SharePoint vs OpenText: The Best Purchase Order Automation Tool in Fresno

Given today’s competitive landscape, businesses of all shapes and sizes must develop ways to enhance efficiency and productivity, while cutting costs wherever appropriate.

A great place to begin is with business process automation (BPA). Through BPA, you can streamline repetitive and laborious workflows, ease the burden for your team members, and upgrade your system by developing productivity and raising accuracy.

There are a variety of tasks and business sectors that can benefit from BPA. Some of the most prevalent adopters are Accounts Payable teams who can utilize BPA to automate invoicing, purchase order processing, and payroll.

In this post, we’re going to hone in on purchase order automation - how it functions, why automation is a perfect option for this area, and assess two of our favorite PO process automation platforms: Microsoft SharePoint and OpenText.

To start, let’s discuss what purchase order automation is and how it works.

What is Purchase Order Automation?

Automated purchase order solutions employ business software armed with robotic process automation (RPA) technology, artificial intelligence (AI), and machine learning (ML) to automate the purchase order procedure.

Via automation, purchase requests can be generated in a few seconds using pre-formatted templates, and forwarding capability can send approvals straight to the supply chain vendor once the approval process is complete.

This eliminates the need for physical intervention, paper filing methods, and makes the operation faster and more manageable.

The Purchase Order Process

Although the purchase order process can differ from organization to organization, the following offers a good example of a standard, hand-operated purchase order process.

Step 1: The first step is to create a purchase order.

Step 2: Then another team member will review and approve/reject the purchase order.

Step 3: After that, the purchase order should be forwarded to the contractor.

Step 4: Once finished, the company will then acquire its service or product.

Step 5: The organization will then get the vendor invoice.

Step 6: The invoice should be examined and confirmed, and payment is delivered to the vendor.

Step 7: Then the final step of the purchasing procedure is to archive the associated documents to provide an audit trail.

This may not seem like many steps, but to make this process to run efficiently, all parties from your AP team members, to sales representatives, vendors, and supervisors, must all deliver accurate, prompt responses. Several businesses can confirm that this is grueling.

There are numerous advantages to automating these steps, which we will discuss in the next chapter.

The Benefits of an Automated Purchase Order Process

There are several advantages to utilizing purchase order automation tools for your business. These include:

• Lower Costs

• Time Saved from Hand-Operated Processes

• Real-Time Operational Visibility

• A Quicker, More Streamlined Procurement Procedure

• Decreased Physical Error

• Improved Utilization of Human Resources

So, now that we’ve reviewed what purchase order automation entails, the aspects of the operation that can be automated, and the gains of purchase order solutions, let’s now talk about two of our preferred automation solutions, OpenText and Microsoft SharePoint.

SharePoint vs OpenText

SharePoint Overview

SharePoint is an enterprise content management software (ECM) that, at its core, is a tool for managing, collaborating on, and sharing content.

Having said that, with the inclusion of Microsoft PowerApps Power Automate, you can quickly customize SharePoint’s capabilities to incorporate automation to many of your AP procedures.

Pros

• Fantastic user experience and interface

• Minimal learning curve for new users

• Metadata search improves searchability

Cons

• No local data imaging or capture capability

• Struggles at fulfilling compliance standards in a few sectors

• SharePoint Online is not designed to fulfill Enterprise ECM requirements

OpenText Overview

OpenText is also an ECM solution but includes powerful add-ons that enable firms to automate tasks, enhance business functions, and decrease the risk associated with management and intellectual property.

Pros

• A superior option for companies that must adhere to strict regulations

• Powerful document management, classification, filtering, and access permissions

• OpenText Documentum adds case and inventory management capabilities to its feature set.

Cons

• Complex UX/UI

• Usually requires expert configuration to ensure it fulfills organizational requirements

• Can get costly for enterprise features and add-ons

SharePoint & OpenText Pricing & Features Table

How Wave Can Help You Implement Purchase Order Automation in Fresno

The reality is manual processes in your accounting system simply slow your firm down, cause logjams and process headaches, and consequently hurt your development and scalability.

Extended payment cycles can also lead to higher expenses associated with purchase order management and invoice processing, reduce your transparency and control, and can add strain to your merchant relationships.

At Wave, we can aid you in optimizing your accounts payable processes completely, including data entry, purchase orders, procurement, payments, approval process, invoicing, and even document storage platforms.

We work with Microsoft Dynamics, SAP, Netsuite, Oracle, and ECM and ERP solutions like those we have mentioned in this article and also MFiles, Oracle, Xerox, and more.

We can assist you in implementing your accounts payable automation tool locally, in the cloud, or in a hybrid framework contingent on your business rules, budget, and compliance requirements.

To discover more, reach out right now for a free consultation.