SharePoint vs M-Files: The Tool For AP Productivity & Purchase Order Automation in Omaha

Developing competencies in your business operations is a critical opening stage toward digital switch-over, back-office innovation, and granting your business an edge in a progressively competitive professional industry.

Paper-based systems and fragmented workflows with logjams make collaboration, efficacy, transparency, and accountability to shareholders very complex.

By means of accounts payable automation, you can carry out paperless arrangements into your organization and streamline duties like purchase requests, invoicing, payment processing, procurement, and data logging processes.

Digitizing these forms of company operations generates more capacity in enterprise resource planning (ERP), higher cost savings, and improved employment of your human resources.

Within this manual, we’re examining two of the most famous platforms used for AP efficiency and purchase requisition mechanization: SharePoint and M-Files. Our goal is to help you select the appropriate tech stack and collaborate so you may develop and accelerate your AP digital switch-over.

But prior to starting our product analysis, let’s do a quick review of what purchase request digitization is and how it creates further productivity for your AP processes.

What is Purchase Order Automation?

Purchase order automation is the process of employing business solutions with robotic technology, artificial intelligence (AI), and machine learning (ML) to automate the purchase order system and its related undertakings.

Through automation, purchase requisitions may be spontaneously forwarded to the relevant party to start the approval routine. Later, as soon as the requisition is confirmed, it is instinctively sent to the merchant.

While this may not look like much at first glance, automating the procurement operation abolishes the requirement for a physical process, tangible systems, and expedites the often time-consuming workflow.

For example, with purchase order software or your Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) tool, you can produce electronic purchase orders that vendors can acknowledge at which point the data mechanically integrated into your accounting software.

This superficially small capability substantially streamlines the process, remarkably lessens the requirement for by-hand interference, and thus, amplifies productivity through your Accounts Payable department.

The Benefits of AP and Purchase Order Automation

We talked about various of the benefits of AP digitization in the previous chapter, but to guarantee that you get the point, let's dissect these advantages in the simplest terms.

• Automated data logging and storage

• Improved productivity through extra automation and less human intervention

• Improved precision due to less manual faults

• Greater transparency into systems through your mechanized tasks

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

• Reformed logistics network and vendor affinities and self-operated portal

• Greater ability to regulate for protection and compliance

Since we’ve discussed what AP and purchase order automation is, how it functions, and why it’s vital, let’s start our product assessment on Sharepoint vs M-Files.

Microsoft SharePoint Online vs M-Files Review

Within this portion, we’re examining a basic evaluation between the pricing and capabilities of SharePoint as well as M-Files, followed by an extensive review on their AP and purchase requisition automation potential.

Basic Price and Features Breakdown

Although this section presents a good conventional neck-and-neck evaluation, it doesn’t educate us on how these solutions administer workflows such as purchase order automation. So in this next portion, we’re providing an overview of each tool and how it manages this significant undertaking.

Microsoft SharePoint Overview

SharePoint is one of the more recognized and accepted enterprise content management (ECM) and DMS tools, owing to its close relation to different famed Microsoft tools like Word, Excel, and Outlook.

As it relates to purchase requisition digitization, SharePoint sanctions you to handle the entirety of issues you may be experiencing with your present-day, by-hand purchase order system.

Order Tracking

To start, by employing Microsoft SharePoint and integrating Office 365 applications, staff may oversee purchase requisitions at every level from request confirmations to delivery.

Customization

SharePoint and Office 365 also empower your organization to tailor your automated purchase order arrangement to your individual directions and requirements.

Components you may individualize within SharePoint comprise of the layout of the purchase request forms, multi-level approvals, role assignments, line items, and filters based on type, payment terms, location, and more.

Communication

SharePoint and Office 365 could also facilitate communication among sectors. As soon as the PO operation has begun, SharePoint could actuate an automated email to all appropriate parties to inform them that the procedure has begun and again once it’s complete.

Interactive Dashboards

Another important aspect of automation is the foresight into efficiency and workflow transparency. SharePoint delivers this by allowing you to supervise purchase requisition progress with an interactive dashboard.

With the dashboard system, you may track purchase request history among divisions, view the analysis of approval vs denial ratio, and follow the position of POs in progress.

Robust Integrations

Furthermore, SharePoint enables great flexibility in that it can work with with most solutions between departments for increased collaboration.

Such as, if a division presents a purchase requisition for a network printer; as soon as the request is handled, SharePoint can automatically generate an entry in your finance software for the new IT resource.

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

M-Files Overview

M-Files is a vigorous enterprise content management (ECM) system that presents both local, cloud solutions, or a hybrid version contingent on your company needs.

Its interface is based off of the Windows Explorer web browser making it easy to figure out and implement for parties that are accustomed to the Windows ecosystem.

Furthermore, M-Files grants advanced functionality that enables organizations to mechanize tasks and processes suchlike purchase request automation. Let’s examine those aptitudes.

Input

With M-Files you can acquire invoices from main or assigned areas and mechanize the ingestion of important data associated with your purchase request and authorization processes.

Data entry

In addition to the input capability, M-Files enables customers to identify and extract details from purchase request fields to expedite the mechanization and routing process. Furthermore, M-Files enables you to input any relevant business codes, approval terms and includes directory searches to help ensure accuracy across the operation.

Matching and coding

As a state-of-the-art feature-set, M-Files could carry out corresponding of POs and GL coding of non-PO billing statements in your ERP procedure to simplify structure and routing.

Digitized approvals

The M-Files platform can regulate and automate as much of the confirmation workflow as you desire. This includes handling, response, queues, routing, and aging records. Any purchase order that falls short of the validation course can be amended by hand and then reinstated into the digitization flow for approval.

Automatic storage of approved POs

As soon as validation has been issued, purchase requisitions can be transmitted to finance spontaneously to finalize development and storage in a central repository.

How Wave Can Assist You in Enforcing Your Purchase Order Automation Platform in Omaha

Holding your company competitive these days involves rationalizing your operations and eliminating the impasses from your workflows that work to diminish your capability and productivity. It also involves picking the proper business tools to accomplish your strategic growth goals.

At Wave, we can assist by studying the fundamental elements of your organization and via incremental digital switch-over and company process automation, reform them.

We use a consolidation of technology appertaining to your organizational necessities to digitize your laborious processes around gathering, regulating, and registering data so that it's simple to track down and use whenever, from any location.

We can be of assistance in individualizing your AP automation tool to fulfill your business's precise requirements and we happily go along with upwards of 60 industry-accepted ECM and DMS platforms including OpenText, M-Files, SharePoint, and Oracle.

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