Control and audit implications for social media

What does social media have to do with finance and control? And even auditing? Those were questions I had to think about after I was invited to give two talks with prof. Eddy Vaassen about 'Control and audit implications of social media'. And I must say, it was challenging and fun.

Our slides can be found here:

Finance and Control Implications of Social Media

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Most of the questions from the audience were about control. What are the implications of using social media for the company's reputation? Should social media be organized centrally? Etc. Furthermore, some wondered if social media was only for marketing and communication, not for other parts of the organization, like R&D and Finance.

There were several other keynotes. One was particularly interesting. Prof. Dennis Campbell gave a talk about 'Control and customer experience'. His research clearly related to the points we made. It shows that: More (tight) control (does mitigate risk) but does not lead to learning. In loose control there is about 9% more learning. 

And I also liked the simple version of the service profit chain:

Employee satisfaction > service value > customer satisfaction > customer loyalty > profitability

Reality is more complex though and this is a long process to get this right, Campbell said.

Social business and compliance are interesting areas to keep an eye on. Recently several good posts by Joe Shepley were written on CMSWire about this topic. I commented on the first one.

Is control and compliance an issue in your internal and external social media roll outs? If so, let me know. I'd love to hear how you address this topic.