Last week, CFO Techstack took our State of the Stack Roadshow across New Zealand.

Three cities. Three packed rooms. Hundreds of conversations.

One clear message: the shift away from traditional ERP is no longer theoretical, it’s happening now, and the word is spreading.

From Christchurch to Wellington to Auckland, we saw finance leaders, advisors, operators and ecosystem partners come together to discuss a topic that’s rapidly becoming one of the defining conversations in modern finance:

Can high-growth businesses scale on Xero + apps instead of ERP?

Increasingly, the answer is: yes.

The Roadshow, built off the back of our inaugural State of the Stack 2026 report, brought together finance leaders who are already scaling on modern stacks, alongside firms that are actively exploring alternatives to heavyweight ERP implementations.

Modern finance teams are no longer asking “Is Xero viable?”

They’re asking: “How can I build the right stack around it?”

Christchurch: “I need to speak to 6 ERP clients”

The Christchurch session at Sudima Airport set the tone immediately.

One standout discussion came from Anna Riley, Director at Oxford Edge — a business intelligence, accounting and advisory firm. Anna spoke excitedly about six of her existing clients who are currently operating on ageing ERPs. She now sees that a move to Xero would be beneficial for them all with the right stack around it!

That theme came up repeatedly throughout the week: genuine curiosity around whether modern finance stacks built around Xero offer a better path than the traditional ERP overhaul.

Faster implementation. Lower cost. Better usability. More flexibility.

The conversations are changing, and importantly, so is the confidence level among advisors.

Wellington: The ecosystem conversation is accelerating

The Wellington roadshow, hosted inside Xero’s offices, highlighted another major trend: the accounting and advisory ecosystem is leaning in hard.

Representatives from Deloitte, PKF and other advisory groups engaged heavily in the discussion around how to better support clients scaling on Xero, rather than defaulting toward ERP migrations.

The appetite for further enablement was strong: more workshops, more sessions, more examples, more operator stories.

Because one of the biggest themes from the State of the Stack 2026 report was that finance leaders need precedent - they need to see businesses like theirs already doing it successfully.

That's why advisors were excited to learn more about the broader CFO Techstack community, including this Newsletter, the Stack Exchange and the App Map.

We also heard some great examples of real-life complex businesses scaling with Xero. For example, Leanne Edmonds at Projectworks is running a Deloitte Fast 50 business in Projectworks, with no reason to leave Xero for the foreseeable future!

Auckland: the conversation has moved beyond “Can Xero scale?”

By the time the roadshow reached Auckland, conversations had evolved even further.

Engagement throughout the session was exceptional, with constant questions from the audience, strong participation throughout discussions, and a clear desire from attendees to continue learning more about modern finance stack architecture.

And, again, the discussion wasn’t purely about software; it was about operational design.

We moved beyond "Can Xero scale", and on to: how can finance teams architect the right tech stacks to preserve flexibility while scaling cleanly across multiple countries, approvals, reporting layers and month-end processes?

The community is getting stronger

One of the clearest signals from the New Zealand Roadshows was just how seriously larger and more complex businesses are now evaluating modern finance stacks.

A CFO from a 200-entity property group was in the room at one of the shows, actively considering whether, and how, Xero could work for part or all of their business.

Meanwhile, conversations with Michael Dall, Managing Partner at Bloom International & Principal at Covisory, reinforced how strong the momentum is becoming internationally, now across Singapore and broader APAC markets.

Local engagement around Xero ecosystems is accelerating rapidly among multinational businesses.

That aligns closely with what CFO Techstack has been hearing globally.

The key takeaway

Perhaps the biggest takeaway from New Zealand was the quality of the conversations happening between finance leaders themselves.

Operators openly sharing trade-offs, advisors discussing implementation realities honestly, and teams talking transparently about costs, failures, workflows, and scaling challenges.

That openness is what makes the ecosystem work, and it’s why the CFO Techstack community continues to grow.

Finance transformation isn’t just about technology; it’s about confidence - that modern alternatives are viable, that others have already solved similar problems, that finance teams can scale without automatically defaulting toward traditional ERP.

Last week in New Zealand, that confidence was everywhere.

And if the conversations across Christchurch, Wellington, and Auckland are anything to go by… the word is spreading, fast.

And, the Roadshow continues next week!

Australia (Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, Perth) – 19th May - 10th June

Register for free here