Xero will start offering new services as it seeks to transform the platform founded on accounting software into the online portal of choice for small businesses.
Chief executive Rod Drury told shareholders at the annual meeting in Sydney the software-as-a-service firm is in the process of migrating its core platform to Amazon Web Services, reducing costs and paving the way for the company to expand its product range into front office services. Xero wants to become the major portal for the way small businesses access web services, building a "financial web" where it becomes a key cog.
"Now we're getting near the end of the beginning where we've built that horizontal global accounting engine, we can now do a whole lot of things that can dramatically drive revenue over time," Drury said. "Over the next couple of years, you'll see us moving from just one piece of fixed-price software for the small business [to where] for another few dollars per month per employee here's another few services."
The Wellington-based company is now processing $1 trillion of transactions, and speaking after the annual meeting Drury said that had made the firm important to large enterprises and government who need Xero to interact with small business.
Because Xero has already built up a strong enough subscriber base and developed an existing platform, the cost of adding new services was cheaper, he said.
