fbpx
Home / Tech  / Xero launches App Marketplace to fuel small business growth

Xero launches App Marketplace to fuel small business growth

Xero’s open app ecosystem gives small businesses and their advisors the opportunity to select the technology that best suits their needs and requirements as they grow.

Xero global ecosystem manager Brooke Anderson says the aim of the marketplace is to make life easier for small businesses.

“The apps all connect with Xero so it reduces the time small businesses spend on manual tasks in their day-to-day.

“Our new marketplace makes it as easy as possible for our small business customers and their advisors to find exactly the right app for their unique business needs.”

The biggest benefit for small businesses is the opportunity to explore different types of technology that might work for them and improve productivity.

Small businesses are increasingly looking for simple ways to connect their accounting software to apps that help them run their businesses more efficiently and Xero has seen a 60 percent increase in the number of businesses using apps in Xero’s ecosystem.

More than a quarter of Xero’s 717,000 customers now use one or more of the 500 apps available in the new ecosystem. The App Marketplace will make it easier for small businesses to find the right app for their business requirements.

Anderson says it is a massive area of growth.

“We’ve got some unstoppable momentum and it will continue to develop.

“We want to make sure businesses can continuously find the right solutions for them, and all businesses have different needs.”

Xero’s ecosystem offers industry specific tools across many vertical segments. For example a retailer coming to the site can streamline retail operations using tools like Vend, Shopify, Paypal and Big Commerce.

Vend chief executive Alex Fala says Xero’s new marketplace is an exciting development, making the latest technology more accessible to small and medium businesses.

“We’re delighted to be featured with Xero as the leading total solution for retailers, and we’re invested heavily in making our integration a world-class offering.

“Using Vend and Xero together gives retailers real-time visibility into their profitability while completely transforming their retail operations.”

Reporting tools are the most popular app category in Xero’s ecosystem, apps like Crunchboards, Spotlight Reporting and Fathom turn Xero data into real-time business intelligence.

The second most popular category is expensive management apps like Receipt Bank.

Eat My Lunch co-founder and director Iaan Buchanan says one of the biggest challenges with startups is getting the right systems in place. Using Receipt Bank through Xero cut down his time spent on managing bill payments from 8 hours to 1 hour a week.

“It streamlines processes and means I can spend time doing the strategic stuff that adds value to the business.

“There’s also a reduction in hard-copy paper work, this way everything is in one computer system so it’s easy to reference.”

Review overview