Industrial-products distributor W.W. Grainger Inc. has state-of-the-art financial software that's integrated with its other applications to ensure a flow of consistent financial data throughout the business. VP of finance Laura Brown loves the system. But she wants more, such as a way to match sales figures with expense data in real time.

Sunburst Hospitality Corp. also has a set of sophisticated financial applications that would let the hotel operator do accounting and general-ledger tasks the same way across the company. But outside of the finance department in its headquarters, nobody uses them. Instead, the company's 52 hotel managers use Excel spreadsheets, which they send to the main office, where the data is typed into PeopleSoft Inc. financial applications.

As Grainger and Sunburst demonstrate, there's a gap between having applications that can give a company deep knowledge of its finances and using them most effectively. Opinions differ on why that gap exists. Are some financial IT systems failing to live up to expectations? Or does the problem lie in a failure to upgrade financial systems or ensure they're used properly?

These questions aren't academic. The accounting scandals of the past year are spurring lawmakers, investors, regulators, and board members to pressure executives to produce accurate financial reports and do so faster. More companies likely will need to use high-end financial software to comply with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002. The law sets deadlines for public companies to implement procedures that ensure their audit committees can document underlying financial data to validate earnings reports and meet demands for accuracy in pro forma numbers. "These systems are critical," says Scott Sorensen, CFO at Hillenbrand Industries Inc., a $2.1 billion holding company in the health-care and funeral-services markets. Without them, "it would be impossible for a company our size to certify that every transaction is accounted for," he says.

Even if regulators weren't scrutinizing the accounting practices of U.S. companies, the still-sluggish economy would give top managers at public and private companies alike reason to deploy software to help finance departments become more-effective strategic players.

Yet some CFOs are skeptical. In a study of 265 CFOs, released last month by Cap Gemini Ernst & Young and CFO Research Services, 56% of respondents say that inadequate IT systems are obstacles to transforming their companies' financial-accounting methods. More than six in 10 say budgeting, forecasting, and decision-support systems are inadequate or insufficiently integrated. Only 4% say their companies have integrated, Web-based budgeting, forecasting, and decision-support tools.

Software vendors say there's no reason that last figure shouldn't be higher. Suppliers of financial-planning, consolidation, and analysis applications, such as Cognos, Comshare, and Hyperion Solutions, have been retooling their applications to support more decentralized financial planning. That's a more-efficient way for business managers to provide their financial departments with budget proposals and detailed operating data, which give CFOs a better grasp of what's happening in their companies.

MicroStrategy Inc. this week will introduce MicroStrategy 7i, which offers financial-report presentation and analysis capabilities. The software can pull financial data from operational systems for analysis, create reports compliant with generally accepted accounting practices, and spot anomalies.

Vendors say workers' resistance to using their systems may partly explain why CFOs are frustrated with financial software. People don't like to regard financial planning as part of their jobs, says Mark Stimpson, international marketing VP at financial-planning software vendor Adaytum Inc. Business managers get skittish when finance executives ask for detailed forecasts because the numbers might come back to haunt them.