Xero

Enriching decision-making through global, user-led competitor research

We helped Xero dive into the customer experience of its key competitors across six global markets.

A comprehensive, global, comparative market and product analysis showing how Xero stacks up to its competitors around the world in the eyes of customers
Strategic insights on the social, physical, and digital context of their competitor's users to inform confident decision-making
An evidence base that can easily and comprehensively be used by different stakeholders across the organisation according to their needs

Services

Market research
Customer experience
Journey mapping
Strategic design

Sectors

Financial Services

Project team

Championing Xero’s mission

Xero’s mission is to help small businesses thrive. They recognise that behind every thriving small business sits an attentive accountant or bookkeeper and that supporting and appealing to these professionals is key to Xero’s thriving.

However, Xero felt they needed a detailed view of the strengths and weaknesses of their current product for this cohort compared to competitor products, especially in markets where Xero is a relative newcomer.

Paper Giant was asked by Xero to help them understand how accountants and bookkeepers in six global markets complete their typical work tasks using their software products of choice (Xero’s or otherwise).

We conducted qualitative research with accountants and bookkeepers in New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, United Kingdom, USA and Canada.

Reaching far and wide for experience insights

To help Xero better understand the unique needs of users in different places, we interviewed 50 accountants and bookkeepers working in small businesses across Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, the US, Canada, and the UK.

We used a range of passive and active research probes, such as developing discussion guides and conducting UX studies to understand their pain, gains, needs and wants from their accounting platform of choice.

We collated that data into a comprehensive set of visually appealing charts to complement our qualitative insights and make comparisons across the markets we explored easier at a glance.

A collaborative “bingo board”, analysing the tasks research participants in markets around the world complete in Xero.

A new way of seeing the problem

The purpose of this research was to empower Xero’s product executives and teams to make strategic design decisions, so we harnessed our findings to present a new model for understanding the needs and wants of the researched group. We found that this new framework provides a refreshed lens for the ideation and creativity the product teams use in research.

**Global and market-level comparisons:** We provided global comparison charts that visualise the feature and product ratings given by accountants and bookkeepers, revealing patterns, strengths and priority areas. We broke the data down further into a country-level analysis, showing how Xero compared to its main competitors in six key markets.

Collaborative deliverable planning

We knew many people within Xero would be drawing on the outputs of this extensive competitive research—a significant investment for their business—so we presented our findings in a way that would be most useful to these various stakeholders.

We worked closely with our immediate Xero project team to ensure that we shaped our final deliverable with the most value, clarity and salience to their internal teams and to meet their time frames so that our work could feed into decision-making and other initiatives in helpful ways.

Our final report was designed to be navigated in different ways according to the unique needs of Xero’s internal teams, who would use the research to inform strategic priorities, whether their focus was by market or platform feature.