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

Developing efficiencies in your organizational workflows is a crucial initial stage toward digital conversion, back-office innovation, and giving your company an edge in a progressively competitive professional sector.

Paper-based operations and incoherent systems with bottlenecks make synergy, productivity, visibility, and responsibility to stakeholders very complex.

Through accounts payable digitization, you could achieve cloud-based systems into your company and streamline tasks like purchase requisitions, procurement, invoicing, payment processing, and data input processes.

Digitizing these forms of company workflows produces more capacity in enterprise resource planning (ERP), greater cost savings, and enhanced application of your human resources.

In this manual, we’re evaluating a couple of the most popular platforms used for AP proficiency and purchase requisition digitization: SharePoint and M-Files. Our goal is to assist you in selecting the appropriate solutions stack and partner so you may expand and expedite your AP digital transformation.

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

What is Purchase Order Automation?

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

Via automation, purchase requisitions could be mechanically sent to the relevant party to initiate the authorization routine. Then, as soon as the requisition is confirmed, it is instinctively forwarded to the merchant.

Although this may not seem like much at first read, digitizing the purchasing procedure eliminates the necessity for a physical process, tangible schemes, and expedites the standard labor-intensive workflow.

For example, with purchase request solution or your Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) tool, you can produce electronic purchase orders that vendors can comprehend at which point the details mechanically incorporated into your accounting software.

This presumably small capability substantially expedites the system, drastically diminishes the requirement for by-hand interference, and thus, amplifies efficiency through your Accounts Payable department.

The Advantages of AP and Purchase Order Automation

We talked about several of the benefits of AP digitization in the former portion, but to be certain that you get the idea, let's dissect these advantages in plain language.

• Digitized data entry and storage

• Improved productivity via extra digitization and less human meddling

• Improved precision on account of less human blunders

• Increased visibility into systems with your mechanized workflows

• Real-time reporting, analytics, and auditing to uphold the development of performances

• Improved supply network and merchant relationships and self-service portal

• Enhanced ability to oversee for safety and conformity

Now that we’ve discussed what AP and purchase order automation is, how it works, and why it’s significant, let’s start our product assessment on Sharepoint as opposed to M-Files.

Microsoft SharePoint Online vs M-Files Review

Coming in this portion, we’re examining a straightforward evaluation between the pricing and competencies of SharePoint as well as M-Files, and then an extensive review on their AP and purchase request digitization qualities.

Basic Price and Features Breakdown

Although this portion presents a fine conventional side-by-side comparison, it doesn’t tell us much about how these programs manage workflows namely purchase order automation. So in this succeeding section, we’re providing a synopsis of each solution and how it manages this significant undertaking.

Microsoft SharePoint Overview

SharePoint is one of the most recognized and established enterprise content management (ECM) and DMS tools, because of its strong association with different famed Microsoft tools like Outlook, Word, and Excel.

When it comes to purchase order mechanization, SharePoint sanctions you to handle all the problems you may be facing with your existing, manual purchase request arrangement.

Order Tracking

To initiate, by employing Microsoft SharePoint and combining Office 365 applications, personnel may track purchase requisitions at any level from request confirmations to delivery.

Customization

SharePoint and Office 365 also enable your company to tailor your automated purchase order scheme to your particular guidelines and needs.

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

Communication

SharePoint and Office 365 could also facilitate communication between divisions. As soon as the PO operation has begun, SharePoint may actuate a programmed email to all relevant parties to inform them that the procedure has commenced and once more as soon as it’s complete.

Interactive Dashboards

A further critical element of automation is the foresight into productivity and workflow visibility. SharePoint enables this by authorizing you to monitor purchase order progress with an interactive dashboard.

With the dashboard setup, you may monitor purchase requisition history across sections, see the breakdown of approval vs denial ratio, and monitor the position of ongoing POs.

Powerful Integrations

Furthermore, SharePoint enables terrific versatility in that it can work with with most programs among departments for greater synergy.

For instance, if a department submits a purchase order for a network printer; when the request is processed, SharePoint can automatically produce an entry in your finance tool for the new IT resource.

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

M-Files Overview

M-Files is a powerful enterprise content management (ECM) solution that provides both local, cloud solutions, or a hybrid version contingent on your business demands.

Its interface is derived from the Windows Explorer web browser making it easy to figure out and execute for parties that are accustomed to the Windows interface.

Moreover, M-Files provides innovative functionality that enables companies to digitize operations and processes such as purchase order automation. Let’s examine those aptitudes.

Input

With M-Files you can acquire invoices from primary or distributed locations and automate the gathering of important data associated with your purchase requisition and authorization undertaking.

Data entry

As a continuation of the input capability, M-Files allows customers to pinpoint and pull out data from purchase request domains to facilitate the mechanization and transmission process. Furthermore, M-Files enables you to input any relevant business regulations, approval terms and contains directory lookups to assist in ensuring precision throughout the process.

Matching and coding

As a cutting-edge feature-set, M-Files could carry out conforming of POs and GL coding of non-PO statements in your ERP procedure to facilitate organization and transmission.

Automated approvals

The M-Files system can control and digitize as much of the confirmation process as you wish. This contains handling, routing, response, queues, and aging reports. Any purchase request that fails the validation process can be amended physically and then restored into the automation flow for authorization.

Automatic storage of approved POs

Once validation has been accepted, purchase requisitions can be transmitted to finance spontaneously to wrap up processing and storage in a primary repository.

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

Holding your company competitive these days means streamlining your procedures and removing the bottlenecks from your workflows that work to diminish your proficiency and productivity. Additionally, it means selecting the appropriate business systems to achieve your tactical growth goals.

At Wave, we can help by studying the essential elements of your business and via incremental digital transformation and business workflow automation, transform them.

We utilize a combination of technology appertaining to your business needs to mechanize your laborious tasks around gathering, regulating, and registering data so that it's simple to locate and access at any time, from anywhere.

We can assist you in customizing your AP automation software to satisfy your company’s precise demands and we gladly go along with more than 60 industry-accepted ECM and DMS solutions including M-Files, SharePoint, OpenText, and Oracle.

If you’re ready to learn more, connect with us today and we can schedule a time to chat.