SharePoint vs M-Files: The Tool For AP Proficiency & Purchase Order Automation in Riverside
Generating efficiencies in your organizational workflows is a critical first phase toward digital transformation, back-office innovation, and giving your company an upper hand in a progressively aggressive professional industry.
Tangible systems and fragmented processes with bottlenecks make cooperation, productivity, perceptibility, and liability to shareholders quite complex.
By means of accounts payable automation, you can implement paperless operations into your business and streamline workflows like purchase orders, payment processing, procurement, invoicing, and data logging processes.
Automating these kinds of company workflows creates more proficiency in enterprise resource planning (ERP), greater expenditure cuts, and reformed employment of your personnel.
Within this guide, we’re reviewing a couple of the most prevalent platforms designed for AP productivity and purchase requisition automation: SharePoint and M-Files. Our target is to assist you in selecting the right solutions stack and collaborate so you could develop and expedite your AP digital revamping.
But before we begin with our product review, let’s talk through what purchase order mechanization is and how it generates further efficiency for your AP workflows.
What is Purchase Order Automation?
Purchase order automation is the process of employing business software through artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and robotic technology to digitize the purchase order operation and its related tasks.
Via digitization, purchase requisitions can be automatically transmitted to the relevant team to start the approval process. After, immediately after the requisition is confirmed, it is instinctively sent to the supplier.
While this may not seem like much at first read, automating the purchasing procedure removes the requirement for a manual process, tangible arrangements, and simplifies the usual laborious workflow.
For instance, with purchase request software or your Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) application, you can produce digital purchase requests that suppliers can comprehend and then have the information automatically fused into your accounting tool.
This seemingly minuscule ability significantly simplifies the process, remarkably reduces the need for by-hand meddling, and therefore, amplifies proficiency through your Accounts Payable division.
The Benefits of AP and Purchase Order Automation
We talked about a number of the gains of AP digitization in the former portion, but to guarantee that you get the idea, let's break these benefits down in plain language.
Digitized data entry and storage
Greater productivity via extra mechanization and less by-hand intervention
Improved precision due to less human error
Enhanced transparency into procedures via automated workflows
Current-time analytics, auditing, and reporting to continue to improve efficiencies
Enhanced distribution network and vendor connections and self-service portal
Greater ability to oversee for safety and conformity
Since we’ve discussed what AP and purchase order automation is, how it works, and why it’s important, let’s begin our platform assessment on Sharepoint versus M-Files.
Microsoft SharePoint Online vs M-Files Review
Within this section, we’re reviewing a straightforward evaluation between the rate and capabilities of SharePoint along with M-Files, succeeded by a deeper dive on their AP and purchase request automation capabilities.
Basic Price and Features Breakdown
Although this chapter gives a fine conventional simultaneous comparison, it doesn’t tell us much about how these solutions handle tasks namely electronic purchase order. Thus in this next chapter, we’re providing a summary of each solution and how it manages this important undertaking.
Microsoft SharePoint Overview
SharePoint is one of the most recognized and endorsed enterprise content management (ECM) and DMS platforms, due to its deep connection with diverse prevalent Microsoft programs like Outlook, Word, and Excel.
In the context of purchase request digitization, SharePoint enables you to address each one of the problems you may be facing with your existing, by-hand purchase request arrangement.
Order Tracking
To initiate, by using Microsoft SharePoint and integrating Office 365 applications, team members may oversee purchase requests at all level from request confirmations to delivery.
Customization
SharePoint and Office 365 also empower your company to adapt your electronic purchase request system to your particular guidelines and needs.
Elements you may custom tailor within SharePoint comprise of the layout of the purchase requisition forms, role assignments, line items, multi-level approvals, and filters attributed to type, payment terms, location, and more.
Communication
SharePoint and Office 365 can also facilitate connection between sectors. When the PO procedure has begun, SharePoint could trigger a programmed email to all relevant teams to inform them that the operation has begun and once more as soon as it’s complete.
Interactive Dashboards
One more critical component of automation is the clarity into efficiency and workflow perceptibility. SharePoint delivers this by allowing you to monitor purchase requisition progress through an interactive dashboard.
Via the dashboard system, you could monitor purchase requisition history among sections, see the breakdown of approval vs denial ratio, and follow the status of existing POs.
Robust Integrations
Furthermore, SharePoint enables superb versatility in that it can integrate with most programs between departments for improved cooperation.
For example, if a branch presents a purchase request for a network printer; as soon as the requisition is actioned, SharePoint can automatically generate an entry in your finance software for the new IT resource.
Now that we’ve learned about what SharePoint can do in terms of aiding you in digitizing your AP processes, let’s proceed to M-Files.
M-Files Overview
M-Files is a robust enterprise content management (ECM) solution that provides both on-premise, cloud solutions, or a hybrid version determined by your company demands.
Its interface is derived from the Windows Explorer web browser making it convenient to learn and implement for teams that are accustomed to the Windows ecosystem.
Moreover, M-Files grants innovative functionality that empowers companies to mechanize operations and processes like purchase request automation. Let’s study those competencies.
Input
With M-Files you may gather invoices from main or allocated locations and mechanize the collection of important data associated with your purchase requisition and authorization workflows.
Data entry
In addition to the input competence, M-Files enables customers to pinpoint and withdraw data from purchase requisition fields to expedite the mechanization and routing process. Furthermore, M-Files enables you to input any pertinent business rules, confirmation specifications and incorporates directory searches to help ensure veracity across the process.
Matching and coding
As a state-of-the-art functionality, M-Files may carry out matching of POs and GL coding of non-PO invoices in your ERP procedure to simplify organization and routing.
Mechanized approvals
The M-Files platform can control and mechanize as much of the approval workflow as you want. This involves handling, routing, response, queues, and aging accounts. Any purchase request that falls short of the approval process can be corrected manually and then reinstated into the mechanization flow for approval.
Automatic storage of approved POs
As soon as validation has been accepted, purchase requests can be transmitted to finance automatically to wrap up processing and storage in a central repository.
How Wave Can Help You Implement Your Purchase Order Automation Tool in Riverside
Keeping your company fierce nowadays means streamlining your procedures and uprooting the bottlenecks from your undertakings that mitigate your proficiency and productivity. Additionally, it means choosing the proper business systems to achieve your tactical growth objectives.
At Wave, we can help by analyzing the fundamental aspects of your company and with incremental digital conversion and company process automation, revamp them.
We utilize a consolidation of innovations based on your business needs to automate your laborious processes around collecting, arranging, and filing data so that it's uncomplicated to track down and use whenever, from any location.
We can be of assistance in individualizing your AP digitization software to satisfy your company’s specific requirements and we willingly collaborate with upwards of 60 industry-acknowledged ECM and DMS platforms including M-Files, SharePoint, OpenText, and Oracle.
If you’d like to discover more, connect with us today and we can set up a time to chat.