It’s a wrap, initial reflections on Xerocon London 2024.
As the lights went down on the 2024 edition of Xerocon (London) and host Sue Perkins left the stage I felt the baton been passed to us, the delegates.
“In an uncertain world you [accountants] can provide certainty”
It felt that Xerocon 2024 (XC24) had been scaled back but it still packed a punch. Some great new features launched, practice tools extended and a chance to listen to what other firms are doing, considered to be best practice.
AI and GenAI were hot topics. The question about the impact on jobs in finance is still lingering and as we learn more about the tech being developed I think the question on jobs is less clear, but more on that another time.
Two new features will almost certainly make a difference to many business owners;
(1) JAX (Just Ask Xero) the new Xero AI Assistant will help business owners perform basic tasks and get into their data, extending their understanding of how their business is performing, and
(2) the ability to take card payments via a “tap”and match against a sales invoice direct in the Xero app will be a huge time saver for a lot of small businesses who won’t need to worry about the integration of third party apps or reconciling items after.
There were plenty of new apps too. Two that caught my attention;
(1) Trace, a tool that helps record and report sustainability measures and
(2) Translucent which helps consolidate group or associated company data providing a single view and handy tools to reconcile inter-co transactions. I’ll be following up with both.
Beyond this there was talk about greater integration of technology in day to day practice operations and the importance of policies and data security wrapping around it.
And finally, the concept of “frictionless transacting” with clients was discussed together with the suggestion we open our minds to meetings in the meta [verse]. I’m not sure about this but again that’s for another post!
Overall XC24 was a great conference. A time to; pause, learn, listen and reflect with lots of takeaways.
More to follow so watch this space!