It seems as if CFOs are actively participating in technology strategy in enterprise contrary to finance chiefs who have diminished view of IT department. According to the research made by Gartner, the Financial Executives Research Foundation and Financial Executives International, hardly 32 per cent of CFOs believe that CIO is a strategic partner whereas 70 per cent d not seen any business benefits provided by IT.

In a survey of the Finance Execs, only 7 per cent finds IT as a key provider of organization’s competitive position and only four cent viewed IT as transformational. Analyst house Gartner further added, the reason behind CFO taking major role in the way company spends their IT budget is the discontent with IT department. Currently merely 5 per cent of the CIOs are able to authorize IT investments even as 26 percent of CFOs do have the similar privilege, research says. As a result, analyst strongly recommends IT department to work hard in order to get their finance chiefs on their side.

According to John Van Decker, Research Vice President at Gartner, since there is a lot of intervention of CFOs and senior financial executives, organizations need to better educate their decision makers. He added, it is high time for IT organizations to comprehend CFOs outlook of technology investment decisions and must find ways of developing sound relationship with CFO that would be just like business partnership.

He also said that such actions would perhaps make business more responsive which will help organizations to choose best practices, practice that will make the entire business  process work in a better way thus giving improved business insight. Analyst house also says, senior financial executives view business intelligence as the highest IT priority followed by business applications like integrated financial management solutions and enterprise resource planning.