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Xero has announced an improved partner program designed to reduce conflict in the accountants’ channel.
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Xero announces changes to partner program
25 August 2014
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Chris Ridd, managing director of Xero, outlined the new program at Xerocon on Friday.
The program is designed to reward accountants based on their engagement with Xero, said Mr Ridd. Status levels come with increasing benefits as accounting firms progress through to platinum status.
Major changes from Xero’s existing partner program include – status points will now be awarded to accountants invited into a subscription, as opposed to only those holding the subscription, and more emphasis will be placed on staff development through education and attending Xero-sanctioned events.
Mr Ridd told AccountantsDaily the initiative is all about building a better accountants’ channel to, in turn, better serve Xero’s end users.
“We have always been about putting the adviser at the centre of everything we do and we think that’s an important part of our business model. It’s also something we are passionate about – smart business owners have good advisers and we see a lot of small business out there not getting great advice – they need someone who really understands the product they are using.”
Mr Ridd said the new program will cost Xero in margins but the benefits will be driven by a more efficient channel.
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“We want partners that stay engaged, that stay certified and can provide a great service to our customers,” he said.
According to Mr Ridd, Xero's existing partner program has, in some instances, led to conflict between accountants as firms compete for client subscriptions in order to obtain a better Xero status.
“It was never our intention as we rewarded you guys for ownership of subscriptions to drive behaviour to where we are seeing poaching of clients,” Mr Ridd told Xerocon attendees.
“We are all about making the adviser successful, what we didn’t anticipate was in the quest to get to the higher levels they’re actually out there trying to grab subscriptions from one another,” he said.
According to Mr Ridd, the new program directly addresses concerns of smaller practices who have in the past lost subscriptions to larger firms.
“What we found was that the really highly skilled smaller partners like bookkeepers and some of the smaller accounting practices, who are stretching to get to silver status, were finding that their subscriptions are being taken by other bigger practices so we wanted to create a level playing field but we also wanted to reward the right behaviour,” Mr Ridd said.
Points can be accumulated as of now, however, the revised partner program will not officially launch until 1 April 2015.
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