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

In today’s competitive marketplace, organizations of varying sizes must discover ways to enhance efficiency and productivity, while reducing costs wherever possible.

An excellent place to start is with business process automation (BPA). With BPA, you could streamline tedious and taxing tasks, reduce the load on your colleagues, and upgrade your workflows by adding productivity and raising precision.

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

In this piece, we’ll focus on purchase order automation - how it works, why automation is a perfect option for this area, and compare a couple of our preferred PO process automation platforms: Microsoft SharePoint and OpenText.

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

What is Purchase Order Automation?

Automated purchase order platforms utilize business software equipped with robotic process automation (RPA) technology, artificial intelligence (AI), and machine learning (ML) to automate the purchase order process.

With automation, purchase requisitions can be produced in a few clicks from pre-formatted templates, and routing functionality can send authorizations straight to the supply chain dealer after the approval process is complete.

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

The Purchase Order Process

Although the purchase order process might differ from one organization to the next, the following provides a great example of a conventional, manual purchase order system.

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

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

Step 3: Following that, the purchase order must be forwarded to the merchant.

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

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

Step 6: The invoice should be examined and authorized, and payment is released to the supplier.

Step 7: The last step of the purchasing procedure is to archive or file the related files to generate an audit trail.

This may not seem like a lot of steps, but in order for this workflow to run efficiently, all parties from your AP personnel, to sales reps, merchants, and supervisors, must all provide precise, timely responses. Most organizations can confirm that this is easier said than done.

There are many benefits to automating these steps, which we’ll discuss in the following chapter.

The Benefits of an Automated Purchase Order System

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

• Reduced Expenses

• Time Saved from By-Hand Tasks

• Real-Time Visibility Into Operations

• A Quicker, More Streamlined Purchasing Procedure

• Reduced Manual Error

• Better Use of Human Resources

Now that we’ve established what purchase order automation entails, the parts of the process that could be automated, and the advantages of purchase order software, let’s now take a closer look at a couple of our favorite automation solutions, 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 managing, collaborating on, and distributing material.

However, with the inclusion of Microsoft PowerApps Power Automate, you can simply modify SharePoint’s functionality to include automation to many of your AP procedures.

Pros

• Superb user experience and user interface (UX/UI)

• Short learning curve for new users

• Metadata search enhances searchability

Cons

• No native information capture or imaging capability

• Struggles at following compliance standards in some industries

• SharePoint Online not equipped to meet Enterprise ECM requirements

OpenText Overview

OpenText is similarly an ECM platform but offers advanced add-ons that empower businesses to automate tasks, augment business functions, and lower the risk related to governance and intellectual property.

Pros

• A better option for compliance-heavy organizations

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

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

Cons

• Complex UX/UI

• Often requires expert optimization to guarantee that it meets organizational needs

• Can get costly for corporate features and add-ons

SharePoint & OpenText Pricing & Features Analysis

How Wave Can Help You Implement Purchase Order Automation in Newark

The reality is manual processes in your accounting system simply slow your firm down, create bottlenecks and process issues, and consequently hurt your development and scalability.

Prolonged billing cycles can also lead to higher expenses associated with purchase order and invoice processing, limit your transparency and control, and can disrupt your supplier relationships.

At Wave, we can assist you in streamlining your accounts payable (AP) processes completely, including purchase orders, procurement, data entry, payments, approval process, invoicing, and even file storage solutions.

We work closely with Netsuite, Microsoft Dynamics, SAP, Oracle, in addition to ERP and ECM solutions like those we’ve mentioned in this piece and also MFiles, Oracle, Xerox, and many others.

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

To discover more, contact us right now for a free consultation.