Some pointers from someone that deals with large and small organizations.
- Expect to be audited both security wise and financially.
- The larger the organization, the longer the process. (Although smaller clients can be just as dysfunctional.)
- Track everything; email, phone call, meeting, etc. It will save your ass in a dispute and may provide valuable metrics.
- The customer isn't always right, but they still are the customer.
- You will have to fire customers or crank prices up so the pain isn't so bad.
It is more than just that. Log files only give you a list of individual transactions that happened. Auditing capabilities (as I understand them) imply the ability to trace a sequence of interrelated transactions in order to determine whether business procedures and rules were properly followed or even determine flaws in the procedures and rules themselves. For example, if a customer complains that a physical product is defective, and you detect that a specific component is at fault, you could trace which supplier sold you that component, when it was bought, where it was stored, etc., in order to determine the root cause of the component being defective: Was a business procedure not properly followed? Is there a flaw in the purchasing/storage/manufacturing/whatever process that results in products being defective?
That sounds way more comprehensive than most "auditing" I've seen in software. Usually it's timestamped activity logs with a couple of reports and maybe some filtering. Very basic.
Well, then software salesmen are taking advantage of the ignorance of their customers.
Of course, "auditing" as I described it is not just a button to be clicked on a GUI - it requires the user to know what stuff he is auditing in first place.
- Expect to be audited both security wise and financially. - The larger the organization, the longer the process. (Although smaller clients can be just as dysfunctional.) - Track everything; email, phone call, meeting, etc. It will save your ass in a dispute and may provide valuable metrics. - The customer isn't always right, but they still are the customer. - You will have to fire customers or crank prices up so the pain isn't so bad.