T he New York City Department of Education faced the same kinds of invoicing and payment problems that plague many buying organizations and their vendors: costly inefficiencies as a consequence of manual handling of paper invoices, labor- intensive account processing, and slow payment for goods and services. Challenge "The New York school system is a big operation, and our purchasing process is complex," said Richard Carlo, deputy administrator in the New York City Department of Education Office of Fiscal Affairs. "With 1,200 schools, we spend almost $1 billion a year on goods and services from thousands of vendors." The Department maintained 40 financial management centers where personnel handled paper invoices, manually keyed-in invoice data, and processed accounts individually

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