It’s been so amazing to bring our long-awaited Xerocon event back to life in New Orleans over the past two days. This vibrant city brought a festive atmosphere to the event and we were inspired with on-stage performances by local talent such as Amanda Shaw, a fiddler and Brandan Odum, a successful street artist.
It was the perfect way to reconnect with our US and Canadian based accounting and bookkeeping partners and the wider Xero community.
The digital customer of the future
In my keynote, I talked about the digital customer of the future and how our partners, as trusted advisors to small business, can set up their practice to meet their ever-changing needs.
Our future clients are a generation growing up with video, voice search, apps for everything and personalized experiences. They are Generation Alpha [born after 2010] and they will enter the workforce at the end of this decade with unprecedented purchasing power and brand influence.
This new generation are:
- the largest of any generation
- more issues-oriented, and less patient than prior generations
- highly opinionated and will demand diversity and empathy
- aligned with brands whose values align with their own
They will be the best educated and the wealthiest of any generation before them, and not to be ignored when it comes to considering the business of the future.
If we’re going to meet the needs of a more digitally-enabled customer, accountants and bookkeepers are going to need:
- access to data and insights to outline the next best actions;
- apps and partnerships to connect and streamline processes;
- educational programs to equip them with the latest information; and
- a customer support system that allows partners to get answers to questions quickly.
At Xero, we are committed to providing these tools and more, and connect them all in the Xero platform.
In conversation with Chad Davis
With this in mind, I invited Chad Davis – co-founder, partner and head of Corporate Development at LiveCA to join me on stage to explain how he is building his firm for the future and putting the digital customer at the center of the strategy. Chad and his partner, Josh Zweig, met in February 2013 with the idea of combining technology and tax under one roof. Nine years later, the firm has over 110 employees, it’s been remote-first since 2013 and services over 650 clients across Canada.
Together, Chad and Josh are committed to building a company that finds great opportunities for its employees, and driven by making work more interesting. For Chad, that means running his company from an RV while traveling across Canada with this family.
LiveCA is a great example of a business that’s building for the client of the future. Chad shared how he took his practice to the next level and the problems his business has overcome to achieve their goals. He also spoke about how to embrace digitization and get the best out of what the Xero platform has to offer – including adopting a growth mindset, playing to your strengths, building relationships, joining communities, and exploring the Xero App Store to move from tax and compliance to true business advisory services.
Tapping into Xero’s API and hiring four developers allows LiveCA to innovate on Xero’s platform, building bespoke, fully-customisable app solutions for their clients.
I was so grateful to have this conversation with Chad, and hope that his insights inspired our attendees to think about how they can prepare for the client of the future.
Bring on Xerocon Sydney
Xerocon New Orleans was the second of our three Xerocon events for 2022. I’m looking forward to wrapping up the series back in Australia in only two weeks! For those who have tickets to Xerocon Sydney, I look forward to seeing you there. Otherwise, I look forward to meeting and connecting with our partners in the US and Canada again in the near future.
