3036: Xero - The Future of Small Business Accounting: AI, JAX, and Mobile Innovation

[00:00:04] How is artificial intelligence changing the game for small businesses and

[00:00:10] accountants?

[00:00:11] Well, today I'm joined by the Senior Vice President of Small Business and Growth at Xero.

[00:00:18] Xero is a global platform dedicated to making life easier for small business owners.

[00:00:23] I'm a user of the company, so I've got a vested interest in this on what

[00:00:28] I find out more about how they're using technology to make my life easier as a small business owner.

[00:00:34] And I think as businesses everywhere look to boost productivity, Xero is now using AI to automate the most repetitive tasks,

[00:00:44] allowing owners to focus on what truly matters.

[00:00:47] So today I want to learn a little bit more about how their AI companion, JAX,

[00:00:52] is going to be offering real-time business insights and actionable recommendations.

[00:00:58] And how it integrates with mobile technology to make accounting more accessible on the go.

[00:01:04] And my guess will also share his insights from Xero's small business productivity report, which did reveal a significant decline in small business productivity.

[00:01:13] And obviously, from there we have to discuss how AI might be able to reverse that trend.

[00:01:19] And ultimately empower small businesses to thrive all by integrating AI without getting lost in the hype.

[00:01:27] All I take a time out to express my gratitude to everyone who supports my mission of delivering daily content to you in 165 countries.

[00:01:35] I couldn't do it without you and I couldn't be without my sponsors.

[00:01:38] And today I want to give a quick shout out to KaiWorks who recently told me that defense contractors are facing immense pressure to comply with things like CMMC 2.0 security standards.

[00:01:50] And finding a secure easy-to-use file sharing platform that meat-sodes guidelines can be a big challenge.

[00:01:57] So quick shout out to any defense contractors listening out there.

[00:02:02] CMMC 2.0 compliance doesn't have to be a headache.

[00:02:05] Consider KaiWorks your fast-track to authorization.

[00:02:09] And as a Fedram-moderate authorised solution, they cover nearly 90% of CMMC 2.0 level 3 requirements.

[00:02:17] For you that means less time, less effort, less cost.

[00:02:20] And while others struggle with DIY approval processes and clunky apps, you'll breeze through with their Xero Trust frameworks.

[00:02:28] So don't let compliance slow you down is what I'm trying to say.

[00:02:31] Simply visit, KaiWorks.com to get started.

[00:02:34] That's KaiWorks.com to learn more about KaiWorks's secure content platform for CMMC compliance.

[00:02:41] But with my thank yous out the way it's now time to jump right into today's interview with a fantastic guest.

[00:02:48] Let's dive into the future of AI-driven productivity for small businesses with my guest today.

[00:02:54] So a massive welcome to the show.

[00:02:57] Can you tell everyone listening a little about who you are and what you do?

[00:03:01] Here's your video.

[00:03:01] Here's my name is Abang Shudahuan.

[00:03:05] I am the Senior Vice President of Product at at 0.

[00:03:08] Responsible for the small business product.

[00:03:10] And a few great initiatives like AI and mobile.

[00:03:13] Excellent.

[00:03:14] And I am a Xero users.

[00:03:16] We were talking about before we started recording today.

[00:03:19] There's a lot of hype around AI at the moment.

[00:03:22] Just about everything that we use everyday.

[00:03:25] But what I'm trying to on this podcast every day is look beyond the hype and hey,

[00:03:28] we'll probably solve it here and try and make it easier for people listening whether they're just a user or a business leader on the cannon value of the AI can bring.

[00:03:38] So I've got to ask, I mean, how do you see AI transforming small businesses?

[00:03:43] Especially in light of productivity challenges highlighted in zeros small business productivity report,

[00:03:49] which upon saying it was a big reason why by the end of the podcast to that.

[00:03:54] Yeah, and that's an excellent question Neil and it's very top of mind for not just us like if people are down there,

[00:03:59] because I talk to you as a part of my day to day job.

[00:04:02] To answer that question, I'll give you a little bit of a trip down my journey so far.

[00:04:07] Before you and I started this, I know we spent 30 seconds getting to know each other.

[00:04:12] I started my career at Microsoft and sort of had been around in the tech industry for about 15 years at this point.

[00:04:18] And the focus has always been how do you take technology and help businesses and people around you get the most value out of faith and make sure.

[00:04:27] As Bill gets famously used to say, the goal of technology should be to bend the productivity part to make the ability to make your idea as productive as possible.

[00:04:34] Somewhere along the way we kind of lost our way, but the premise and that inspiration is always sort of stuck with me.

[00:04:41] And even when we look at zero, the big thing that's really driving a lot of fasts including me and my team here is how do we sort of distill the hype and reality when it comes to AI?

[00:04:54] How do you figure out the right use cases to really help small businesses and the advisor community that supports them automate some key jobs to save them time, give them the gift of time.

[00:05:06] So they can go back to doing what they enjoy.

[00:05:09] Like if you could automate something like bank reconciliation or creating and color sending an invoice just getting a good glance view of your cash flow projections those are things that.

[00:05:22] No small business owner really likes to do and if you keep automate them away that allows that kick shop owner or the coffee shop owner to really go back to doing what they love the most.

[00:05:31] So that's what we are really focused on.

[00:05:33] The other dimension that is really starting to play out is the one of accounting hasn't really booked down to the mobile revolution.

[00:05:40] All other parts of life have but you look at your accounting software it all still draws down to a table at the end of the day or some spreadsheet.

[00:05:47] But what AI and specifically generally where I allow you to do is distill information into the most important bits and then that becomes conducive to a smaller mobile phone factor.

[00:05:59] So that's what I'm very excited about how do you combine AI and mobile both are very real but separate the hype, create the right use cases that actually give people the time back.

[00:06:08] And before you came on I was having a quick look at that small business productivity report and one of the stats that still out to me was that there's a 7% decline in small business productivity in the UK over the past years.

[00:06:21] What was some of the key draw I was behind that decline and how do you think some of these digital tools can help reverse a trend like this.

[00:06:29] Yeah that stack was particularly starting to me as well.

[00:06:34] To be fair to the UK more in many countries struggle with this and I think we've seen that in the Australia news land in US as well it just tends to be more at least recently you've seen it being more pronounced in the UK.

[00:06:48] And the way out of it is has kind of always been the same whether you look at the industrial revolution the digital revolution or the most recent cloud in the eye revolutions is you need to make the right capital investments.

[00:06:59] You need to make sure you use train and skill the right people the people with the right skills that they need to take advantage of the tools and the governments and the infrastructure and institutions around us just need to incentivize those so that.

[00:07:14] People can take advantage of the right tools and get again go back get back to the things that they enjoyed the most and once you do that I think you do get to start to see those productivity gains.

[00:07:24] I'm just a cent with you and zero has been integrating AI into your platform to support business owners and their financial advisors alike and I'm conscious we will have people listening that maybe they use zero whether they're in account and financial advisor or a business owner and equally there be other people maybe interesting learning more about they said.

[00:07:46] Maybe some of those users know the AI tools that they're working in the same way they've always worked for the last 10 years and not they're trying so can you explain how AI is reshaping repetitive tasks in zero and ultimately helping drive that most strategic decision making.

[00:08:02] Yeah there are various flavors of the idea that are available today to our zero users with something like hub dog they can start uploading expenses in voices etc and that leads to sort of statement takes extraction and automating a lot of the manual entry thesis.

[00:08:17] Then one of the most are do tasks is around back reconciliation and we've been using AI for many years to make that easier and we'll continue to do that.

[00:08:26] It's not a solved problem, we continue to make deep in this.

[00:08:28] And then how much of the back of the reconciliation process can you truly automate and most recently we announced just our zero or as we let all in just jacks which is supposed to be the business copilot which is helping businesses and the advisor community.

[00:08:45] Answer questions whenever they want it if you just want to know how many voices are still on point paid it'll give you a list of that and then it also starts to go as tech further to suggest actions where you could be taking to just make improve the financial health of a business.

[00:09:02] The other sort of elements of AI that are just also available in the product are whether you look at mobile app or the web app.

[00:09:10] You will be able to see the cash flow projections which is just giving you a view into if all things remain the same how is your business going to do in the very future.

[00:09:19] These are practical applications of AI and as you will mention email there's a lot of high-epid on the AI but a lot of stuff to be ability is real and it's actually heavily used by businesses did rely on it to make sure that their business can be done smoothly this month as well as the month to come.

[00:09:37] And whether we have an account at least wanting to drill a little bit deeper on AI and how it can improve reconciliation or a business owner wanting to look at those projected cash flows etc.

[00:09:49] I always say I feature in one particular place is it quite intuitive for people discovered and get up and running with them.

[00:09:57] I'm sure I'm sure my team could do much better than making it more intuitive and you will but as of now think you go to the respective sections whether it's been the reporting tab or in the jacks window.

[00:10:09] We do try to make sure that these questions and these ways to get insights from the AI tools is as intuitive as possible but any feedback from any account in friends of this podcast will listening.

[00:10:20] Please reach out to us and we would love feedback but how we can make it even more intuitive.

[00:10:25] Of course the way I ask is product activities crucial right now for both small businesses and the broader economy that the lifeblood of every economy really.

[00:10:34] So what would you say the most common productivity bottlenecks small businesses of small businesses are facing right now and how are you at zero helping them tackle these challenges.

[00:10:46] I love how you use that phrase like I do strongly believe that small businesses are the backbone of every economy.

[00:10:52] It tends to be the largest and pride in pretty much all markets and anything we can do to make productivity better even a few basis points has ripped a line effects to the GDP of pretty much every economy that of your period.

[00:11:04] And now what could a business be doing today and some of it just requires being aware of the latest and greatest tooling that's available in zero is definitely one of those which has been the pilot year ago to cloud accounting and it is now making bold steps in AI and mobile as well so I would highly encourage using zero or other software providers as well.

[00:11:24] Second is how do you make sure you are equipping your employees if you have five or ten employees and you want to train some of them for managing in voice or managing inventory.

[00:11:34] Those are all the skills that you need to invest in your people so they can take advantage of the tooling and the technology that's available around you and once you make those investments I think then the community starts to feed off each other and a generally believe it will lead to the productivity gains that we're all looking after.

[00:11:53] And then what why do you think small businesses using AI will help them gain a competitive edge especially in industries where technology adoption is traditionally being slower.

[00:12:06] I think you can share around that for what you see.

[00:12:09] hugely important if you look at what makes a business competitive is that if you focus your time and energy on the things that really matter to you and your customers and employees.

[00:12:19] That leads to a better product that you're serving a better service that you're providing and just a better business.

[00:12:24] That is if you want to do that well it is important that you start using technology for the things that are taking time away from those activities managing your books managing your invoices managing your expenses those are the kind of activities that are probably taking a lot of time away from.

[00:12:43] The business and the productivity active activities that somebody would want to do and our mission is to just automate as much of that as possible provide that as easy to use in your service.

[00:12:55] So the businesses can go back to focusing on how to the best serve their clients or did they keep their employees engaged and happy and I'll do make sure they're financial out of the business remains strong.

[00:13:05] I'd love to try and inspire some business. Listen, we'll be located over the world and I know you can't we probably can't share too many names here but are you able to share any real world examples of how a zero customers are using AI and successfully boosted productivity and ultimately made smart or financial decisions do you get to hear any stories like that.

[00:13:27] That's been one of the privileges of this job you do get to get a these stories very regularly and one of the big ones that came to me very recently was as we announced jacks or just as we are, yeah, it's co-pilot.

[00:13:40] We are in beta you've started to use it.

[00:13:43] We have active small businesses and it accountants were using the product and we're getting real some real stories of how they are finding it useful.

[00:13:50] And one of the ones that stuck with me more recently was if you're a business you're getting tens and potentially hundreds of invoices on a day to day basis.

[00:14:00] Now we've always provided an interface we could you could get a snapshot you've been in the world held but having just a copilot that's available on the go.

[00:14:09] Like one of the most common examples I'm seeing is WhatsApp where you're able to actually chat with jacks while you're using what's up and on that chart interface itself business owner while they were traveling was able to use.

[00:14:23] The jacks and the page just asked them how many voices are left and then based on the one that was the longest spending trigger trigger notification to that render to provide it to pay that in voice.

[00:14:33] Now that is a real application of using conversational AI. A business manager who was a business owner who was able to operate the business on the go using mobile technology and all the data that we have about about the business owner themselves as well as the suppliers they work with all three came together to create value and keeping them productive even while on the go.

[00:14:55] I'm a great example and of course we are only a matter of months away from life in 2020 for I've already so as AI continues to evolve and recall every business and and our indeed our life.

[00:15:08] We're recording this on the even the iPhones going to be announced with Apple intelligence AI going to be in our iPhones everything's going to be going mainstream so had you envisioned a future financial management for small businesses and what role do you see zero playing in shaping that future in this.

[00:15:25] AI AI era that we find ourselves. It goes back to the core of our mission mission is to build technology that can make it easier for small business owners and their advisors to do that the things that they love most you want to give each other the insights that they need and the actions that they want to take at the tip of this like at the fingertips whenever they wanted so.

[00:15:46] I've been we look at and as you rightly said and we're going to have the app and intelligence updates very soon and just the entire AI industry is moving so fast what I'm particularly excited about is how do we had focused on all of these advances.

[00:16:01] Do a great job of distilling down which one which are the right technology bets to make.

[00:16:07] Then actually more fast and make those bets integrate that into our product so that we can draw out all of these advances to all of those customers has an as possible.

[00:16:16] Well I cannot thank you enough for sharing your insights today give us a little peek behind the curve and some of the things that you're working on and zero.

[00:16:23] It'd be great to get you back on actually see how things are evolving but before I let you go I'm going to ask you to leave one final gift everyone listing I always ask my guests to share with the listeners either a song that they recommend means something to them that we can add to our Spotify playlist.

[00:16:38] Go it, pledge is all allowed or a book we can leave to our Amazon wishlist all out there ask is what you're going to leave everyone listing and one.

[00:16:48] I love this question and yeah for me I do love reading books I also have two very young kids so it's part of my way of making sure they read books so we do this in the time of the tour and the book that I keep going back to is just sort of.

[00:17:01] Kids coming back to me and I look at it my coach help us especially like that is you're done by the founder of Nike for the light.

[00:17:09] I just felt it's just an amazing very real story of what it takes to build and grow business and if you look at this sort of journey at least one and half of the book.

[00:17:19] Nike we all know as this global power office of brand today but for almost half the book the journey is about how small business owner is barely scribing by to find some sort of a product market fit and for a long time with sort of a regional player and most people wouldn't even have noticed it.

[00:17:37] So it's a fantastic deal of courage, our business skills and Harvey Fielza's and his running experiences into that as well like how different parts of the lives on feed off each other and that's something that resonates with me and I keep talking to my kids that I hope a president is with them as well.

[00:17:53] Yeah, it's a great book that one I'll get that added straight to our Amazon wishlist that we've talked a lot about AI and new features on zero etc and you did say if I don't want to see have got any examples of things that they'd like to.

[00:18:07] to see in the products etc. Where's the best place for anyone listening to find your team online, find out more about anything we talked about today and just dig a little bit deeper and find how they can about this technology work for them.

[00:18:19] Amazing and yes I think we tried to do a really good job of making sure all the products and services will be available on z dot com so if you're interested in trying them out I would recommend just go to zero common.

[00:18:31] You will free trial if you're an active customer and you have feedback on something you've seen something you've used or something you would love to see it's you just want to keep peace on all the recent announcements that we're making.

[00:18:42] I'm marketing to you does a really good job of giving you everyone up to date through LinkedIn and Twitter as well.

[00:18:47] And test take our make sure there's links to everything so people listening can find out more information come to your team and see how they get on with these tools because I think the big takeaway from our conversation today is the power of AI for small businesses and.

[00:19:01] And I find that you can find out your advice is all comes at a time where productivity is suffering and requiring a boost of sorts so learning about how owners are using AI to gain edge by.

[00:19:12] Reimagining the most repetitive task but also getting critical insights to make business owners smart and ultimately make faster decisions has got to be a win win for everyone so.

[00:19:23] I love to follow you and see where this evolves maybe get your back on next year see what's happening there because I do have a feeling when this apple intelligence things kicks off and it is going to be over a period of 12 months.

[00:19:34] It's going to bring AI into the mainstream and I'm always probably people like you and I don't talk about it.

[00:19:39] I'm excited about it. Everyone else is sat on the fence they can watch this about but I think it is coming that mainstream adoption so.

[00:19:46] Just more let me know thank you for bringing this conversation to life tonight.

[00:19:49] Thank you so much and absolutely agreed. I would love to catch up in a year even before this call, like for the minutes before that I was talking with mad ad.

[00:19:56] I started telling him already used the speech to text capability on the iPhone and that's a practical application up the eye.

[00:20:03] And they keep trying to target or type on these smaller screens now and he was just blown away that the text just speech worked so well.

[00:20:08] So these are sort of practical applications up the eye that are already changing lives up your color up nice thank you so much.

[00:20:14] So after listening to my guest today what are your thoughts on AI's potential to transform small businesses because I think we learn today the automation isn't just about efficiency.

[00:20:24] It's also about giving business owners the freedom to focus on their passion while also leveraging powerful tools like jacks to make those smart decisions.

[00:20:35] And it feels that zero is making strides with AI and mobile technology to offer solutions that can simplify financial management and provide business critical insights right where owners need them.

[00:20:48] And as we all face increasing challenges in productivity I think small businesses can take the lead by maybe better embracing AI driven tools and training their teams to work smart and not harder.

[00:21:02] But how will you adopt these new technologies into your own business operations?

[00:21:07] Over to you tech blog writer at outlook.com, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram just at Neil Sey Hughes. Let me know your thoughts.

[00:21:15] So today we discussed the world of accountancy, zero technology all those things but tomorrow we got a completely different tech trend to discuss.

[00:21:24] No spoilers from me but join me here. Same to home, same place tomorrow we'll do it all again with a different guest.

[00:21:31] Speak with you all then.