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

Developing capabilities in your organizational processes is a crucial first stage toward digital transformation, back-office modernization, and giving your business an upper hand in a growingly aggressive professional sector.

Concrete operations and incoherent systems with logjams make synergy, productivity, visibility, and accountability to stakeholders very complicated.

By means of accounts payable mechanization, you could implement dematerialized systems into your company and simplify duties like purchase requisitions, procurement, invoicing, payment processing, and data input workflows.

Automating these kinds of organizational operations produces more capacity in enterprise resource planning (ERP), greater expenditure cuts, and improved utilization of your human resources.

Included in this manual, we’re examining a couple of the most popular tools used for AP productivity and purchase request automation: SharePoint and M-Files. Our target is to help you select the appropriate tech stack and collaborate so you may expand and speed up your AP digital switch-over.

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

What is Purchase Order Automation?

Purchase order automation is the concept of utilizing business software via robotic technology, artificial intelligence (AI), and machine learning (ML) to automate the purchase order process and its corresponding workflows.

Through mechanization, purchase requests could be automatically forwarded to the relevant company to begin the validation procedure. Then, once the order is approved, it is automatically sent to the vendor.

While this may not seem like much at first read, digitizing the procurement process abolishes the need for a manual process, tangible schemes, and streamlines the standard time-consuming workflow.

As an example, with purchase requisition software or your Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) platform, you can produce digital purchase requests that suppliers can identify and then have the data mechanically incorporated into your accounting software.

This seemingly minuscule ability greatly simplifies the process, dramatically lessens the need for by-hand interference, and consequently, improves efficiency through your Accounts Payable division.

The Advantages of AP and Purchase Order Automation

We discussed various of the benefits of AP digitization in the former portion, but to be certain that you get the point, let's break these benefits down in plain language.

• Automated data logging and storage

• Improved competence with extra automation and less human interference

• Improved reliability on account of less physical blunders

• Increased transparency into systems through your mechanized workflows

• Real-time reporting, analytics, and auditing to continue to improve efficiencies

• Enhanced supply process and supplier relationships and self-operated portal

• Enhanced aptitude to monitor for safety and amenability

Since we’ve reviewed what AP and purchase order automation is, how it operates, and why it’s vital, let’s begin our product review on Sharepoint as opposed to M-Files.

Microsoft SharePoint Online vs M-Files Review

In this portion, we’re going to first take a look at a basic evaluation between the rate and capabilities of SharePoint and M-Files, and then an in-depth analysis on their AP and purchase order automation qualities.

Basic Price and Features Breakdown

While this chapter gives a fine standard simultaneous analogy, it doesn’t inform us on how these programs administer tasks like purchase order automation. Therefore in this succeeding chapter, we’re giving a synopsis of each solution and how it administers this important task.

Microsoft SharePoint Overview

SharePoint is amongst the most widely known and endorsed enterprise content management (ECM) and DMS platforms, because of its deep connection with other famed Microsoft solutions like Outlook, Word, and Excel.

In the context of purchase requisition mechanization, SharePoint allows you to resolve the entirety of concerns you might be experiencing with your current, physical purchase order arrangement.

Order Tracking

To begin, by using Microsoft SharePoint and combining Office 365 tools, team members could track purchase requests at all level from request approvals to delivery.

Customization

SharePoint and Office 365 also allow your business to customize your digital purchase requisition scheme to your particular guidelines and requirements.

Elements you could individualize within SharePoint involve the template of the purchase requisition forms, multi-level approvals, role assignments, line items, and filters based on location, type, payment terms, and more.

Communication

SharePoint and Office 365 can also facilitate communication across sectors. Once the PO procedure has commenced, SharePoint may trigger a programmed email to all respective parties to inform them that the procedure has begun and once more as soon as it’s carried out.

Interactive Dashboards

A further critical element of mechanization is the clarity into capability and workflow transparency. SharePoint enables this by allowing you to oversee purchase request progress through an interactive dashboard.

With the dashboard setup, you may track purchase request history across divisions, distinguish the breakdown of approval vs denial proportion, and monitor the position of ongoing POs.

Robust Integrations

SharePoint also provides superb flexibility in that it can work with with most tools across departments for improved synergy.

Such as, if a branch submits a purchase request for a network printer; once the request is actioned, SharePoint can spontaneously produce an entry in your finance software for the new IT resource.

Now that we’ve learned about what SharePoint is capable of in terms of aiding you in digitizing your AP processes, let’s move on to M-Files.

M-Files Overview

M-Files is a powerful enterprise content management (ECM) system that offers both on-premise, cloud solutions, or a hybrid variant contingent on your business demands.

Its interface is based off of the Windows Explorer internet browser making it easy to understand and execute for parties that are used to the Windows ecosystem.

Additionally, M-Files provides advanced functionality that empowers companies to digitize workflows and processes such as purchase order automation. Let’s study those aptitudes.

Input

With M-Files you may gather invoices from central or distributed sites and mechanize the gathering of significant data linked to your purchase order and approval undertaking.

Data entry

In addition to the input capability, M-Files enables customers to identify and extract data from purchase order areas to facilitate the mechanization and conveying process. Additionally, M-Files allows you to input any pertinent business regulations, validation terms and incorporates archive lookups to help ensure veracity across the operation.

Matching and coding

As an advanced feature-set, M-Files may execute corresponding of POs and GL coding of non-PO billing statements in your ERP system to facilitate arrangement and routing.

Automated approvals

The M-Files solution can regulate and digitize as much of the authorization process as you desire. This includes managing, queues, routing, response, and aging records. Any purchase order that fails the authorization process can be amended manually and then reinstated into the mechanization flow for validation.

Automatic storage of approved POs

After validation has been granted, purchase orders can be sent to finance mechanically to wrap up processing and storage in a main cache.

How Wave Can Aid You in Executing Your Purchase Order Automation Tool in Lincoln

Holding your organization competitive today means streamlining your procedures and removing the hindrances from your undertakings that decrease your efficiency and efficacy. Additionally, it requires choosing the appropriate business solutions to complete your tactical growth objectives.

At Wave, we can assist by analyzing the fundamental aspects of your business and via step-by-step digital transformation and company workflow automation, revamp them.

We apply a consolidation of technology based on your business needs to mechanize your laborious processes around collecting, arranging, and cataloging data so that it's uncomplicated to track down and utilize whenever, from any location.

We can be of assistance in individualizing your AP automation solution to satisfy your organization’s specific needs and we gladly go along with over 60 industry-recognized ECM and DMS platforms including OpenText, M-Files, SharePoint, and Oracle.

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