Rod Drury - Founder and CEO, Xero
Cloud accounting firm, Xero, has revealed a raft of new tech offerings for its customers, including a new multi-vendor platform for accountants and bookkeepers and a mobile-first expense management offering.
The New Zealand-founded software-as-a-service (SaaS) provider hosted its annual Xerocon Asia Pacific region partner conference in Melbourne on 13 September.
The company’s founder and CEO, Rod Drury, used the event to announce some of its latest technology developments.
Highlights of the new products demonstrated at Xerocon included the Xero HQ open practice platform, an integrated multi-vendor platform for accountants and bookkeepers to run their entire back office.
Indeed the launch of the next iteration of Xero HQ, saw the company introduce a set of third-party apps for accounting and bookkeeping practices.
With a select number of app partners, Xero HQ will offer accountants and bookkeepers the tools to build a growing digital practice, the company said.
The company also shed light on its Xero Expenses platform, a mobile-first expense management with Open APIs for banks to connect to millions of employees in small business. Also unveiled was the Xero Discuss platform, which allows users and their advisors to communicate within the Xero platform.
Among the other new product was Xero Projects, a time and job costing for professional services, and the Xero Lifelong Learning Platform, an online learning tool aimed at students and the reskilling of the workforce, which will be delivered by educational institutions.
Drury also updated partners on the company’s burgeoning adventures with artificial intelligence.
“We are early in the journey of using artificial intelligence to simplify accounting to make it easier for small businesses,” Drury said. “We are proud to deliver a new generation of smart tools to drive further productivity.
“In parallel, our focus is to create opportunities for our community of accountants and bookkeepers to take advantage of our global platform to help grow small businesses and create new jobs,” he said.
In July, Drury used the company’s annual shareholder’s meeting to talk up the cloud accounting software company’s burgeoning use of machine learning and artificial intelligence.
“We’re into a new phase of innovation as machine learning and artificial intelligence allow[s] us to redefine small businesses computing on our global platform,” Drury told shareholders on 12 July. “Our strong revenues allow us to continue to invest to lead this revolution while we manage our cash towards break-even."
Late last year, Xero completed its transition to Amazon Web Services (AWS) from Rackspace, a move that marked one of the largest data migrations into the AWS cloud infrastructure environment across Australia and New Zealand.
