Introducing our latest initiative for CFOs and finance teams across the APAC region: the 'Building an Enterprise-Level System with Xero (APAC)' webinar series. Whether you're currently using Xero and contemplating a move to an ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) system, or concerned about scalability as your business expands, this series is tailor-made for you.
Last September, we identified an unmet need among businesses that had grown up on Xero and loved its functionality but their needs had expanded, leading them to consider the shift to an ERP solution. To address this, we launched the ‘Building an Enterprise-Level System with Xero (UK)’ webinar series. We aimed to guide these businesses in harnessing Xero and its ecosystem to create scalable solutions, enabling them to move into their growth phase using the accounting system. The series received overwhelming feedback from over 750 registrants and 44 panellists about the huge value of the insights shared. Buoyed by its success, we were so excited to introduce CFO Techstack, our dedicated content and community hub for in-house finance leaders.
Building on the success of this series and the growth of our CFO Techstack community, we're thrilled to bring a comprehensive lineup of 12 webinars to our APAC audience throughout April. Each session will tackle a specific topic to help CFOs and their teams improve their Xero setup for their growing business.
If you think you’re outgrowing Xero, this series is for you. We'll be showing you the way to E-R-Peace of Mind on the accounting platform you already know and love.
Read on to find out more, or sign up here.
CFO Techstack is brought to you by Mayday. Mayday helps finance teams in multi-entity businesses streamline their month-end processes with Xero. As a result, we often speak with finance teams who are anxious about their expanding requirements and seeking solutions within Xero's ecosystem.
Many finance leaders are desperate to stick with Xero but worry it won't handle their growing needs. These businesses have often grown up using the software and as their day-to-day needs have grown more complex, they’re now testing the limits of what it can do.
“We've absolutely loved using Xero as we've grown as a business. But as we've expanded as a group, things have gotten more and more challenging.” – Katrina Bignasca, Director of Finance & Operations at Confidential
Opening new offices, expanding overseas and ramping up hiring all require new processes and tools. In these scenarios, CFOs and their teams end up grappling with complex spreadsheets. This can lead to trouble: human error, version control, or the fact that a complex spreadsheet can crash a computer!
Businesses that are looking to scale need to ensure that their various data sources can communicate with one another. Without the accounting system talking to the CRM, to payroll, to inventory management, to payments processing and more, it’s impossible to get the real-time business intelligence that drives decision-making in successful teams.
If you don’t carefully consider your tech stack and design your Xero platform to work better for you as you scale, you may start to feel as if moving to a large-scale ERP system is the only way forward.
Nobody Wants to Migrate to an ERP
Transitioning from Xero to any major ERP system is a huge leap, marked by major hurdles.
Firstly, the cost. While Xero may cost under $1000 AUD annually, migrating to an ERP could inflate software expenses by 50 times or more. Additionally, you could spend the same amount on consulting fees for implementation as you do on the software in year one, adding significant financial strain in the first year.
Secondly, the hassle. Migrating systems demands extensive time and resources, diverting the focus of finance teams from action-oriented tasks like sales forecasting and strategic planning. The process is universally acknowledged as stressful and disruptive, as highlighted by a Mayday customer, Harriet Hope at Arbolus, who described her last migration project as "horrible and hectic."
Thirdly, not all ERP implementations are successful. According to research from Gartner, 55-75% of ERP implementation projects fail. We’ve spoken to many third-party finance experts who have had to untangle poor ERP implementations, and bring businesses back to Xero. In reality, they never needed to leave, and the Xero ecosystem could solve their problems.
Thankfully, our 'Building an Enterprise-Level System with Xero (UK)' webinar series in September debunked the myth that businesses need to switch to an ERP system in order to scale.
Bringing our Enterprise Series to a New Audience
Across the three weeks of our original ‘Building an Enterprise-Level System with Xero’ series we saw over 750 people registering to hear from over 44 speakers across 14 sessions.
The demand for information on how Xero can scale to enterprise level was absolutely staggering! We were inundated with positive feedback from both attendees and participants, who raved about the immense value of the insights shared.
“Thank you all - brilliant info!”
“Great advice - too many growing businesses move to an ERP too early”
“Thanks for making this series. Fascinating”
“Amazing work team… a very accessible and useful library for years to come.”
A huge part of our community is from the APAC region. Since Xero hails from New Zealand, it's no wonder that loads of businesses across Australia, New Zealand, Singapore and broader Asia have grown up using Xero and want to stick with it for their accounting needs.
That's why we’re bringing back our Building an Enterprise-Level System with Xero series, but this time, we're putting the focus on APAC-based ecosystem apps and scheduling the series at times which are ideal for finance leaders in the APAC region.
Announcing our ‘Building an Enterprise-Level System with Xero (APAC)’ Series
For each session we’ll be joined by a different in-house finance leader who has grappled with these exact issues in their roles, working with Xero to scale their businesses. They’ll tell you about the ups and downs of designing a software stack from scratch, the pros and cons of different approaches and how to avoid the mistakes they’ve made.
We’ll also be joined on each webinar by a cloud-integrating expert accountant and a relevant app partner, both of which will talk through their recommendations, guided by the series host, Mayday APAC Commercial Lead, Jack Thiel.
Each session will go over a specific topic that CFOs have asked us about. We have operations and process-focused topics, topics that apply to businesses expanding globally and opening new offices, topics helping businesses with insight and analytics, and more. For a full list of sessions, see the series schedule.
These webinars won’t be salesy. They’re for you to hear real-life experiences of those who have been where you are now, and to get your questions answered. We’ll even do our best to cover where we think an ERP system might be needed over Xero (although we think that’ll be rare).
Sign up to the whole series, or to whichever sessions make sense for you and your business today.
Our series in full
1. Launch Webinar, Thu 4th April, 12pm AEST
2. Optimising Xero for Scale (with Xero), Mon 15th April, 12pm AEST
3. Automating Multi-Entity Month End (with Mayday), Tues 16th April, 12pm AEST
4. Streamlining Spend Management (with Weel), Wed 17th April, 12pm AEST
5. Automating AP Operations (with Lightyear), Thu 18th April, 12pm AEST
6. Executing Complex HR & Payroll (with Employment Hero), Fri 19th April, 12pm AEST
7. Enhancing Multi-Entity Consolidations (with Calxa), Mon 22nd April, 12pm AEST
8. Navigating & Optimising FX (with Airwallex), Tues 23rd of April, 12pm AEST
9. Levelling Up Management Reporting (with Fathom), Wed 24th of April, 12pm AEST
10. Managing Large-Scale Inventory (with Unleashed Software), Fri 26th of April, 12pm AEST
11. Strengthening Financial Controls (with ApprovalMax), Mon 29th April, 12pm AEST
12. Preparing Powerful Forecasts & Models (with Castaway), Tue 30th of April, 12pm AEST
