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

Generating capabilities in your company operations is a critical opening phase toward digital conversion, back-office innovation, and giving your business an edge in a growingly cutthroat professional sector.

Tangible systems and incoherent workflows with impasses make synergy, efficiency, transparency, and responsibility to partners notably complex.

With accounts payable automation, you can achieve cloud-based arrangements into your company and simplify duties like purchase orders, invoicing, payment processing, procurement, and data input workflows.

Mechanizing these kinds of company operations creates more capacity in enterprise resource planning (ERP), better cost reductions, and reformed utilization of your manpower.

Within this handbook, we’re reviewing a duo of the most popular solutions used for AP efficiency and purchase request digitization: SharePoint and M-Files. Our objective is to assist you in selecting the appropriate tech stack and collaborate so you may expand and expedite your AP digital revamping.

But prior to starting our product assessment, let’s discuss what purchase requisition automation is and how it creates higher productivity for your AP processes.

What is Purchase Order Automation?

Purchase order automation is the notion of utilizing business solutions through artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and robotic technology to digitize the purchase request system and its related undertakings.

By means of digitization, purchase orders may be mechanically sent to the relevant party to begin the validation routine. Then, once the order is authorized, it is instinctively transmitted to the merchant.

Though this may not seem like much at first read, mechanizing the procurement procedure eliminates the necessity for a by-hand process, tangible systems, and streamlines the usual time-consuming workflow.

For instance, with purchase request solution or your Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) application, you can create automated purchase orders that contractors can identify at which point the information automatically incorporated into your accounting platform.

This seemingly small aptitude significantly streamlines the system, dramatically reduces the requirement for manual meddling, and therefore, amplifies productivity through your Accounts Payable division.

The Perks of AP and Purchase Order Automation

We covered a number of the benefits of AP automation in the former portion, but to guarantee that you get the point, let's dissect these advantages in the simplest terms.

• Mechanized data logging and storage

• Greater productivity with more automation and less manual interference

• Enhanced reliability because of less human faults

• Increased visibility into operations through your digitized workflows

• Current-time analytics, auditing, and reporting to continue to improve performances

• Enhanced supply network and merchant connections and self-operated portal

• Enhanced aptitude to oversee for security and amenability

Since we’ve discussed what AP and digital purchase order is, how it works, and why it’s vital, let’s start our platform assessment on Sharepoint versus M-Files.

Microsoft SharePoint Online vs M-Files Review

In this section, we’re examining a straightforward evaluation between the pricing and competencies of SharePoint along with M-Files, followed by a deeper dive on their AP and purchase requisition digitization qualities.

Basic Price and Features Breakdown

Although this section gives a fine general neck-and-neck evaluation, it doesn’t educate us on how these programs administer tasks like purchase order automation. Therefore in this succeeding portion, we’re providing a summary of each tool and how it handles this significant task.

Microsoft SharePoint Overview

SharePoint is one of the most recognized and accepted enterprise content management (ECM) and DMS platforms, because of its close relation to diverse prevalent Microsoft programs like Word, Excel, and Outlook.

As it relates to purchase requisition mechanization, SharePoint sanctions you to address all the issues you may be confronting with your present-day, by-hand purchase order arrangement.

Order Tracking

To initiate, by using Microsoft SharePoint and integrating Office 365 applications, personnel could track purchase requisitions at every level from request authorizations to delivery.

Customization

SharePoint and Office 365 also enable your organization to adapt your electronic purchase order scheme to your individual guidelines and needs.

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

Communication

SharePoint and Office 365 could also facilitate correspondence across sectors. As soon as the PO operation has begun, SharePoint could actuate a programmed email to all relevant groups to inform them that the operation has commenced and again once it’s carried out.

Interactive Dashboards

One more critical element of mechanization is the insight into capability and workflow perceptibility. SharePoint provides this by authorizing you to supervise purchase requisition progress through an interactive dashboard.

Through the dashboard setup, you may monitor purchase request history among departments, distinguish the breakdown of approval vs denial ratio, and track the position of ongoing POs.

Powerful Integrations

Furthermore, SharePoint provides superb versatility in that it can incorporate with most tools between departments for greater cooperation.

For instance, if a branch delivers a purchase order for a network printer; as soon as the requisition is processed, SharePoint can spontaneously develop an entry in your finance software for the new IT resource.

Now that we’ve learned about what SharePoint can do in terms of aiding you in digitizing your AP workflows, let’s proceed to M-Files.

M-Files Overview

M-Files is a robust enterprise content management (ECM) tool that provides both local, cloud solutions, or a hybrid adaptation depending on your organizational demands.

Its interface is modeled off the Windows Explorer web browser making it easy to figure out and perform for teams that are used to the Windows ecosystem.

Moreover, M-Files provides state-of-the-art functionality that enables companies to digitize tasks and processes suchlike purchase requisition automation. Let’s examine those capabilities.

Input

With M-Files you can acquire invoices from main or assigned areas and digitize the ingestion of important data associated with your purchase requisition and approval undertaking.

Data entry

As a continuation of the input competence, M-Files enables users to identify and withdraw information from purchase order areas to promote the digitization and transmission process. Moreover, M-Files allows you to input any appropriate organizational rules, validation specifications and incorporates archive lookups to help ensure accuracy across the operation.

Matching and coding

As a cutting-edge functionality, M-Files can carry out conforming of POs and GL coding of non-PO billing statements in your ERP operation to facilitate organization and delivery.

Digitized approvals

The M-Files system can manage and automate as much of the approval procedure as you desire. This contains handling, response, queues, routing, and aging records. Any purchase order that flunks the validation course can be corrected physically and then restored into the digitization flow for authorization.

Automatic storage of approved POs

As soon as approval has been granted, purchase requisitions can be sent to finance spontaneously to wrap up processing and storage in a primary cache.

How Wave Can Assist You in Enforcing Your Purchase Order Automation Tool in Cincinnati

Keeping your organization cutthroat these days requires rationalizing your operations and eliminating the bottlenecks from your workflows that decrease your efficiency and efficacy. It also requires picking the proper business tools to complete your calculated growth objectives.

At Wave, we can help by analyzing the fundamental aspects of your business and via step-by-step digital transformation and company process automation, transform them.

We apply a combination of technology appertaining to your company needs to digitize your laborious processes around capturing, organizing, and registering data so that it's uncomplicated to track down and access whenever, from wherever.

We can assist you in customizing your AP mechanization software to fulfill your business's particular needs and we happily work with over 60 industry-acknowledged ECM and DMS solutions including SharePoint, OpenText, M-Files, and Oracle.

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