SharePoint vs M-Files: The Solution For AP Proficiency & Purchase Order Automation in New York

Creating competencies in your company operations is a crucial initial step toward digital switch-over, back-office modernization, and supplying your organization an edge in an increasingly aggressive professional landscape.

Paper-based arrangements and incoherent systems with impasses make collaboration, productivity, transparency, and accountability to stakeholders notably complicated.

By means of accounts payable digitization, you could achieve cloud-based operations into your company and simplify tasks like purchase requisitions, invoicing, payment processing, procurement, and data input workflows.

Digitizing these types of organizational workflows creates more capacity in enterprise resource planning (ERP), greater cost reductions, and reformed application of your personnel.

Included in this manual, we’re reviewing two of the most prevalent solutions designed for AP proficiency and purchase requisition automation: SharePoint and M-Files. Our target is to help you select the right solutions stack and partner so you can develop and speed up your AP digital revamping.

But prior to beginning our product review, let’s discuss what purchase requisition digitization is and how it generates higher productivity for your AP workflows.

What is Purchase Order Automation?

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

Via digitization, purchase requisitions can be mechanically forwarded to the relevant party to initiate the authorization procedure. Later, immediately after the request is approved, it is mechanically sent to the merchant.

Though this may not appear to be significant at first glance, mechanizing the procurement operation eliminates the need for a manual process, materialized arrangements, and simplifies the usual time-consuming workflow.

As an example, with purchase request solution or your Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) platform, you can produce digital purchase requests that vendors can comprehend and then have the data spontaneously integrated into your accounting tool.

This presumably minor ability substantially streamlines the process, dramatically lessens the need for manual intervention, and therefore, amplifies productivity within your Accounts Payable section.

The Advantages of AP and Purchase Order Automation

We talked about several of the gains of AP digitization in the previous chapter, but to guarantee that you get the idea, let's take these advantages apart in plain language.

• Digitized data entry and storage

• Enhanced efficiency via further mechanization and less by-hand meddling

• Enhanced accuracy due to less manual faults

• Enhanced visibility into procedures with your digitized tasks

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

• Reformed distribution network and merchant connections and self-operated portal

• Enhanced aptitude to oversee for safety and compliance

So now that we’ve reviewed what AP and purchase order automation is, how it functions, and why it’s significant, let’s begin our product evaluation on Sharepoint as opposed to M-Files.

Microsoft SharePoint Online vs M-Files Review

Within this section, we’re going to first take a look at a basic evaluation between the costing and capabilities of SharePoint along with M-Files, and then an extensive review on their AP and purchase order automation potential.

Basic Price and Features Breakdown

Though this chapter provides a fine conventional simultaneous comparison, it doesn’t tell us much about how these solutions manage processes namely digital purchase order. Thus in this succeeding section, we’re giving an overview of each program and how it manages this important operation.

Microsoft SharePoint Overview

SharePoint is one of the most recognized and endorsed enterprise content management (ECM) and DMS platforms, owing to its deep connection with diverse popular Microsoft solutions like Excel, Outlook, and Word.

When it comes to purchase requisition digitization, SharePoint allows you to resolve the entirety of issues you may be facing with your existing, manual purchase order system.

Order Tracking

To begin, by utilizing Microsoft SharePoint and incorporating Office 365 programs, personnel can monitor purchase orders at every level from request approvals to delivery.

Customization

SharePoint and Office 365 also empower your organization to tailor your electronic purchase request arrangement to your specific directions and requirements.

Aspects you could individualize within SharePoint include the template of the purchase order forms, multi-level approvals, role assignments, line items, and filters based on location, type, payment terms, and more.

Communication

SharePoint and Office 365 may also further communication among departments. Once the PO process has begun, SharePoint may trigger a mechanized email to all respective parties to alert them that the operation has started and once more when it’s carried out.

Interactive Dashboards

One more important element of mechanization is the foresight into productivity and workflow perceptibility. SharePoint enables this by authorizing you to oversee purchase requisition progress via an interactive dashboard.

Via the dashboard framework, you could track purchase request history throughout sections, see the analysis of approval vs denial proportion, and monitor the status of POs in progress.

Vigorous Integrations

Moreover, SharePoint offers terrific versatility in that it can integrate with most solutions among departments for increased synergy.

For example, if a branch submits a purchase requisition for a network printer; when the order is actioned, SharePoint can mechanically produce an entry in your finance solution for the new IT resource.

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

M-Files Overview

M-Files is a robust enterprise content management (ECM) solution that offers both local, cloud solutions, or a hybrid variant contingent on your company needs.

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

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

Input

With M-Files you could acquire invoices from central or allocated areas and automate the collection of important data linked to your purchase order and confirmation processes.

Data entry

In addition to the input competence, M-Files allows customers to distinguish and pull out data from purchase requisition domains to expedite the mechanization and conveying process. Additionally, M-Files allows you to input any relevant business regulations, confirmation terms and incorporates database searches to help ensure accuracy throughout the process.

Matching and coding

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

Digitized approvals

The M-Files system can regulate and automate as much of the authorization procedure as you desire. This contains managing, routing, response, queues, and aging reports. Any purchase requisition that falls short of the validation course can be corrected manually and then reinstated into the mechanization flow for approval.

Automatic storage of approved POs

Once authorization has been granted, purchase requisitions can be forwarded to finance mechanically to conclude development and storage in a main repository.

How Wave Can Aid You in Executing Your Purchase Order Automation Tool in New York

Holding your organization competitive nowadays requires streamlining your operations and uprooting the hindrances from your undertakings that work to diminish your capability and productivity. Moreover, it involves choosing the appropriate business tools to accomplish your tactical growth aims.

At Wave, we can assist by studying the foundational aspects of your company and through gradual digital switch-over and organizational system automation, reform them.

We apply a blended set of solutions appertaining to your organizational needs to digitize your laborious tasks around gathering, regulating, and filing data so that it's simple to track down and utilize whenever, from any location.

We can be of assistance in individualizing your AP automation solution to satisfy your business's particular needs and we happily go along with upwards of 60 industry-recognized ECM and DMS solutions including M-Files, SharePoint, OpenText, and Oracle.

If you’re interested in learning more, reach out today and we can schedule a time to chat.