A new survey conducted by Grant Thornton LLP finds that more than two-thirds (69 percent) of corporate finance functions are planning to increase their investment this year in technologies that accelerate business change. Four in 10 expect the spending increase to be larger than 10 percent.

The survey of more than 300 CFOs and senior finance executives indicates that about 24 percent of all finance teams are currently in the process of adopting advanced analytics, and another 49 percent expect to do so within the next two years. Survey respondents are also interested in artificial intelligence (AI) but see it as a more distant goal; 20 percent expect to adopt AI within the next five years. Other technologies that are top-of-mind in finance are distributed ledger technologies such as the blockchain, machine learning, robotic process automation (RPA), and optical character recognition.