IT Audit Can Actually Be Cool, With Modern SaaS

The countdown is on to the annual Salesforce conference next week and this makes me think of the turning point when I realized that IT Audit was a lot cooler than I had been told, if focused on the right system at the right company in the right culture.

IT audit evolved out of mainframe systems in the basement of financial institutions, so it has humble beginnings and frankly gets a bad rap.

I remember early in my career talking to a Finance Director who slighted IT audit a bit saying that he'd worked every job in Finance:

• Management accounting and financial reporting

• Auditor and auditee

• All the processes: order to cash, procure to pay, treasury, tax, etc.

• But the one thing he hadn't done was "you know, IT audit," implying that it wasn't worth his time.

After I fell into IT audit, I wanted to get closer to supporting Sales. That's where the action is to make an business impact. I volunteered to audit Salesforce, thinking it was just a customer rolodex.

Then I learned it had a $200B market cap, an entire ecosystem of jobs around it, and it hosts one of the the biggest software conference in the world! Attracting tens of thousands of attendees.

That year the speaker lineup included:

• The President of the United States

• The CEO of Apple

• The Drummer from Metallica

• Celebrity chefs and more

This lineup was not congruent with that my Finance Director had told me!

Modern SaaS isn't your grandfather's IT audit, and IT audit can be cooler than you think.