A survey of 335 senior finance executives found that: 1) Agility is becoming an increasingly important competitive advantage over the next two years. 2) There is a growing demand for ad-hoc, real-time decision support and analysis from finance. 3) Current IT systems for financial planning and analysis are falling short of demands for real-time, ad-hoc analysis. 4) Tight integration between financial planning systems and core ERP supports more effective decision making. 5) Pressure is increasing on finance teams to improve their contribution to high-value planning and analysis.