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

Creating capabilities in your business operations is a pivotal initial step toward digital transformation, back-office modernization, and giving your company an edge in a growingly cutthroat professional industry.

Concrete operations and incoherent systems with impasses make synergy, efficiency, perceptibility, and responsibility to stakeholders very difficult.

Through accounts payable digitization, you can implement cloud-based arrangements into your organization and expedite tasks like purchase requests, procurement, invoicing, payment processing, and data entry workflows.

Digitizing these forms of organizational workflows generates more capacity in enterprise resource planning (ERP), better cost reductions, and reformed application of your manpower.

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

But prior to beginning our product assessment, let’s do a quick review of what purchase order automation is and how it generates greater productivity for your AP workflows.

What is Purchase Order Automation?

Purchase order automation is the concept of utilizing business solutions through robotic technology, artificial intelligence (AI), and machine learning (ML) to digitize the purchase request system and its synonymous undertakings.

Through mechanization, purchase requests may be spontaneously transmitted to the fitting team to begin the authorization routine. After, immediately after the requisition is authorized, it is mechanically sent to the vendor.

Though this may not appear to be significant at first glance, automating the procurement process eliminates the necessity for a physical process, tangible systems, and simplifies the often labor-intensive workflow.

For instance, with purchase request software or your Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) tool, you can produce digital purchase orders that contractors can identify at which point the data automatically fused into your accounting software.

This seemingly minuscule ability substantially expedites the process, drastically reduces the need for manual interference, and therefore, improves proficiency within your Accounts Payable division.

The Benefits of AP and Purchase Order Automation

We covered various of the advantages of AP automation in the preceding chapter, but to guarantee that you understand, let's break these benefits down in absolute terms.

• Automated data entry and storage

• Enhanced productivity via extra mechanization and less by-hand intervention

• Enhanced reliability due to less physical blunders

• Greater transparency into procedures via digitized processes

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

• Reformed logistics network and vendor affinities and self-managed portal

• Enhanced capability to regulate for protection and conformity

Since we’ve discussed what AP and purchase order automation is, how it works, and why it’s important, let’s get into our software evaluation on Sharepoint vs M-Files.

Microsoft SharePoint Online vs M-Files Review

Within this portion, we’re going to first take a look at a basic evaluation between the rate and aptitudes of SharePoint and M-Files, succeeded by an extensive review on their AP and purchase requisition mechanization potential.

Basic Price and Features Breakdown

Although this portion presents a fine conventional neck-and-neck comparison, it doesn’t educate us on how these solutions manage workflows namely electronic purchase order. Thus in this succeeding section, we’re giving a synopsis of each solution and how it handles this essential undertaking.

Microsoft SharePoint Overview

SharePoint is one of the more recognized and established enterprise content management (ECM) and DMS solutions, owing to its close relation to diverse popular Microsoft programs like Outlook, Word, and Excel.

As it relates to purchase order automation, SharePoint sanctions you to address each one of the problems you might be confronting with your existing, manual purchase requisition system.

Order Tracking

To begin, by using Microsoft SharePoint and integrating Office 365 tools, team members can monitor purchase requisitions at all stage from request approvals to delivery.

Customization

SharePoint and Office 365 also enable your business to tailor your electronic purchase order scheme to your individual directions and necessities.

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

Communication

SharePoint and Office 365 could also promote communication among divisions. Once the PO operation has commenced, SharePoint can prompt an automated email to all appropriate teams to notify them that the operation has begun and once more as soon as it’s complete.

Interactive Dashboards

Another important aspect of digitization is the insight into capability and workflow transparency. SharePoint delivers this by authorizing you to oversee purchase requisition progress with an interactive dashboard.

Through the dashboard setup, you can monitor purchase request history across departments, view the analysis of approval vs denial proportion, and follow the position of POs in progress.

Powerful Integrations

Moreover, SharePoint offers terrific flexibility in that it can incorporate with most programs across departments for improved cooperation.

Such as, if a branch submits a purchase requisition for a network printer; as soon as the order is handled, SharePoint can mechanically develop an entry in your finance software for the new IT asset.

Now that we’ve seen what SharePoint can accomplish in terms of assisting you in automating your AP processes, let’s continue to M-Files.

M-Files Overview

M-Files is a vigorous enterprise content management (ECM) system that provides both on-site, cloud solutions, or a hybrid version contingent on your company requirements.

Its interface is derived from the Windows Explorer web engine making it simple to learn and execute for teams that are comfortable with the Windows ecosystem.

Additionally, M-Files offers innovative functionality that enables businesses to automate operations and processes such as purchase request automation. Let’s examine those capabilities.

Input

With M-Files you could gather invoices from primary or distributed sites and mechanize the collection of important data related to your purchase request and authorization workflows.

Data entry

In addition to the input competence, M-Files enables customers to pinpoint and withdraw details from purchase order areas to expedite the digitization and transmission process. Furthermore, M-Files enables you to input any pertinent organizational codes, confirmation terms and includes database searches to help ensure accuracy across the procedure.

Matching and coding

As a cutting-edge functional scope, M-Files could execute matching of POs and GL coding of non-PO invoices in your ERP operation to facilitate structure and routing.

Mechanized approvals

The M-Files system can manage and mechanize as much of the approval process as you desire. This includes managing, response, queues, routing, and aging reports. Any purchase request that flunks the approval procedure can be revised physically and then reinstated into the mechanization flow for authorization.

Automatic storage of approved POs

Once authorization has been accepted, purchase requests can be transmitted to finance mechanically to finalize development and storage in a primary cache.

How Wave Can Help You Implement Your Purchase Order Automation Solution in Honolulu

Holding your company fierce today requires streamlining your operations and removing the hindrances from your workflows that decrease your capability and productivity. Additionally, it means selecting the right business systems to complete your strategic growth objectives.

At Wave, we can help by examining the essential pieces of your business and via gradual digital transformation and organizational process automation, reform them.

We use a consolidation of technology appertaining to your company requirements to digitize your repetitive workflows around collecting, arranging, and filing data so that it's simple to find and utilize at any time, from anywhere.

We can assist you in customizing your AP mechanization solution to satisfy your company’s specific needs and we happily go along with over 60 industry-recognized ECM and DMS platforms including SharePoint, OpenText, M-Files, and Oracle.

If you’re interested in learning more, contact us today and we can set up a time to chat.