SharePoint vs OpenText: The Ultimate Purchase Order Automation Platform in Chula Vista

Considering today’s competitive marketplace, businesses of all sizes must find ways to enhance productivity and efficiency, while lowering costs wherever appropriate.

An excellent place to begin is with business process automation (BPA). Via BPA, you can streamline tedious and time-consuming processes, ease the burden for your staff, and upgrade your processes by developing efficiency and boosting reliability.

There are several operations and business sectors that can take advantage of BPA. Among of the most prevalent adopters are Accounts Payable departments who can use BPA to automate purchase order processing, payroll, and invoicing.

In this article, we’re going to hone in on purchase order automation - how it works, why automation is a perfect fit for this area, and evaluate a couple of our preferred PO process automation software: Microsoft SharePoint and OpenText.

To begin, let’s go over what purchase order automation is and how it performs.

What is Purchase Order Automation?

Automated purchase order tools 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 layouts, and routing capability can send approvals directly to the supply chain vendor after the approval process is finished.

This removes the need for manual interference, document filing processes, and makes the process faster and more efficient.

The Purchase Order Process

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

Step 1: The first step is creating a purchase order.

Step 2: Then another staff member will review and approve or reject the purchase order.

Step 3: After that, the purchase order should be routed to the merchant.

Step 4: Once finished, the organization will then receive its product or service.

Step 5: The vendor invoice will thereafter be received by the firm.

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

Step 7: Then the final step of the purchasing process is to file the related files to provide an audit trail.

This might not seem like a great deal of steps, but to make this workflow to run efficiently, all individuals from your AP staff, to sales representatives, suppliers, and supervisors, must all deliver correct, prompt responses. Several businesses can testify that this is way harder than it sounds.

There are several benefits to automating this procedure, which we will discuss in the following chapter.

The Benefits of an Automated Purchase Order Process

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

• Cost Savings

• Time Saved from Manual Tasks

• Real-Time Insight Into Activities

• A Faster, More Optimized Purchasing Method

• Lessened Physical Error

• Better Use of Human Resources

Now that we’ve reviewed what purchase order automation entails, the aspects of the process that can be automated, and the advantages of purchase order software, let us now talk about a couple of our favorite automation options, Microsoft SharePoint and OpenText.

SharePoint vs OpenText

SharePoint Overview

SharePoint is an enterprise content management platform (ECM) that in its base form, is a program for handling, collaborating on, and sharing content.

However, with the integration of Microsoft PowerApps Power Automate, you can simply customize SharePoint’s features to enable automation to most of your AP operations.

Pros

• Excellent user experience and interface

• Moderate learning curve for new users

• Metadata search optimizes searchability

Cons

• No local information imaging or capture capability

• Struggles at following compliance guidelines in some industries

• SharePoint Online is not made to fulfill Corporate ECM needs

OpenText Overview

OpenText is similarly an ECM platform but offers powerful add-ons that empower firms to automate processes, enhance organizational operations, and reduce the risk related to governance and intellectual property.

Pros

• An excellent option for compliance-heavy organizations

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

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

Cons

• Complicated UX/UI

• Usually demands professional tuning to ensure it satisfies organizational requirements

• Can be pricey for corporate functionality and add-ons

SharePoint & OpenText Pricing & Features Table

How Wave Can Help You Implement Purchase Order Automation in Chula Vista

The truth is physical processes in your accounting framework simply slow your business down, generate bottlenecks and process headaches, and sooner or later hurt your progress and flexibility.

Prolonged billing cycles can also contribute to greater costs associated with purchase order management and invoice processing, reduce your insight and control, and can disrupt your vendor connections.

At Wave, we can assist you in streamlining your accounts payable (AP) processes end-to-end, including data entry, purchase orders, procurement, payments, approval process, invoicing, and even document storage platforms.

We work with Netsuite, Microsoft Dynamics, SAP, Oracle, and ECM and ERP tools like the ones we have examined in this piece and also MFiles, Oracle, Xerox, and more.

We can assist you in implementing your AP automation solution on-premises, in the cloud, or in a hybrid concept depending on your business rules, budget, and compliance guidelines.

To find out more, connect with us right now for a free consultation.