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most telephone-contacted CFOs to respond, but they often admitted to pressing priorities. Those CFOs who claimed to have responded or who were unwilling to respond were eliminated from subsequent mailing and telephone follow ups. CFOs with less than 10 years of experience tended to involve an employee with the required experience or stated they chose not to respond. 4. Results 4.1 Demographics of Respondents Of the 90 CFOs sampled, 35 responded giving an overall response rate of 38.9 percent. Table 1 shows the demographics of respondents. Two respondents self identified as female and 33 as male. The median size of the sampled companies was $1.1 billion (based on information from DatAnalysis) and respondents were representative of a range of industry types with Industrial (17 per cent), Consumer Staples and Materials (both 20 per cent) being the most highly represented industry groups. INSERT TABLE 1 HERE 4.2 Impact of information technology on Capital Budgeting The first five questions in the second section of the questionnaire related to the impact of information technology on capital budgeting techniques. Table 2 provides a summary of the responses to the summary questions, while the open-ended responses are summarised in each category of discussion below. INSERT TABLE 2 HERE 4.2.1 Changes in Capital Budgeting Techniques In the first instance respondents were asked to indicate whether or not the firm’s capital budgeting techniques had changed in the past 10 years. Twenty-nine (83 per cent) of respondents stated there had been changes to capital budgeting techniques, while six indicated that there had been no changes. In identifying the nature of the changes in capital budgeting techniques, respondents were asked to specify the nature of the changes. Responses were received from 26 companies. The most common themes were (1) an increased use of analytical or measurement tools for capital budgeting, such as risk adjusted profitability index, risk adjustments, ROI, WACC, DCF, IRR, payback, and (2) an increase in formalisation and rigor in the overall process, such as an investment management committee, capex manual. 4.2.2 ERP and its impact on Capital Budgeting Techniques Seventy-seven per cent (26) of respondents indicated that their companies had ERP systems such as SAP, Oracle or PeopleSoft. In addressing the possible impact of ERP systems on capital budgeting techniques, only nine respondents stated that this was the case. Respondents who stated that their ERP system affected capital budgeting, noted that ERP systems provide capital budgeting with better information. Recognizing that the ERP system provided better information, one respondent said, The amount and quality of information available with which to make capital budgeting decisions has vastly increased. The system essentially is a database of information that can be mined. Higher levels of system integration feeding into the core accounting systems have also increased the sophistication of the process. Another respondent admitted the ERP system provided better information, but added that “the information is available in the system but most of the process is Excel driven therefore largely unchanged.” The ERP systems also allow the capital budgeting processes to be stored online, which allows for approvals by various levels to be done more easily. This improvement in the process occurs despite capital