Xero announces integration with PowerBI at Xerocon
Xero announces integration with PowerBI

At Xerocon London 2016, Gary Turner, UK Managing Director, Xero announced an integration with Microsoft that would allow Xero users to take advantage of PowerBI. The announcement made on stage was well received by the audience and extends Xero’s relationship with Microsoft.

Gary Turner, UK Managing Director, Xero
Gary Turner, UK Managing Director, Xero

According to Turner: “This will enable users to take advantage of big data and analytics around their accounts.” The integration will become available in March 2016 and will be available to all Xero customers. There are 25 data visualisations around business metrics that will come by default including cash position, revenue vs expenses, profit & loss trend, debtor days and return on investment.

Debtor days will appeal to a lot of small businesses. The story over the last few years has been that small businesses are often paid late by large companies. Xero claims that 91% of the small businesses they support suffer late payment. In many cases the payment is so late that a lot of companies are perilously close to going under because of overdue invoices. To solve that Xero added in new features last year and the ability to visualise which customers are continually late will help companies decide whether they can afford to deal with those customers.

Will Xero get closer to Microsoft?

The feature is just the latest integration between Xero and Microsoft with support for Microsoft Office 365 being announced last year one wonders how much closer the two companies can get. One of the things that makes this integration interesting is that it is hooking to the continual use of Microsoft Excel across the small business sector and their accountants.

Perhaps the more interesting question is where next with this relationship? A number of senior members of Xero have all come from Microsoft where they worked in or with Microsoft Dynamics. Taking this into account will we see a deal with Microsoft to provide Dynamics with a highly integrated accounts package? It is a question that brings smiles to the face of different people at Xero but no comments.

Xero Chief Executive Rod Drury says: “Business tools today are smarter and more connected than ever and finally available to the small business sector. The Accounting Industry runs on Microsoft Office and we’re delighted to further integrate with Microsoft Power BI to give our users easier ways to access and analyse information from Xero and other sources to make smart, informed decisions.”

Conclusion

This is a good move by Xero and is likely to see an early surge of adoption by those accountants and end-users who want to understand more about their accounts.

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