SharePoint vs M-Files: The Tool For AP Efficiency & Purchase Order Automation in Kansas City
Developing efficiencies in your company operations is a critical first stage toward digital switch-over, back-office innovation, and supplying your company an advantage in an increasingly competitive professional sector.
Tangible arrangements and disjointed workflows with impasses make synergy, efficacy, transparency, and accountability to partners very difficult.
Through accounts payable digitization, you can achieve paperless arrangements into your business and streamline tasks like purchase requests, payment processing, procurement, invoicing, and data input tasks.
Mechanizing these forms of business workflows creates more proficiency in enterprise resource planning (ERP), better expenditure cuts, and enhanced application of your personnel.
In this manual, we’re reviewing two of the most popular tools used for AP proficiency and purchase request digitization: SharePoint and M-Files. Our target is to help you select the proper toolset and collaborate so you may develop and accelerate your AP digital transformation.
But prior to starting our product assessment, let’s do a quick review of what purchase order digitization is and how it generates higher capability for your AP processes.
What is Purchase Order Automation?
Purchase order automation is the process of employing business solutions via artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and robotic technology to mechanize the purchase order process and its related undertakings.
Via automation, purchase orders can be automatically forwarded to the appropriate party to initiate the validation process. Then, immediately after the order is confirmed, it is automatically sent to the merchant.
Although this may not appear to be significant at first glance, automating the buying operation eliminates the requirement for a by-hand process, paper-based arrangements, and streamlines the usual laborious workflow.
As an example, with purchase request software or your Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) application, you can develop electronic purchase requisitions that suppliers can identify and then have the data automatically incorporated into your accounting tool.
This seemingly small aptitude significantly expedites the process, dramatically reduces the need for by-hand interference, and therefore, enhances efficiency within your Accounts Payable section.
The Perks of AP and Purchase Order Automation
We talked about several of the benefits of AP automation in the former chapter, but to be certain that you understand, let's take these advantages apart in absolute terms.
Automated data entry and storage
Improved productivity through extra automation and less human meddling
Enhanced accuracy because of less human error
Enhanced perceptibility into operations with your automated tasks
Actual-time auditing, reporting, and analytics to continue to improve performances
Reformed supply network and merchant connections and self-operated portal
Greater capability to regulate for protection and conformity
Now that we’ve discussed what AP and electronic purchase order is, how it works, and why it’s significant, let’s get into our product evaluation on Sharepoint vs M-Files.
Microsoft SharePoint Online vs M-Files Review
Within this portion, we’re going to first take a look at a fundamental evaluation between the rate and competencies of SharePoint and M-Files, and then an extensive review on their AP and purchase request digitization capabilities.
Basic Price and Features Breakdown
Although this chapter gives a fine general side-by-side analogy, it doesn’t inform us on how these solutions manage processes like digital purchase order. Thus in this following chapter, we’re going to do a synopsis of each program and how it manages this important task.
Microsoft SharePoint Overview
SharePoint is one of the most recognized and accepted enterprise content management (ECM) and DMS tools, because of its strong association with diverse famed Microsoft solutions like Excel, Outlook, and Word.
When it comes to purchase request automation, SharePoint allows you to handle all the problems you may be experiencing with your present-day, by-hand purchase request arrangement.
Order Tracking
To start, by employing Microsoft SharePoint and combining Office 365 tools, personnel may track purchase orders at every phase from request confirmations to delivery.
Customization
SharePoint and Office 365 also enable your company to customize your digital purchase order arrangement to your particular directions and necessities.
Components you could personalize within SharePoint include the layout of the purchase request forms, line items, multi-level approvals, role assignments, and filters appertaining to type, payment terms, location, and more.
Communication
SharePoint and Office 365 could also promote connection across sectors. When the PO procedure has commenced, SharePoint can trigger an automated email to all appropriate parties to notify them that the operation has started and again once it’s complete.
Interactive Dashboards
Another significant element of automation is the foresight into productivity and workflow transparency. SharePoint delivers this by allowing you to oversee purchase requisition progress via an interactive dashboard.
Via the dashboard system, you can track purchase requisition history among departments, view the breakdown of approval vs denial ratio, and follow the state of existing POs.
Robust Integrations
Furthermore, SharePoint enables terrific flexibility in that it can incorporate with most tools between departments for improved cooperation.
For instance, if a division delivers a purchase requisition for a network printer; when the requisition is actioned, SharePoint can mechanically develop an entry in your finance solution for the new IT resource.
Now that we’ve discussed what SharePoint can do in terms of helping you automate your AP workflows, let’s continue to M-Files.
M-Files Overview
M-Files is a vigorous enterprise content management (ECM) solution that provides both on-site, cloud solutions, or a hybrid version contingent on your company demands.
Its interface is modeled off the Windows Explorer web engine making it convenient to understand and implement for parties that are used to the Windows interface.
Additionally, M-Files provides innovative functionality that allows organizations to digitize workflows and processes suchlike purchase requisition automation. Let’s take a look at those competencies.
Input
With M-Files you could acquire invoices from main or assigned sites and mechanize the collection of essential data associated with your purchase requisition and authorization workflows.
Data entry
As a continuation of the input aptitude, M-Files allows customers to identify and pull out data from purchase request areas to expedite the automation and conveying process. Moreover, M-Files enables you to input any pertinent business rules, confirmation specifications and includes database lookups to help ensure veracity during the operation.
Matching and coding
As a cutting-edge functionality, M-Files can perform conforming of POs and GL coding of non-PO statements in your ERP system to facilitate arrangement and routing.
Digitized approvals
The M-Files platform can manage and mechanize as much of the authorization workflow as you want. This includes overseeing, response, queues, routing, and aging reports. Any purchase order that fails the authorization course can be corrected by hand and then reinstated into the digitization flow for authorization.
Automatic storage of approved POs
Once approval has been accepted, purchase orders can be transmitted to finance automatically to wrap up processing and storage in a main cache.
How Wave Can Aid You in Executing Your Purchase Order Automation Solution in Kansas City
Keeping your business fierce nowadays involves streamlining your processes and uprooting the bottlenecks from your undertakings that mitigate your capability and output. It also involves picking the proper business systems to complete your calculated growth goals.
At Wave, we can assist by analyzing the foundational elements of your company and with incremental digital transformation and company system automation, transform them.
We apply a combination of technology in accordance with your company needs to digitize your repetitive tasks around collecting, arranging, and registering data so that it's easy to locate and use whenever, from wherever.
We can be of assistance in individualizing your AP mechanization solution to fit your business's particular demands and we happily go along with over 60 industry-accepted ECM and DMS tools including M-Files, SharePoint, OpenText, and Oracle.
If you’re interested in learning more, contact us today and we can schedule a time to chat.