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

Generating competencies in your organizational workflows is a critical opening stage toward digital switch-over, back-office modernization, and supplying your organization an edge in a growingly cutthroat professional landscape.

Paper-based systems and disjointed systems with impasses make synergy, efficacy, perceptibility, and liability to partners notably complex.

With accounts payable mechanization, you could carry out paperless arrangements into your company and simplify tasks like purchase orders, payment processing, procurement, invoicing, and data entry tasks.

Automating these types of organizational processes creates more capacity in enterprise resource planning (ERP), better cost reductions, and enhanced utilization of your personnel.

Included in this guide, we’re reviewing two of the most famous solutions geared toward AP efficiency and purchase order automation: SharePoint and M-Files. Our goal is to assist you in selecting the appropriate solutions stack and cooperate so you can expand and speed up your AP digital switch-over.

But prior to starting our product review, let’s talk through what purchase order mechanization is and how it produces greater efficiency for your AP operations.

What is Purchase Order Automation?

Purchase order automation is the notion of using business tools through artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and robotic technology to automate the purchase requisition system and its synonymous undertakings.

Via mechanization, purchase orders can be automatically transmitted to the relevant company to start the authorization process. Later, as soon as the requisition is approved, it is mechanically transmitted to the supplier.

Although this may not appear to be significant at first glance, automating the purchasing procedure removes the necessity for a manual process, paper-based schemes, and expedites the often labor-intensive workflow.

For instance, with purchase request solution or your Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) application, you can create digital purchase orders that suppliers can identify at which point the information mechanically integrated into your accounting platform.

This seemingly small ability significantly expedites the system, dramatically diminishes the demand for human meddling, and thus, amplifies productivity through your Accounts Payable section.

The Advantages of AP and Purchase Order Automation

We discussed several of the advantages of AP digitization in the former section, but just to make sure you get the point, let's take these advantages apart in the simplest terms.

• Mechanized data logging and storage

• Greater efficiency via extra digitization and less manual interference

• Enhanced reliability due to less physical error

• Enhanced visibility into procedures through your digitized tasks

• Current-time analytics, auditing, and reporting to continue to improve performances

• Improved logistics network and vendor relationships and self-service portal

• Enhanced capability to regulate for protection and compliance

So now that we’ve gone over what AP and digital purchase order is, how it works, 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

Within this portion, we’re reviewing a straightforward breakdown between the pricing and capabilities of SharePoint and M-Files, and then an extensive review on their AP and purchase requisition mechanization capabilities.

Basic Price and Features Breakdown

Although this portion gives a good standard side-by-side comparison, it doesn’t educate us on how these solutions handle tasks such as digital purchase order. Therefore in this following chapter, we’re providing a summary of each solution and how it manages this essential undertaking.

Microsoft SharePoint Overview

SharePoint is one of the more recognized and accepted enterprise content management (ECM) and DMS solutions, because of its strong association with other popular Microsoft solutions like Excel, Outlook, and Word.

In the context of purchase order digitization, SharePoint enables you to resolve all the problems you may be experiencing with your existing, manual purchase request arrangement.

Order Tracking

To initiate, by utilizing Microsoft SharePoint and combining Office 365 applications, staff may oversee purchase requests at any phase from request authorizations to delivery.

Customization

SharePoint and Office 365 also allow your organization to adapt your automated purchase order system to your particular directions and necessities.

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

Communication

SharePoint and Office 365 may also promote communication between divisions. Once the PO process has commenced, SharePoint may actuate an automated email to all appropriate teams to alert them that the operation has commenced and once more as soon as it’s accomplished.

Interactive Dashboards

A further significant aspect of automation is the clarity into efficiency and workflow perceptibility. SharePoint delivers this by allowing you to monitor purchase request progress with an interactive dashboard.

Through the dashboard system, you may track purchase request history throughout departments, see the analysis of approval vs denial percentage, and track the status of existing POs.

Vigorous Integrations

SharePoint also provides great versatility in that it can integrate with most tools between departments for greater synergy.

For example, if a branch presents a purchase requisition for a network printer; when the request is processed, SharePoint can spontaneously generate an entry in your finance solution for the new IT resource.

Now that we’ve discussed what SharePoint is capable of in terms of assisting you in automating your AP tasks, let’s proceed to M-Files.

M-Files Overview

M-Files is a powerful enterprise content management (ECM) system that offers both local, cloud solutions, or a hybrid adaptation depending on your company requirements.

Its interface is modeled off the Windows Explorer internet browser making it simple to understand and perform for parties that are accustomed to the Windows ecosystem.

Furthermore, M-Files provides advanced functionality that allows businesses to automate tasks and processes such as purchase requisition automation. Let’s take a look at those competencies.

Input

With M-Files you could acquire invoices from main or allocated locations and digitize the collection of significant data associated with your purchase order and approval processes.

Data entry

As an extension of the input competence, M-Files enables customers to pinpoint and pull out information from purchase requisition domains to facilitate the mechanization and conveying process. Furthermore, M-Files allows you to input any appropriate company regulations, confirmation details and incorporates archive searches to assist in guaranteeing veracity across the process.

Matching and coding

As an advanced functionality, M-Files may perform matching of POs and GL coding of non-PO billing statements in your ERP operation to simplify structure and routing.

Automated approvals

The M-Files system can control and automate as much of the approval procedure as you wish. This includes handling, routing, response, queues, and aging reports. Any purchase requisition that falls short of the approval process can be amended physically and then put back into the automation flow for approval.

Automatic storage of approved POs

Once validation has been accepted, purchase requisitions can be transmitted to finance automatically to conclude development and storage in a central repository.

How Wave Can Assist You in Enforcing Your Purchase Order Automation Solution in Baton Rouge

Holding your company cutthroat today requires rationalizing your operations and eliminating the hindrances from your systems that mitigate your capability and productivity. Additionally, it requires picking the appropriate business tools to achieve your strategic growth objectives.

At Wave, we can help by studying the essential aspects of your business and with gradual digital transformation and company workflow automation, transform them.

We use a combination of technology appertaining to your organizational necessities to mechanize your repetitive processes around collecting, regulating, and cataloging data so that it's easy to locate and use at any time, from anywhere.

We can help you to custom-tailor your AP automation solution to fit your company’s precise demands and we happily collaborate 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 arrange a time to chat.