From working with government, to developing new product innovations and tools, Xero Australia Managing Director Trent Innes told more than 2,300 people at Xerocon today that cloud technology is helping to power up and rewire the global small business economy.
He explained that small businesses working on Xero are much more likely to grow and thrive. Where only 51% of small businesses survive more than 5 years, 88% of those on Xero will still be around to celebrate their fifth birthday.
“We do what we do to make the lives of small business owners better,” he said.
“Xero brings together small businesses, banks, advisors, large enterprises and government. We’re helping to drive small business to be far more successful.
“The cloud has completely changed the game. With cloud technology and apps, small businesses have the capability to compete globally – the world is a much flatter place.”
With over 700,000 customers across more than 180 countries, Xero’s small business platform is already pulling together what was once a highly fragmented market, that was expensive to service and reach at scale, into one place.
Today we announced that BPAY will now integrate directly into Xero to help small businesses get paid faster. Innes also said that in the next 9 months we will add another 40 new financial institutions to the platform. Xero now works with more than 80 financial institutions around the world to help open up the small business market, where the deals were previously too small or too risky, and help improve access to capital.
In the small business SaaS world, we are seeing many integrations but also much more data connectivity with information flowing in and out of the systems of record. More than 40% of Xero’s customers use one or more of the over 500 integrations in the Xero Marketplace, and it’s helping small businesses thrive.
“Businesses that use cloud apps grew 30% faster than those who didn’t,” Innes said.
We’re using the technology to reduce the cost of evaluating individual loans. Today Xero announced our first New Zealand lending partner, Fuelled.
Commenting on the partnership, Trent Fulcher, Director at Fuelled New Zealand said, “Like fuel is to a car, every small business needs enough money to flow through it to run smoothly. But there are always times when a business needs an immediate injection of cash to pay a supplier or a contractor, but cannot wait 30 or 90 days for a customer to pay or a bank loan to be accepted. The first of its kind in New Zealand, with Xero integrated with Fuelled, customers can access an immediate source of finance making the task of managing cash flow easier, as well as providing the means to fund future growth.”
By having real-time, two-way connectivity between the lender, accountant and the business owner, banks have a true understanding of their customers’ daily cashflow, further reducing the likelihood of a default on the loan. We’re making it much easier to approve loans, reducing the risk of those loans, and opening up access to capital for small business owners.
We’re doing much more than driving cloud adoption in the small business and accounting sectors. We are using software to rewire the economy. Of the millions of small businesses around the world, less than 1 percent have online accounting. More than 89% of small businesses on Xero connect with an advisor. Businesses that use an advisor grow their net profit by 23% more than businesses who don’t – accountants and bookkeepers have a huge role to play in driving the small business economy.
The market opportunity is massive and we’re just getting started.
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