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

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