Seems to me , every time the SP drops or competitor does something positive ...Rod comes up with something else to talk about to turn it all around, or criticise the competitor etc. I remember this kids story ... something about the pied piper ...
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Seems to me , every time the SP drops or competitor does something positive ...Rod comes up with something else to talk about to turn it all around, or criticise the competitor etc. I remember this kids story ... something about the pied piper ...
And I personally think that the move of competitors has actually proved what Xero has been creating for the customers was what they have missed or ignored in the past. They want to catch up. The competition may give some stress to Xero. It definitely creates higher productivity to the accounting industry and more accurate and in-time data for customers.
Productivity, efficiency, time saving etc etc for the Accounting industry and their customers have more direct access to their numbers than before, better understanding of their business, planning blah, blah. I don't see a lot of that efficiency being passed onto the customer $$$ fee wise though.
It gets past on with the increase of features as release versions go by. In addition to the Xero 'features to add' roadmap, Xero has a customer community where they can vote on what features they want to see in upcoming releases. The same goes for many SAAS products. I am sure some shortsighted (imho) people look at the non-reduction in fees, but efficiency saving is a saving money.
Customers also realise, in breaking from a stand-alone product to a cloud product that they save much money in hardware, backups and security. May take a few months before this dawns on them. 8-)
Not just that but also the fact that you have better quality (ie. upto date) information on hand, all the time. So while you maybe paying the same amount on an annual basis, the information you can access yourself instantly, and the advice your accountant can give you though out the year is much better.
In the past, SMB only got accurate information when their annual accounts were prepared, 6 months after balance date! Now they can run a P&L, Balance sheet or cashflow statement which is upto date, and for any period, when ever they want.
Dellow, CJ and Turmeric understand the value that Xero provides. I may have mentioned before that I work for an accounting firm and this is exactly how we present it. It seems a bit evangelistic but it really does make a huge difference in the way customers run their businesses. No more hurried catch up at year end as the client scrabbles to do all the work they neglected throughout the year. Most owners I know reconcile all their accounts in the morning, plug in any notes about entries they don't understand and the accountants take care of this as the notifications come in. Tack on all the partner firms for reporting and inventory etc and its hard to beat.
It starts off as a quest by the customer for lower fees but generally we are adding in more services once the client sees the benefit. If anything our fees have gone up on average with hardly a protest. Had to change the way we interact with the clients though. Much more contact now.
We run our retail shops and our farming enterprises all through XRO and have done for 2 years its just brilliant no wonder its going well don't even require an accountant just a tax agent.
I remember Rod saying something like the churn rate was less than the death rate of businesses. I am not exactly sure what that means and I am pretty sure that the death rate of SME's is pretty high so maybe not the best thing to remember?
http://allthingsd.com/20130604/sales.../?mod=atdtweet
Paying $2.5b to increase revenue by $120m if I read it right
That should be good for another buck to be added to XRO's undervalued share price.