Artificial Intelligence and a burgeoning shift in advisory services: What I learned at Xerocon London 2024

A couple of weeks ago, I flew back to my homeland to go to Projectworks' first Xerocon in London. It was the first Xero conference in the UK since 2022 and it promised to be a good one. I couldn’t wait to get there and build connections with other Xero Apps and partners.

And boy they delivered. Xero pulled out all the stops from impressive product updates to glam rock heaven. Keep reading for some of my key takeaways from Xerocon London.

Xero’s new venture into Artificial Intelligence
What the WorkflowMax by Xero sunset means for the professional services industry
Advisory and auditing services - a potential new regulation on the horizon?

Xero’s new venture into Artificial Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence continues to be a major buzzword in the tech industry. It’s very clear that AI is here to stay and will only become more prominent in our daily lives.

Last week, Xero announced JAX (Just Ask Xero), a generative AI-powered companion launching in August. Xero users will be able to use JAX to complete tasks like generating an invoice or editing a quote. The purpose of JAX is to make accountants, bookkeepers and their clients lives easier by helping them speed up admin and save time. This venture into AI is going to revolutionise how accountants work and we can already see more exciting AI updates from Xero in the future.

If you are feeling a little unsettled by AI, that’s totally understandable. Some accountants and bookkeepers might be feeling a little unsure about AI and what it means for their business. We’ve talked for years about automation replacing accounting tasks, is AI going to accelerate that?

It’s becoming clear that accountants and bookkeepers should be diversifying their services. This could include growing their business advisory and technology implementation services to help their clients businesses succeed. Providing this more specialised expertise will help accountants and bookkeepers to become a indispensable source of advice and guidance for their clients.

There were more exciting product updates from Xero. Read about them here.

What the WorkflowMax by Xero sunset means for the professional services industry

Speaking one-on-one with our UK partners about the future of job management systems was enlightening. Many of them have been spending the last few months helping clients find alternative solutions to WorkflowMax by Xero. For their professional services and consulting clients in particular, accountants and bookkeepers were keen to add new technologies to their arsenal that will help these clients to run their business and projects efficiently. It was great to introduce them to the Projectworks platform and our in-built reports such as revenue forecasting and projected margin at Xerocon London and learn that there's still a technological gap for their clients that needs to be filled when now that WorkflowMax by Xero has retired.

If you’re interested in learning more about Projectworks as an alternative to WorkflowMax, you can read more here.

Advisory and auditing services - a potential new regulation on the horizon?

A Big Four accounting firm is facing fines of over $138million USD as they’re accused of overlooking misconduct with a client for over a decade. And it poses an interesting conflict of interest - should auditing and advisory services be provided by the same company?

There is concern that auditing cannot be truly independent and unbiased if it’s operating under the same umbrella company that’s providing the accounting advisory services. In recent months, I’ve noticed the Big Four are reducing their consulting staff and in the not so distant future, we might see new regulations to force all accounting firms to decouple their advisory services so they’re completely independent.

What does this mean? It means there could be a growing opportunity for independent advisory and technology experts. The big firms have already started to outsource and partner with companies who can take on the responsibility of providing business advice and recommending technology solutions. With these firms reducing or removing their advisory services, they will end up relying on external experts to do this work instead. There’s an opportunity here for smaller accounting and bookkeeping firms who don’t offer auditing to benefit from new business and partnerships coming from large auditing firms.

Summary

Xerocon London was incredible - suffice to say, I’ll be thinking about this one for a while.

There’s lots exciting developments coming in the ecosystem for Xero users and app partners alike. We can’t wait to see Xero’s new features like JAX in action. We look forward to building relationships with Xero partners and accountants and bookkeepers in the UK to help them expand their services and grow their practices. Now that WorkflowMax by Xero has retired, there’s no better time to learn about the future of job management with Projectworks.

If you or your clients are interested in learning more about the benefits of using or partnering with Projectworks, get in touch.