Reshaping Xero to enable disciplined growth and focus

Canada at the end of last year. It aims to help accountants by combining workflows across their practice in one place.

Improving Accountancy Productivity

Saving just a few minutes on day-to-day tasks, customers have increased productivity by 34% because of Futrli.

The capabilities of the product include performance insights for past, present and future; customizable dashboards with multiple data set reporting and three-way forecasting to better understand profit impacts on cash flow and business value. Seeing the Keep reading

BELOW IS THE MESSAGE SHARED WITH ALL XERO EMPLOYEES TODAY...

Dear Xeros

Over the past few weeks, as I have stepped into the CEO seat, we have had several conversations about Xero’s strengths and significant market opportunities. We have also talked candidly about our challenges following the rapid scaling of the company.

As we look to the next phase of Xero’s growth, many of you have asked me what change is needed for us to simplify focus, strengthen our execution and balance growth with profitability. Today I want to share an important update and the extremely challenging news that comes with it.

In today’s all-hands, we are sharing the difficult decision to remove 700-800 roles across Xero, representing approximately 15% of our employee base. This will happen through a consultative process with those potentially impacted by this change, beginning next week.

While we remain committed to our broader platform strategy, to further focus our efforts, we have also made the decision to exit Waddle, the cloud-based lending platform we acquired in 2020.

I am deeply sorry to be taking this step. I want to make it clear to all Xeros that, as a leadership team and Board, we are responsible for the decisions that led us here.

Today’s news affects

Xero announces new Chief Product Officer, Diya Jolly

CURRENT CHIEF PRODUCT OFFICER, ANNA CURZON TAKES SABBATICAL DUE TO PERSONAL AND FAMILY HEALTH REASONS

Xero Limited today announces former Google and Okta executive, Diya Jolly, has been appointed as Xero's new Chief Product Officer, effective 10 April 2023.

Jolly comes to Xero from Okta where she was Chief Product Officer, responsible for leading product innovation for both its workforce and customer identity business. Prior to Okta, Jolly was Vice President of Product Management at Google, where she was focused on driving adoption for some of the company's leading products including Google Home, Nest, YouTube monetisation and Gmail monetisation. She has an MBA from Harvard Business School and a Bachelor of Electrical Engineering and Economics from the University of Michigan.

Find out more everyone at Xero, but most of all it affects the many talented colleagues and friends who have contributed so much to Xero and whose roles are potentially impacted. It is now our commitment to support them, and you through the coming weeks, and I will outline the steps we are taking shortly.

Where we are today

As we discussed recently, as Xero continued to scale in recent years, we have grown our headcount, areas of focus and cost base at a faster rate than our revenue.

Externally the broader tech landscape favoured high growth in this period; internally, we were less clear and measured in the rate of our hiring and investments.

In FY23 we made the decision to slow the rate of incremental headcount growth significantly which has helped, but not enough. On my CEO listening tour, I also heard from many Xeros about how we can improve our focus and prioritisation of resources to become more effective.

We aspire to build a higher performing global SaaS company; to do so, we must deliver better for our customers and execute against a disciplined growth framework. This is why we are streamlining and reshaping our organisation.

Our next steps

I do not underestimate the impact these decisions have on all Xeros. We are...

Keep reading