Technology trade routes

Michael Wood, co-founder of Receipt Bank  - Xero UK Add-on Partner of the year in 2012 - stopped by our UK office last week for a conversation (audio here) with me about the fast growing Xero Add-on Partner community.

Of particular interest to me was how Receipt Bank’s partnership with Xero meant that their original UK focussed business plan could quickly broaden to encompass Australia and New Zealand (and soon, the US) and in doing so, earned them the distinction of being possibly the first ever London based technology start-up to open their second office 11,000 miles away from the first one!

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ICAEW re-accreditation & UK Online VAT filing

Last week we ticked off a couple of important market milestones in the UK; firstly the technical experts at the Institute of Chartered Accountants England & Wales saw fit to re-accredit Xero as ticking all the right accounting boxes in all the right places, and second we opened up the first phase of our long-awaited online integration with Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs online gateway, enabling UK customers to submit their VAT Returns online at the click of a button, directly from Xero to the HMRC online gateway.

We first obtained the ICAEW’s nod back in 2008 shortly after we launched the UK Edition of Xero and its fair to say that after the 70 or so updates since then there was a great deal more functionality for their assessor to check through this time around. Continue reading ›

The United States of Productivity

As someone who’s been in business technology for a long time, I have a penchant for the long view of tech innovation and particularly how we’re adapting our use of technology rather than just the fact of it.

The smartphone is an interesting example of how iterative improvements to the original mobile phone ultimately resulted in a device that has little to do with origin of the species, with a recent study revealing that phone calls now account for only 10% of total smartphone usage. Despite this, the word phone still accounts for half the letters of the term smartphone. It’s likely that if the smartphone had just magically appeared, fully formed in a puff of smoke yesterday, it wouldn’t occur to us to put phone in its name.

And so, as we increasingly look at contemporary technology through a lens that can’t see as far back as the mainframe, we’re free to think differently about how we apply technology in the workplace, and specifically in different workplace contexts.

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The App’s second act

As a new year’s resolution last month I embarked upon an App cull.

That is to say I deleted any app from my iPhone that I either hadn’t used in the previous month, or apps whose remit I deemed was to just sit there in idle readiness for episodes of emergency boredom such as one might encounter in an airport departure lounge, or on a long train journey.

I also decided that any apps I culled would be welcomed back with open arms on a case-by-case, as needed basis.

A month later and I’ve noticed a couple of interesting things.

1. I haven’t added any of the deleted apps back.
2. I could have deleted even more of them – usefulness is relative.
3. Most of the apps I rely on day-to-day are free.
4. I don’t remember the last time I actually bought an app. It’s been months.

The four pages of apps on my iPhone 5 contain 76 apps – as an aside I can remember a time when if you’d told me I’d one day need 76 apps to run my life I would have thought you were an idiot.

• 23 are system apps that you can’t delete, Contacts, Camera, Mail etc.
• 11 are paid for, including one for train times, a podcasts app, Shazam for identifying music in coffee shops etc., a couple of music apps, Keynote and iMovie.
• The remaining 43 are free apps.

So, I didn’t buy a whopping 85% of the apps I use. (Which is an amusing latter-day take on software piracy).

Then I broke it down another way.

Apparently I have a mild OCD that compels me to organise my apps a certain way. Firstly, those apps fortunate enough to make it onto my homepage are my must-have, do-or-die, Premier League apps. The second division apps live on page two, and so on. Some apps teeter on the demotion/promotion boundary from time to time, but the front page rarely changes.

And it doesn’t stop there.

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The future of retail (Part II)

In my last blog post I listed a few observations about why some retailers are struggling and specifically how failure to react to changing consumer expectations and the arrival of new online competitors is probably terminal for some big brand name retailers.

But it’s not all doom and gloom and there are examples where specialist retailers have found higher ground where they can add discernable value and differentiate themselves from competitors, both online and offline.

While this blog post is focussed specifically around retail, the thematic arc is a common one in that significant structural change is unfolding across all industries and throughout broader society as we change and adapt to a new technology empowered age.

In round terms, some basic facts hold true.

1. Offering mainstream value is a race to the bottom.
2. Differentiation is key.
3. Online is no longer a trivial adjunct to your core offline operations.

Amid a broad collapse in specialist retail, the Apple Store shines as a prominent example of how vibrant and successful post-web retail can be in 2013.

Apple Store Facts

• The average store attracts 20,000 visitors a week and generates USD $49 million in sales per annum.
• In terms of sales per square foot in the US, Apple Stores are number one with over $6,000 per square foot, twice that of the company in second place, Tiffany & Co.
• Apple’s 400+ retail stores collectively generate almost $20Bn of revenue with year on year growth last year of 38%.
• Apple stores deliver profit margins of 26%.

Instinctively, you could be forgiven for justifying the success of Apple stores on the grounds that Apple’s products are among the most sought after gadgets and devices on the planet.

While that’s certainly a factor there are weighty counterarguments; you can freely purchase Apple products in many other retail outlets (and often at discounted prices because Apple’s own stores rarely if ever discount) plus, if it was just about demand for Apple products, we’d have seen swathes of independent retailers opening stores dedicated to selling Apple kit in competition to Apple’s own stores.

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