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

Generating efficiencies in your organizational operations is a crucial first phase toward digital conversion, back-office upgrading, and supplying your company an advantage in an increasingly aggressive professional landscape.

Concrete operations and fragmented systems with bottlenecks make cooperation, efficacy, visibility, and accountability to shareholders quite difficult.

By means of accounts payable automation, you may achieve dematerialized systems into your organization and simplify duties like purchase orders, payment processing, procurement, invoicing, and data entry processes.

Digitizing these types of business operations generates more efficiency in enterprise resource planning (ERP), better expenditure cuts, and reformed application of your manpower.

Within this manual, we’re evaluating a duo of the most famous platforms geared toward AP efficiency and purchase requisition mechanization: SharePoint and M-Files. Our goal is to aid you in selecting the proper toolset and partner so you may expand and speed up your AP digital switch-over.

But before we begin with our product assessment, let’s do a quick review of what purchase request digitization is and how it produces further capability for your AP operations.

What is Purchase Order Automation?

Purchase order automation is the process of utilizing business software through artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and robotic technology to mechanize the purchase request system and its related workflows.

Through digitization, purchase orders may be spontaneously transmitted to the relevant party to initiate the authorization process. Later, as soon as the requisition is approved, it is automatically transmitted to the supplier.

Though this may not appear to be significant at first glance, automating the purchasing operation removes the need for a by-hand process, materialized schemes, and expedites the usual time-consuming workflow.

For instance, with purchase request solution or your Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) platform, you can create automated purchase requisitions that suppliers can acknowledge and then have the details spontaneously fused into your accounting platform.

This presumably minuscule aptitude substantially expedites the system, dramatically reduces the demand for human interference, and consequently, improves proficiency through your Accounts Payable division.

The Advantages of AP and Purchase Order Automation

We talked about various of the gains of AP digitization in the preceding portion, but just to make sure you get the point, let's break these benefits down in absolute terms.

• Digitized data entry and storage

• Enhanced competence via extra mechanization and less human meddling

• Greater accuracy due to less human blunders

• Enhanced transparency into operations through your digitized tasks

• Actual-time auditing, reporting, and analytics to sustain the betterment of performances

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

• Improved capability to regulate for security and amenability

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

Microsoft SharePoint Online vs M-Files Review

Coming in this portion, we’re examining a basic evaluation between the pricing and aptitudes of SharePoint as well as M-Files, and then a deeper dive on their AP and purchase request mechanization capabilities.

Basic Price and Features Breakdown

Although this section provides a good standard neck-and-neck evaluation, it doesn’t tell us much about how these tools manage processes namely digital purchase order. Thus in this following portion, we’re giving a summary of each program and how it administers this important task.

Microsoft SharePoint Overview

SharePoint is one of the more prominent and accepted enterprise content management (ECM) and DMS tools, owing to its deep connection with different famed Microsoft programs like Outlook, Word, and Excel.

When it comes to purchase order mechanization, SharePoint allows you to resolve each one of the problems you could be experiencing with your present-day, by-hand purchase request arrangement.

Order Tracking

To begin, by using Microsoft SharePoint and combining Office 365 applications, personnel may monitor purchase orders at every stage from request authorizations to delivery.

Customization

SharePoint and Office 365 also allow your company to customize your electronic purchase requisition scheme to your individual instructions and necessities.

Elements you could individualize within SharePoint involve the format of the purchase requisition forms, role assignments, line items, multi-level approvals, and filters attributed to location, type, payment terms, and more.

Communication

SharePoint and Office 365 can also further connection among departments. Once the PO procedure has commenced, SharePoint can actuate an automated email to all appropriate teams to notify them that the operation has started and once more as soon as it’s complete.

Interactive Dashboards

One more important component of digitization is the insight into productivity and workflow perceptibility. SharePoint provides this by authorizing you to oversee purchase order progress via an interactive dashboard.

Through the dashboard setup, you can monitor purchase requisition history across sections, view the analysis of approval vs denial ratio, and monitor the state of existing POs.

Robust Integrations

Furthermore, SharePoint provides terrific adaptability in that it can work with with most solutions between departments for improved cooperation.

For instance, if a branch presents a purchase requisition for a network printer; once the requisition is handled, SharePoint can spontaneously develop an entry in your finance tool for the new IT resource.

Now that we’ve learned about what SharePoint can accomplish 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) system that offers both on-site, cloud solutions, or a hybrid variant determined by your organizational demands.

Its interface is modeled off the Windows Explorer web engine making it convenient to understand and execute for teams that are used to the Windows interface.

Furthermore, M-Files provides advanced functionality that empowers organizations to mechanize operations and processes suchlike purchase order automation. Let’s examine those competencies.

Input

With M-Files you may gather invoices from central or distributed areas and automate the ingestion of essential data related to your purchase order and confirmation processes.

Data entry

As a continuation of the input aptitude, M-Files enables clients to pinpoint and withdraw information from purchase requisition fields to promote the mechanization and conveying process. Furthermore, M-Files allows you to input any appropriate company codes, approval terms and contains database searches to assist in ensuring veracity during the operation.

Matching and coding

As an advanced feature-set, M-Files can perform conforming of POs and GL coding of non-PO statements in your ERP operation to streamline arrangement and delivery.

Automated approvals

The M-Files system can regulate and mechanize as much of the confirmation process as you desire. This contains overseeing, routing, response, queues, and aging accounts. Any purchase order that fails the approval course can be revised physically and then put back into the digitization flow for authorization.

Automatic storage of approved POs

As soon as approval has been issued, purchase requisitions can be sent to finance automatically to conclude handling and storage in a primary database.

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

Holding your company competitive these days means simplifying your procedures and eliminating the hindrances from your systems that mitigate your capability and productivity. It also means choosing the appropriate business solutions to complete your tactical growth goals.

At Wave, we can assist by analyzing the foundational aspects of your organization and via gradual digital transformation and business process automation, transform them.

We utilize a consolidation of innovations appertaining to your company needs to digitize your repetitive workflows around collecting, organizing, and registering data so that it's easy to locate and use whenever, from any location.

We can assist you in customizing your AP automation software to fit your company’s precise needs and we happily go along with upwards of 60 industry-acknowledged ECM and DMS solutions including M-Files, SharePoint, OpenText, and Oracle.

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