A watershed moment
We opened the day with a framing built around three Ms.
1. Mayday for the M of SMB.
Twenty years ago, Xero kicked off the cloud accounting revolution. But for finance teams scaling beyond SMB, there's always been a missing step.
The move to ERPs like NetSuite or Intacct came with order-of-magnitude jumps in cost, complexity and risk — and roughly 70% of ERP implementations fail.
We built Mayday to close that gap.
The same month-end work that used to take 7.5 days of manual spreadsheet effort — deferred revenue, prepayments, accruals, intercompany — reduced to a single click. The kind of automation ERPs charge a fortune for, delivered through the Xero API instead.
2. The Movement that became CFO Techstack.
Three years ago, we launched CFO Techstack to give this new way of working a home.
Movements need missionaries, trailblazers willing to challenge the status quo. Today, more than 13,000 finance leaders are part of that community, sharing playbooks, stack setups and real-world stories of what's possible.
And the movement is only growing.
Take Roxanne from Amalgamated Property, one of our Finance Leader Advisory Council members, who was at the Showcase. Her stack, supporting a 57-entity group, costs $4,400 a month. It’s cheaper, faster and more powerful than any equivalent ERP setup.
That's the upside finance teams are now unlocking by harnessing best-of-breed specialisation around Xero.
We've stopped talking about the M of SMB. That term doesn't do it justice.
The finance teams operating here are the M Powered.
3. Today's Moment.
There's a parallel here to the Enlightenment — the 18th-century movement that challenged people to Sapere aude: dare to know. To stop blindly accepting inherited authority. To start thinking independently.
In 1789, that movement erupted into revolution.
Liberty. Equality. Fraternity.
Over the last three years, the CFO Techstack movement has continued to grow and build momentum — finance leaders daring to know, blazing trails on Xero plus best-in-class apps.
Last week, it erupted into its own moment.
Liberty from the costly ERP one-stop-shop.
Quality through best-of-breed specialisation.
Community in the form of 13,000+ finance leaders proving it's not just possible, it's optimal.
This is the world we now inhabit. ERP isn't going away. But it's becoming the rare exception. The new norm is the CFO Techstack way.
Perhaps the clearest reflection of this came from Andy Colalillo (CFO) who brought his entire RSGx finance team to the Showcase.
The business is now at roughly half a billion in turnover, managing 13 entities… they even hired Tai Qasim, specifically to support their ERP implementation. But RSGx has now turned their back on that ERP project entirely, after reassessing the pace of innovation across the Xero ecosystem and the flexibility required in an AI-driven operating environment. The internal reaction wasn't resistance. It was excitement.
The kind of story that would have been unthinkable five years ago. Today, it's the new norm.
And that "AI-driven operating environment" RSGx referenced isn't a future concern. It's the reality every finance team is now building for.
James Scott-Griffin (Co-Founder & CPTO at Mayday) made that case directly in his closing keynote. When asked what it takes to "win" in the AI era, his answer was simple:
"Choose open tools."
The best outcomes, he argued, won't come from monolithic platforms locked behind their own walls. They'll come from open, interoperable stacks — where AI can move freely across systems and every layer of the stack is building toward the same future.
That's exactly why the Xero ecosystem is set to win.
Three major announcements
The Showcase was a watershed moment.
And my word, was it a day packed with announcements:
- Xero launched Ultra — an entirely new plan for the "M" of SME. We dive into this below.
- Stackademy + FTS Consultants — a formal training pathway and a new identity for the consultants implementing Xero-based stacks. Waitlist open now, join here — full details soon.
- The first CFO Techstack Awards — eight categories recognising the leaders, teams and tools driving this movement. Entries open June 23rd — full details soon.
Each of these deserves its own space. We’ll be covering them in more detail in the weeks to follow.
This week, we're focused on the first of these announcements. The one that quite literally changed the tone of the entire day.
Xero just made a major statement about the future of the mid-market
During his keynote, Angad Soin (MD AU/NZ and Chief Strategy Officer at Xero) used the CFO Techstack Showcase stage to announce something significant.
Xero is launching an entirely new plan for the "M" of SME. The Ultra plan.
Scheduled for general release in Australia in late June, Ultra introduces additional capabilities to Xero, including:
- Advanced reporting
- Multi-entity consolidations (via Syft)
- Fast-track support
- Future functionality such as data restore & more granular user permissions
Functionality finance teams have been asking for. And functionality built specifically for larger Xero businesses.
Why this matters
For years, the dominant assumption across finance has been that businesses eventually "graduate" away from Xero into heavyweight ERPs as complexity increases. That Xero was a starter system. A small-business tool.
At CFO Techstack, we've seen the opposite happen.
An ever-increasing number of finance teams are ditching the ERP path entirely — and choosing to scale on Xero instead.
Whether it's Demartini Group and their 25 entities, ditching YARDI for a Xero-based stack. Or Wholesale Paints and their 26 entities, leaving behind Epicor Prophet 21 to grow with Xero at the core.
Best-of-breed apps around Xero are now delivering functionality that genuinely outperforms traditional ERPs.
But for the larger teams blazing this trail, one thing has been missing: reassurance from Xero themselves. The company at the centre of this movement, are they in this with us? Will they keep investing in functionality for businesses our size?
Ultra is the answer. A resounding yes.
Xero are behind us. They are behind you.
The conversation has shifted. It's no longer "Can we scale with Xero?" — it's how.
Xero has just provided the reassurance that you can.
CFO Techstack delivers the how.
The default has shifted
Last week's Showcase didn't create this momentum. It revealed how strong it already is.
And with Xero now publicly investing deeper into the mid-market through Ultra, the ecosystem around modern finance operations is accelerating faster than ever.
ERP isn't dead. But it's no longer the default. And the businesses choosing the CFO Techstack way are no longer the exception, they're the new norm.
If you're here, part of the CFO Techstack community, you're in the right place.
In the coming weeks we'll be diving further into the key announcements from the day; Stackademy and FTS Consultants, and the inaugural CFO Techstack Awards.
In the meantime, our CFO Techstack road trip continues this week. Join us in Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth. Register here.
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