Xero’s new inventory solution will help small businesses manage their inventory effortlessly and stay on top

Xero’s new inventory solution will help small businesses manage their inventory effortlessly and stay on top

Faye Pang, Canada Country Manager for Xero, talked to CanadianSME about creating a seamless experience for eCommerce and goods-based business customers and helping them to manage their accounting and eCommerce operations in one place to provide an enhanced and centralized view of their business performance. 

Faye Pang, Canada Country Manager, Xero

Faye Pang is the Canada Country Manager for Xero, the global small business platform with more than 2.7 million subscribers worldwide that are dedicated to making business beautiful. Faye brings nearly 15 years of experience building businesses from the ground up. Prior to joining Xero, Faye helped launch Uber Freight into the Canadian market. She also helped launch the Uber Eats app in Toronto in December 2015, scaling the business from 80 restaurants on launch day to 20,000 partners by the end of her tenure.

As a leader, Faye prioritizes growth above all else, and practices authenticity, transparency, and empathy in the way she manages her team. She strongly believes that we all have a set of values that we have to live by at all times (rather than keeping our work and personal lives separate), and keeps this consideration top-of-mind when championing her team’s growth, both personally and professionally. She is passionate about creating systems that lift women up while tackling the hierarchical barriers that have disproportionately affected women in the workplace.


Xero recently announced its integration with Shopify, what was the motivation behind this partnership and what are you hoping to accomplish through it?

Xero aspires to create a seamless experience for eCommerce and goods-based business customers, helping them to manage their accounting and eCommerce operations in one place to provide an enhanced and centralized view of their business performance. 

This integration supports our strategic priority to grow the Xero small business platform, strengthens our eCommerce offering, and supports our growth opportunities in North America and globally as we strive to be the most insightful and trusted platform for small businesses.

By building Xero solutions that seamlessly integrate with Shopify, we aim to support our small businesses community to not only weather tough economic conditions but to manage and grow their businesses via one of the world’s largest eCommerce platforms. We are also excited to introduce Xero to a whole new suite of potential customers around the world via Shopify.


How will the acquisition of LOCATE Inventory (LOCATE), a US cloud-based inventory management provider, help small businesses in Canada with their eCommerce capabilities?

This acquisition supports Xero’s strategic priority to grow our small business platform, and it helps strengthen our eCommerce offering and opens the door to additional growth opportunities in North America.

LOCATE’S inventory-accounting workflows are some of the most comprehensive in the US market. It connects goods-based business owners’ sales channels into one platform, providing a centralized view of all inventory and sales performance. This helps small goods-based businesses to better understand their inventory costing, profitability, and sales channels performance.

We’re thrilled to embed the LOCATE team and their inventory management capability, talent, and expertise into Xero to help build a new cloud inventory management solution for our Canadian customers.


What are some features that you’re excited to develop as a result of the LOCATE acquisition?

Xero’s new inventory solution will help small businesses manage their inventory effortlessly and stay on top of their supply, demand, and financial performance across all channels, so they can focus on growing their business.

Our vision is to provide an inventory management solution that will help accountants, bookkeepers, and small business owners:

  • save time on manual and repetitive data entry
  • manage the balance of supply and demand in your business, so you don’t over-purchase stock and can better manage your cash flow
  • make smart decisions about how you price your products, so you can improve the profitability of your business
  • grow your business sales, by making it easier to sell on new sales channels and reach a wider audience

Xero delivered a strong performance; including operating revenue, which grew 23% (26% in CC) to $505.7 million NZD, subscribers, which increased by 23% to 3.0 million, and AMRR, which surpassed $1 billion NZD for the first time. How will these achievements support the small business community in Canada?

We were pleased with our H1 FY22 results, which also included 23,000 net subscriber additions in North America to reach a total of 308,000 subscribers.

Xero continues to focus on supporting our partner channel in North America and expanding our partnerships with a number of Canadian accounting firms to make Xero a preferred solution for their practices.

We see the small business community as the heart and soul of Canada’s economy, and our mission has been to provide these businesses with the digital tools to help them thrive. As the Canadian small business economy recovers, Xero will continue to invest in developing our platform to meet the needs of Canadian businesses now and in the future.


What is your advice for small businesses as we come out of the pandemic and they try to recover?

While operating during a pandemic has been incredibly challenging, one of the bright spots has been seeing the adaptability and flexibility of small business owners and their teams. In our research, digital maturity has proven to be a crucial success factor during the pandemic, and it will be just as important for businesses moving forward.

From the research that went into Xero’s One Step report, we know that 7 out of 10 small business owners in Canada say they are confident embracing new technology in their business. However, only 21% said they are “Adopters” of new tech, while 30% identified as “Delayers”. We worked with a team of behavioural scientists to dig into the reasons small businesses were slow to adopt technology and we found that for these companies, their hesitancy stems not from a lack of information or choice, but from discomfort or anxiety with the idea of change.

If the pandemic has taught us anything, it’s that change is inevitable, and you either embrace it or risk getting left behind.

Small businesses that readily adopt new technology see 120% higher revenue on average, and experience 106% higher productivity.

While change can seem costly in terms of time and effort, these stats clearly show that the cost of not changing is much higher.

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CanadianSME
With an aim to contribute to the development of Canada’s Small and Medium Enterprises (SME’s), Cmarketing Inc is a potential marketing agency and a boutique business management company progressing rapidly in its scope. By acknowledging a firm reliance of the Canadian economy over its SMEs, the agency has resolved to launch a magazine, the pure focus of which will be the furtherance of Canadian SMEs, and to assist their progress with the scheduled token of enlightenment via the magazine’s pertinent content.
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