This year’s Xerocon is just around the corner so we asked our Director Katharine why she’s taking the journey down to London to attend her 5th Xero conference.
Why have you attended every Xerocon UK?
I find them very inspiring. I can immerse myself completely in the buzz and excitement of new ideas and developments, and come back invigorated and ready for action. A couple of days in an environment like Xerocon, can bring forward plans that might otherwise have taken several months to come together.
Is the whole team going?
Last time we took a team from the office and it was great, everyone found it interesting and useful, although I don’t think they realised how tiring such a full-on conference can be! This year I’m going alone. I get very wrapped up in learning, and see it as a bit of a retreat really. So I find it hard to capture every new idea and look after my team at the same time. Perhaps next year we’ll go the opposite way and take the whole office!
What are you hoping to see this year?
This year we’ve decided not to focus on just one cloud software product, and partnered with Quickbooks, so we’ll be keen to identify which elements of Xero are improving. Many of our larger Sage clients are ready to move onto the cloud, so I’ll be focusing on the added features which make Xero suitable for our more complex, larger clients.
For example, Xero have recently launched projects for job costing, which could be very useful for those clients who want to track how much profit they are making on each project. This year more than before, we are feeling very confident that Xero is sufficiently robust and feature-rich to be used by our bigger business clients.
Add-ons are also a vital part of implementing Xero so I’ll be checking out the add-on partners to see how they have developed their products. And as always, it will be great to catch up with our own add-on partners such as Autoentry, Spotlight, Practice Ignition, GoCardless and The Profitable Firm.
If anyone would like me to speak to a particular add-on partner or get an update from Xero on any specific issue, please do get in touch.
