Partners take centre stage at Xerocon Brisbane

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Thank you, Brisbane, for making Xerocon 2018 such an amazing partner event! My head is still spinning and I had such an incredible time meeting new people and seeing familiar faces. For me and my team, this event is absolutely essential for hearing what’s happening with our wider Xero community.

For those of you who couldn’t make it, I wanted to share some of the things we’re doing to help you do the best work of your lives.

Listening to you

In the partner team, we’re constantly thinking about and amplifying your voice and working to find ways we can make your lives easier. I challenge my people to think about what you would say if you were in the room with us – whether it’s about building better products or producing the education tools you need.

Throughout our discussions over the course of this year, your number one request was for us to focus on the things that matter most in your practice – which will enable you to get closer to your clients and better serve them.

This has formed our partner mission: to provide you with the best global platform for you to advise small businesses.

Investing in you

This year alone, we are doubling down on our investment in practice products for you. We know how critical these tools are to running your practices and we want to make them even better.

So we’re building a true single client record across Xero’s practice platform and creating a tighter and more cohesive experience overall. We know that if our software stops, so do you, so we’re putting a huge amount of effort into ensuring maximum uptime.

I invited Gareth Cronin (our Executive GM of Global Practice Products), to speak at Xerocon and share what we are working on. It’s so important that you hear from the people building the platform, so you’ll hear more about Gareth’s plan and roadmap for the future of Xero Practice in the coming weeks.

Time better spent

Through listening to you, and through our global benchmarking research, we’ve found that in every region where Xero operates there are practices who are well ahead of the curve. We call these practices “pacesetters.”

The single biggest unifying factor of pacesetting practices is that they are focused on efficiency and value. These partners are qualifying the apps they use by asking themselves two vital questions: “Will this increase efficiency in my practice?” and “Will this help me add value for my clients?”.

The number one trend we’ve seen from pacesetting practices is around leveraging the power of data extraction apps, such as Hubdoc, Receipt Bank, Datamolino, and AutoEntry. These data extraction apps turn manual data entry into effortless data flow. Using data extraction has created incredible time savings for these firms. They’re able to focus less on chasing clients for paperwork and more time being advisors.

The second pacesetting trend is for firms to embrace cashflow forecasting, budgeting and reporting apps, such as FUTRLI, Fathom, Spotlight Reporting, and Float. These apps power simple advisory services by allowing you and your clients to see cash-flow forecasts, budgets and future scenarios right within the apps. Importantly, these apps work best when they’re implemented after you’ve set up your data extraction apps.

Once they’re set up, it’s magic – data flows from your clients, through Xero, and back to your clients through your advice.

Putting pacesetters in the spotlight

Another thing we hear a lot is that you want more help from Xero when it comes to transforming your practice for advisory services. So we’re absolutely thrilled to announce an upcoming Xero-published book, The Pacesetters: Advisory.

Our aim is for this book to be nothing less than the global best practice guide for advisory services. To achieve this, we want to hear from you. If you, or any practices you know, are doing amazing things and are willing to share, reach out. Send your thoughts to pacesetters@xero.com – I can’t wait to hear from you.

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