Information technology increasingly falls under the oversight of a company's finance chief, according to a recent survey by technology consulting Gartner, Financial Executives Research Foundation and the Committee of Finance and IT of Financial Executives International. The survey of 344 finance executives shows that IT reports up to the CFO in 42% of organizations.

Finance chiefs also have a lot to say about how IT spends its money: CFOs authorize IT investments in 26% of organizations, and CFOs and CIOs jointly sign off on investments in another 25%. Only 5% of CIOs can authorize investments on their own.

Looking ahead, almost half of the finance executives expect to boost capital spending next year, with 30% predicting it will be up by 3% to 9%, and 18% seeing an increase of 10% or more.

When it comes to technology shopping lists, business intelligence is the clear favorite. Sixty-five percent of the finance executives cited business intelligence, analytics and performance management applications as one of their three most important initiatives for 2011. Enterprise applications like ERPs came in a distant second, cited by 46%, while data and document management and storage were cited by 28%.