Better technology, better information. (technology).

A study earlier this year of 150 of the world's largest organizations, both in the U.S. and Europe, has concluded that technology is the main driver for improvements in information flow. Just under 80 percent of respondents chose technology, compared to specific, topical needs such as improvements in corporate governance (named by 29 percent) or more complicated accounting requirements (45 percent).

The study, commissioned by business performance management (BPM) specialist Cartesis SA, also found that 91 percent of respondents said that technology had significantly improved the quality and relevance of financial data available to them over the last couple of years. Yet the vast majority of respondents (89 percent) said that the finance department could add more value--and 78 percent of these believed that improving their information technology systems was the way to achieve that.

The survey, which encompassed companies in the U.S., U.K., France, Germany and the Netherlands, found some interesting differences between continents. U.S. respondents were much more likely that their European counterparts to believe that technology had delivered more relevant and better quality data. CFOs in the U.S. were also twice as likely to name corporate governance and managing external relationships as key business challenges than their counterparts in Europe.