August 17, 2021

SharePoint vs M-Files: The Platform For AP Proficiency & Purchase Order Automation in Las Vegas

Developing competencies in your business processes is a crucial opening step toward digital switch-over, back-office modernization, and supplying your business an advantage in a progressively aggressive professional sector.


Concrete systems and incoherent systems with bottlenecks make cooperation, efficacy, visibility, and responsibility to partners notably complicated.

Through accounts payable automation, you could implement dematerialized operations into your organization and expedite tasks like purchase requests, procurement, invoicing, payment processing, and data entry tasks.

Digitizing these types of company workflows creates more efficiency in enterprise resource planning (ERP), better cost savings, and reformed application of your human resources.

Within this guide, we’re evaluating two of the most prevalent solutions designed for AP productivity and purchase request mechanization: SharePoint and M-Files. Our objective is to help you select the proper toolset and cooperate so you may expand and accelerate your AP digital switch-over.

But before we begin with our product review, let’s discuss what purchase requisition mechanization is and how it creates greater productivity for your AP operations.

What is Purchase Order Automation?

Purchase order automation is the process of employing business solutions with artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and robotic technology to digitize the purchase order operation and its corresponding undertakings.


By means of automation, purchase requisitions may be automatically transmitted to the fitting company to start the authorization process. After, once the order is authorized, it is mechanically transmitted to the merchant.


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


As an example, with purchase request software or your Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) application, you can develop electronic purchase orders that suppliers can comprehend at which point the data spontaneously fused into your accounting software.


This seemingly minor aptitude significantly expedites the workflow, remarkably diminishes the need for by-hand meddling, and consequently, improves proficiency within your Accounts Payable division.

The Advantages of AP and Purchase Order Automation

We talked about various of the benefits of AP mechanization in the preceding portion, but just to make sure you understand, let's break these benefits down in plain language.

  • Automated data logging and storage

  • Improved productivity with more automation and less human meddling

  • Enhanced precision due to less manual blunders

  • Increased transparency into procedures through your digitized workflows

  • Current-time auditing, reporting, and analytics to uphold the development of performances

  • Reformed distribution chain and supplier relationships and self-service portal

  • Improved ability to oversee for protection and compliance

So now that we’ve discussed what AP and digital purchase order is, how it functions, and why it’s significant, let’s start our product assessment on Sharepoint versus M-Files.

Microsoft SharePoint Online vs M-Files Review

Coming in this portion, we’re going to first take a look at a fundamental analysis between the rate and competencies of SharePoint and M-Files, succeeded by a deeper dive on their AP and purchase order digitization potential.

Basic Price and Features Breakdown



Microsoft SharePoint

M-Files

Pricing

Starting at $5 p/month

By quote

Features

Android/iOS Mobile Apps

Access Services

Compliance-Capable

Customized Web Parts

Durable Links

e-Sign Off

Encrypted Connections

Fast Site Collection Creation

Image/Video Preview

Large File Support

Mini Roles

Network Folders

Site Templates

Storage Library

User Rights Management


Android/iOS Mobile Apps

Check-in/out

Co-authoring

CRM, Accounting, ERP

Document Templates

Dynamic Views

Email Notifications

e-Sign Off

File Scanning and Capture

Full Text or Metadata Search

Log and Audit Trail

Network Folders

Shareable Links

User Rights Management

Versioning

Workflow Automation


API Integrations & Add-ons


Microsoft Office Products

(Word, Excel, Outlook, OneDrive, etc)

Microsoft PowerApps

ERP

Business Intelligence

CRM

Microsoft Office Products

(Word, Excel, Outlook, OneDrive)

Microsoft SharePoint

Microsoft Dynamics CRM

Salesforce CRM

AutoCAD

SAP

Support Options

Email & Phone

Email & Phone


Though this chapter gives a fine standard simultaneous comparison, it doesn’t tell us much about how these solutions handle tasks like purchase order automation. Therefore in this following chapter, we’re providing a synopsis of each program and how it handles this important task.

Microsoft SharePoint Overview

SharePoint is one of the more recognized and accepted enterprise content management (ECM) and DMS platforms, owing to its strong association with diverse popular Microsoft tools like Outlook, Word, and Excel.


When it comes to purchase requisition mechanization, SharePoint allows you to resolve the entirety of problems you may be experiencing with your present-day, physical purchase order scheme.

Order Tracking

To start, by utilizing Microsoft SharePoint and incorporating Office 365 applications, staff may track purchase requests at all level from request confirmations to delivery.

Customization

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


Elements you could personalize within SharePoint include the format of the purchase order forms, role assignments, line items, multi-level approvals, and filters attributed to location, type, payment terms, and more.

Communication

SharePoint and Office 365 can also further connection across divisions. When the PO procedure has commenced, SharePoint may actuate a programmed email to all appropriate parties to alert them that the procedure has commenced and once more when it’s accomplished.

Interactive Dashboards

Another significant element of digitization is the insight into efficiency and workflow visibility. SharePoint delivers this by authorizing you to monitor purchase requisition progress via an interactive dashboard.


With the dashboard framework, you can monitor purchase request history across departments, view the analysis of approval vs denial ratio, and monitor the position of POs in progress.

Vigorous Integrations

Moreover, SharePoint offers terrific flexibility in that it can incorporate with most programs between departments for greater synergy.


Such as, if a department presents a purchase order for a network printer; once the request is actioned, SharePoint can spontaneously develop an entry in your finance solution for the new IT resource.


Now that we’ve discussed what SharePoint can accomplish 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) tool that provides both local, cloud solutions, or a hybrid adaptation determined by your company needs.


Its interface is based off of the Windows Explorer web engine making it convenient to learn and implement for teams that are used to the Windows ecosystem.


Moreover, M-Files provides state-of-the-art functionality that empowers businesses to mechanize tasks and processes such as purchase request automation. Let’s take a look at those capabilities.

Input

With M-Files you can acquire invoices from primary or distributed sites and automate the gathering of significant data linked to your purchase request and authorization undertaking.

Data entry

In addition to the input competence, M-Files empowers customers to distinguish and pull out information from purchase request areas to promote the automation and routing process. Additionally, M-Files enables you to input any pertinent organizational codes, approval specifications and includes directory searches to help ensure precision across the operation.

Matching and coding

As a cutting-edge functional scope, M-Files can perform corresponding of POs and GL coding of non-PO statements in your ERP operation to facilitate arrangement and routing.

Mechanized approvals

The M-Files solution can manage and digitize as much of the confirmation process as you want. This involves handling, queues, routing, response, and aging reports. Any purchase requisition that falls short of the approval procedure can be amended manually and then put back into the digitization flow for validation.

Automatic storage of approved POs

After approval has been issued, purchase orders can be transmitted to finance mechanically to finalize development and storage in a central repository.

How Wave Can Assist You in Enforcing Your Purchase Order Automation Platform in Las Vegas

Keeping your company cutthroat these days involves streamlining your operations and eliminating the bottlenecks from your systems that mitigate your efficiency and output. It also requires selecting the appropriate business systems to accomplish your strategic growth aims.


At Wave, we can be of assistance by analyzing the essential elements of your organization and with step-by-step digital switch-over and business process automation, transform them.

We apply a blended set of solutions appertaining to your business necessities to automate your laborious workflows around capturing, 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 software to fulfill your company’s specific demands and we gladly go along with upwards of 60 industry-acknowledged ECM and DMS tools including OpenText, M-Files, SharePoint, and Oracle.

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