Leveraging DocuSphere with SharePoint

So your organization like many others may have already invested in Microsoft SharePoint. Like many, you may have dipped your toes in the water initially by using SharePoint for collaboration purposes, and then implemented a company portal or Intranet using its technology. You have a major investment in SharePoint software and internal IT resource skills – so you’re looking to leverage SharePoint as broadly as possible including in the enterprise content management/document management space.

So, now your accounts payable organization has been talking about the business benefits they can achieve through accounts payable automation – eliminating paper, reducing manual data entry, improving the processes surrounding routing for approval, and managing errors and exceptions more efficiently. You feel that it would be more cost effective to leverage your existing investment in SharePoint for this application, though your accounts payable organization has been looking at various accounts payable automation solutions that include workflow and content management.

What’s the Best Approach to Using SharePoint?

So, how are others approaching this situation? Here are some interesting results from an AIIM survey published in June 2011 titled, “Using SharePoint for ECM – How well is it meeting expectations?”

• 36% of organizations responding said they have SharePoint “in use across the enterprise for content management.” Of these, 11% have no other content systems, while 19% have other systems running in parallel though not connected to SharePoint and another 6% have SharePoint fully integrated with their other systems.
• 18% of the organizations were using a workflow or third-party business process management add-on; however, this figure was set to grow to 55% in total.
• Going forward, 53% of the organizations consider SharePoint as their primary enterprise content management system; however, 22% will use SharePoint in conjunction with their existing content management system.

So, what do you do? Stay the path with SharePoint and have your IT team build all the integration and workflow themselves or acquire another solution for accounts payable automation like DocuSphere where these capabilities are delivered out of the box?

Combining DocuSphere and SharePoint for Optimal Benefits

When considering DocuSphere and SharePoint, your answer doesn’t have to be an “either or;” rather, you can take a “both-and” approach. This is because of the DocuSphere software suite includes the DocuSphere Repository Connectors which can integrate DocuSphere with over 30 other content repositories including SharePoint, Documentum, and a variety of other industry-leading repositories.

The benefit of a “both-and” approach is that organizations that have made major investments in SharePoint from a software, supporting infrastructure, and associated skills perspective can continue to leverage all of those investments, while also leveraging the deep and proven benefits DocuSphere delivers for accounts payable automation including predefined yet highly configurable accounts payable workflow processes for managing non-purchase order-based invoices and 2-way and 3-way purchase order-based invoices from invoice scanning to voucher for payment processing. Additionally, organizations can leverage DocuSphere’s strong bidirectional integration with JD Edwards, Oracle E-Business Suite, and SAP, which are proven and standards-based, while focusing internal IT resources on other higher value-added tasks rather than having them building one-off custom integrations that may require redesign and redevelopment when moving from version-to-version or ERP system-to-system. Additionally, the “both-and” approach enables organizations to leverage the DocuSphere Process Modeler for workflow creation and maintenance by business-process users in a point-and-click approach rather than requiring IT technologists to build custom workflows via software coding.

This “both-and” approach with SharePoint and DocuSphere will cause your business people to smile because their accounts payable challenges are solved in a timely and cost-effective manner, your IT organization to smile because you’re leveraging their investment in SharePoint while allowing their resources to focus on other higher value-added tasks, and your financial executives to smile because you’ll be achieving a payback on your solution in roughly a 12-month timeframe with the implementation of DocuSphere for accounts payable automation.

For more information about how you can leverage a “both-and” approach to accounts payable automation and enterprise content management with DocuSphere and SharePoint, please Contact Us for further discussion.