SharePoint vs M-Files: The Platform For AP Efficiency & Purchase Order Automation in Los Angeles

Creating capabilities in your company workflows is a critical initial phase toward digital conversion, back-office modernization, and supplying your company an edge in a progressively competitive professional landscape.

Concrete systems and fragmented systems with logjams make cooperation, efficacy, perceptibility, and liability to partners notably difficult.

By means of accounts payable mechanization, you can achieve cloud-based systems into your company and streamline tasks like purchase requisitions, invoicing, payment processing, procurement, and data input processes.

Mechanizing these forms of business operations creates more capacity in enterprise resource planning (ERP), better cost savings, and reformed utilization of your personnel.

Included in this manual, we’re examining a duo of the most popular solutions geared toward AP productivity and purchase requisition digitization: SharePoint and M-Files. Our target is to assist you in selecting the appropriate solutions stack and collaborate so you may expand and speed up your AP digital transformation.

But before we begin with our product assessment, let’s discuss what purchase requisition mechanization is and how it produces further capability for your AP workflows.

What is Purchase Order Automation?

Purchase order automation is the notion of employing business tools with machine learning (ML), robotic technology, and artificial intelligence (AI) to mechanize the purchase requisition operation and its related workflows.

Through automation, purchase requisitions may be automatically sent to the fitting team to initiate the validation procedure. Then, immediately after the requisition is authorized, it is automatically transmitted to the supplier.

Though this may not seem like much at first read, automating the procurement process abolishes the need for a manual process, materialized arrangements, and streamlines the usual time-consuming workflow.

As an example, with purchase request solution or your Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) platform, you can produce automated purchase requests that contractors can identify and then have the data automatically integrated into your accounting platform.

This presumably small aptitude significantly expedites the process, dramatically reduces the requirement for human intervention, and thus, enhances proficiency inside your Accounts Payable department.

The Perks of AP and Purchase Order Automation

We covered a number of the gains of AP digitization in the previous chapter, but to guarantee that you get the point, let's dissect these advantages in the simplest terms.

• Mechanized data input and storage

• Greater productivity with more mechanization and less manual meddling

• Enhanced accuracy on account of less physical error

• Enhanced visibility into operations via automated workflows

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

• Improved supply chain and merchant relationships and self-managed portal

• Greater aptitude to regulate for safety and conformity

Since we’ve gone over what AP and purchase order automation is, how it functions, and why it’s significant, let’s begin our platform assessment on Sharepoint as opposed to M-Files.

Microsoft SharePoint Online vs M-Files Review

Coming in this chapter, we’re examining a basic analysis between the rate and competencies of SharePoint and M-Files, succeeded by a deeper dive on their AP and purchase order mechanization capabilities.

Basic Price and Features Breakdown

Though this portion presents a decent standard simultaneous analogy, it doesn’t tell us much about how these programs handle workflows such as digital purchase order. Therefore in this succeeding portion, we’re going to do a summary of each tool and how it administers this significant undertaking.

Microsoft SharePoint Overview

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

When it comes to purchase requisition automation, SharePoint sanctions you to handle the entirety of problems you may be confronting with your existing, manual purchase request system.

Order Tracking

To begin, by employing Microsoft SharePoint and incorporating Office 365 programs, team members can monitor purchase requests at every phase from request confirmations to delivery.

Customization

SharePoint and Office 365 also allow your organization to tailor your digital purchase order system to your specific instructions and requirements.

Aspects you may individualize within SharePoint include the format of the purchase request forms, role assignments, line items, multi-level approvals, and filters appertaining to payment terms, location, type, and more.

Communication

SharePoint and Office 365 could also promote correspondence across departments. As soon as the PO procedure has started, SharePoint may trigger a programmed email to all relevant groups to alert them that the operation has begun and once more when it’s complete.

Interactive Dashboards

Another significant aspect of mechanization is the foresight into efficiency and workflow visibility. SharePoint enables this by permitting you to monitor purchase request progress via an interactive dashboard.

With the dashboard framework, you may monitor purchase request history throughout divisions, see the analysis of approval vs denial proportion, and follow the position of ongoing POs.

Powerful Integrations

Furthermore, SharePoint provides great versatility in that it can integrate with most programs among departments for improved cooperation.

For instance, if a department delivers a purchase requisition for a network printer; when the requisition is actioned, SharePoint can mechanically generate an entry in your finance software for the new IT asset.

Now that we’ve discussed what SharePoint can do in terms of helping you automate your AP processes, let’s move on 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 needs.

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

Additionally, M-Files grants advanced functionality that empowers organizations to automate tasks and processes suchlike purchase requisition automation. Let’s take a look at those competencies.

Input

With M-Files you can capture invoices from main or assigned locations and mechanize the gathering of essential data associated with your purchase request and approval processes.

Data entry

As a continuation of the input aptitude, M-Files enables customers to distinguish and extract information from purchase request domains to promote the mechanization and conveying process. Moreover, M-Files permits you to input any appropriate business regulations, validation terms and incorporates directory searches to help ensure veracity throughout the process.

Matching and coding

As a state-of-the-art functionality, M-Files could execute conforming of POs and GL coding of non-PO invoices in your ERP operation to streamline arrangement and delivery.

Automated approvals

The M-Files platform can control and automate as much of the confirmation procedure as you want. This includes managing, routing, response, queues, and aging reports. Any purchase order that fails the validation procedure can be corrected physically and then reinstated into the mechanization flow for authorization.

Automatic storage of approved POs

Once approval has been granted, purchase requests can be forwarded to finance spontaneously to conclude processing and storage in a primary cache.

How Wave Can Help You Implement Your Purchase Order Automation Platform in Los Angeles

Keeping your organization competitive nowadays involves rationalizing your procedures and removing the hindrances from your undertakings that mitigate your proficiency and output. Moreover, it requires selecting the right business solutions to complete your strategic growth aims.

At Wave, we can be of assistance by examining the fundamental aspects of your business and with step-by-step digital transformation and business system automation, revamp them.

We utilize a consolidation of solutions appertaining to your business necessities to mechanize your repetitive tasks around collecting, organizing, and filing data so that it's uncomplicated to track down and utilize whenever, from wherever.

We can be of assistance in individualizing your AP digitization solution to fulfill your business's specific needs and we happily collaborate with more than 60 industry-acknowledged ECM and DMS solutions including OpenText, M-Files, SharePoint, and Oracle.

If you’d like to discover more, reach out today and we can arrange a time to chat.