The CFO's role in technology decision making has increased in the last year with 44 percent of CFOs stating that their influence over IT investment has increased since 2010, says a joint study by Gartner and Financial Executives Research Foundation (FERF), the research affiliate of Financial Executives International (FEI). While 47 percent say that it has remained the same and just nine percent of those surveyed believe that their influence has decreased.

The survey of CFOs, which is in its fourth year, is designed to gather perceptions from financial executives about the economic environment, the CFO's role in technology and their IT investment priorities. The survey was conducted between October 2011 and February 2012, and it included 255 CFO respondents.

"The CFO and CIO are well-positioned to work together at generating business value from enterprise IT investments. However, this performance is often not achieved because of poor perceptions of IT, a parochial CFO or CIO perspective, or simply a failure to invest in the CFO-CIO relationship. This year’s results show that, in most organizations, the CFO and CIO work together to finance IT and provide information that supports enterprise processes. But there is also an opportunity for them to form a powerful alliance that generates more value for the enterprise," says John Van Decker, Research Vice President,Gartner.

The survey results showed that there are many ways that CFOs are involved in making IT investment decisions. 41percent said that they were the actual leader of a group responsible for IT investment, whereas another 41 percent were part of a group responsible for IT decision making, 16 percent provide advice and one percent said they were the sole decision maker. Since the large majority was involved in group decision making about IT, engaging the CFO is clearly a critical issue.