In a separate question on broader finance system issues — including security and access privileges and performance tracking against plans — analytical, ad hoc analysis capabilities emerged again as a source of dissatisfaction. While a majority of respondents say their systems maintain suitable security and 44 percent give high ratings to their control over end-user access, a solid majority give poor performance ratings to both their what-if analysis capabilities and to their access to non-financial performance information (see Figure 4).

A majority of respondents call for improving the timeliness of information, and more than one-third say broader sources of information (that is, more types of information) is a top area for improvement that would deliver business benefit (see Figure 5). But respondents' call for easier analysis again comes through loud and clear in the data, as 71 percent say improving the ease of analysis of their performance data would yield the greatest business benefit.

This article is excerpted and adapted from ''Performance Reporting and Analysis: Finance Executives Seek Better Applications to Dig Deeper.'' Cartesis and Microsoft funded the research and the publication of our findings; at CFO Research Services, Sam Knox and Celina Rogers conducted the research and wrote the report. You may download a copy of the full report by filling out a brief form.

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