisions, see the evaluation of approval vs denial percentage, and track the state of POs in progress.

Vigorous Integrations

SharePoint also offers terrific versatility in that it can integrate with most tools among departments for greater collaboration.

For example, if a department submits a purchase requisition for a network printer; as soon as the requisition is handled, SharePoint can spontaneously develop an entry in your finance solution for the new IT asset.

Now that we’ve seen what SharePoint is capable of in terms of helping you automate your AP workflows, let’s proceed 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 depending on your company requirements.

Its interface is derived from the Windows Explorer internet browser making it easy to learn and implement for teams that are comfortable with the Windows operating system.

Furthermore, M-Files offers state-of-the-art functionality that empowers organizations to mechanize workflows and processes such as purchase requisition automation. Let’s take a look at those aptitudes.

Input

With M-Files you could acquire invoices from main or distributed areas and automate the collection of important data linked to your purchase requisition and approval processes.

Data entry

In addition to the input competence, M-Files enables users to pinpoint and extract details from purchase request fields to expedite the digitization and routing process. Moreover, M-Files allows you to input any relevant business codes, validation specifications and incorporates directory searches to assist in ensuring accuracy across the process.

Matching and coding

As an advanced functionality, M-Files could perform corresponding of POs and GL coding of non-PO statements in your ERP procedure to facilitate organization and transmission.

Automated approvals

The M-Files platform can control and digitize as much of the approval workflow as you wish. This includes overseeing, routing, response, queues, and aging records. Any purchase request that falls short of the approval course can be revised by hand and then reinstated into the digitization flow for approval.

Automatic storage of approved POs

Once authorization has been accepted, purchase requisitions can be forwarded to finance mechanically to wrap up processing and storage in a primary cache.

How Wave Can Aid You in Executing Your Purchase Order Automation Platform in Cleveland

Keeping your company fierce these days requires streamlining your operations and removing the hindrances from your undertakings that work to diminish your proficiency and efficacy. Moreover, it means choosing the right business tools to achieve your tactical growth aims.

At Wave, we can assist by studying the essential elements of your company and via incremental digital conversion and company workflow automation, transform them.

We apply a consolidation of innovations appertaining to your company needs to automate your tedious workflows around capturing, arranging, and cataloging data so that it's easy to track down and use whenever, from wherever.

We can help you to custom-tailor your AP automation tool to fit your company’s particular requirements and we gladly collaborate with over 60 industry-accepted ECM and DMS solutions including OpenText, M-Files, SharePoint, and Oracle.

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