Yesterday I attended the launch of the results of the IBM Global CFO Study.  The event was attended by a small group of research analysts, IBM clients, and IBMers.  The survey included input from a diverse group of over 1900 CFOs and Finance leaders.  Approximately, 1500 of the participants were directly interviewed in addition to completing the survey.

There is much more information than can be discussed in a blog entry but here are some nuggets from the notes I took during the  session yesterday:

1. 70% of CFOs believe they have advisory or decision making role on the enterprise agenda
2. 55% are dissatisfied with their operational planning and forecasting capabilities
3. 50% lack a common planning platform
4. 50% of finance time is still spent on transaction activities
5. 50% produce operational metrics manually
6. 44% have very limited or no predictive modeling capabilities
7. 40% of organizations produce financial metrics manually

A couple of thoughts on this:
If CFOs want to drive the enterprise agenda they need to reduce the amount of time finance spends on transaction activities. 

Any company that is still doing planning in spreadsheets should be ashamed of themselves.  There are so many packaged planning applications of various shapes, sizes, and price points that it is unconscionable to still be doing this in spreadsheets

CFOs who want to be strategic need to get more involved in the development of common and automated performance metrics.  It's OK to start with financial metrics but strategic CFOs realize that financial performance is a lagging indicator and that operational metrics are what drive financial performance.