Today, we wrapped up Xerocon New Orleans, the second of three Xerocon events we’re hosting in 2022.

Despite its name, Xerocon isn’t just about Xero – it’s really about our partners and community. It’s so important that we connect with our communities to understand why they choose Xero, what is working well, and where we can improve. After being unable to connect in person at Xerocon for nearly three years, this connection felt especially important and special this year.

Expanding Xero Small Business Insights to the United States and Canada

The first major announcement we made in New Orleans was our expansion of the Xero Small Business Insights program to the United States and Canada. As part of this announcement, we launched  a Xero Small Business Insights special report, Small business snapshot: United States and Canada, which draws on aggregated and anonymized data from tens of thousands of our customers across the United States and Canada. Going forward, we will offer quarterly updates on the state of small business in Canada and the United States via our website. This is great news because as Chris said during our conversation, “what gets measured, gets managed” and it’s our hope that the insights this program provides will help shape policy, and assist academics, accountants, bookkeepers, and small businesses themselves to understand and improve this sector.

Announcing new product solutions and partnerships

Yesterday, Anna Curzon, Xero’s Chief Product Officer, and Hamish Cook, Vice President of Sales (US) took to the stage with some exciting updates in the product space. These included plans for new inventory solutions, following our acquisition of LOCATE Inventory late last year; new strategic partnerships with Avalara to help small businesses navigate sales tax, and an integration with BMO Financial Group to enable automatic transaction syncing between BMO and Xero; a new Hubdoc bank statement extraction feature; and improved reporting for US customers. Read more about these announcements in Anna’s blog post.

Building a community-powered platform

Chris O’Neill, Xero’s Chief Growth Officer, spent some time discussing how Xero is creating a connection point – a centralized platform of apps and tools where the needs of small businesses and their advisors can be met, and unique problems can be solved. One of the ways Xero will continue to expand is through community-led growth where  our community is a force at every stage of our funnel. He likened the Xero ecosystem to building Lego – making software that molds to how teams work, not the other way around. At Xero, we want to put the building blocks straight in your hands – you can stack apps together, composing those blocks into solutions that drive growth and make advisors’ jobs easier and more rewarding.

Connecting on stage with our partners

Chris also facilitated an on-stage conversation with Rashida Gayle, founder and CEO of Twenty Six Entertainment and her accountant Miguel Otchere-Marshall, founder and CEO of Nelopy Accounting. They discussed the importance of creating meaningful relationships between accountants and bookkeepers and small business clients – and the role of the Xero product in fostering a relationship of trust. I had the pleasure of interviewing Rashida on my podcast, What Led You Here last year, so it was great to connect with her again.

Keeping with the theme of connecting with our communities, our Americas leaders, Ben Richmond and Faye Pang, sat down with one of our longstanding Xero partners and early ambassadors, Amanda Aguillard. They had an insightful conversation about our work in the North American market.

And today, our Chief Customer Officer, Rachael Powell, spoke to Chad Davis, co-founder, partner and head of Corporate Development at LiveCA. LiveCA is a great example of an accounting firm building for the customer of the future, and I know his advice and experiences would have been incredibly useful to our guests. Read more about Rachael and Chad’s insightful discussion in Rachael’s blog post.

Festivity and fun

As anyone who’s been to Xerocon will agree, it’s not just about the main stage announcements – Xerocon is a colorful, vibrant event where our partners can not only be inspired and make connections, but have a lot of fun along the way. Our host city, New Orleans, is the home to independent thinkers, creative spirits, non-conformists, distinctive music, and amazing Creole food – and I think we got to experience a little bit of all of those over the past two days.

Thank you to everyone who made the event such a wonderful experience. I can’t wait to be back in North America very soon – but for now, our attention turns to Xerocon Sydney in just two short weeks!