Hosted by Kevin Appleby, Head of Partnerships at GrowCFO, the GrowCFO Show brings together finance leaders, operators and technology partners to explore how modern finance functions are evolving, and where traditional assumptions are starting to break.
As a sponsor of the State of the Stack 2026 Report, GrowCFO has played a key role in shaping this conversation, bringing an independent lens to what’s happening in the market.
In this episode, Kevin was joined by Kate Hayward (UK Managing Director, Xero) and David Tuck (Mayday & CFO Techstack) to tackle one of the biggest assumptions in finance:
Do finance teams really “outgrow” Xero?
The discussion opened with the familiar belief: "as businesses scale, they eventually outgrow their accounting system..."
Very quickly, that assumption was challenged.
Kate Hayward addressed what she described as a persistent misconception:
“There is a myth in the market that Xero is for the small end of small, but if you look through our customer base, there are thousands of larger businesses already on Xero.”
This framing is important. It shifts the conversation away from limits and towards possibility.
Rather than asking: “When do you outgrow Xero?”
The better question becomes: “What can you build around Xero before you ever need to leave it?”
Xero’s role
Kate described Xero's original purpose clearly:
“The whole point of Xero was to be that single source of truth, that system of record giving smaller businesses the same insights as larger businesses.”
That need doesn’t disappear as companies scale. If anything, it becomes more critical.
What changes is the need for capability around it, and that’s where the stack comes in.
Debunking the “ERP moment”
This is where the conversation sharpened.
They directly challenged the idea that there is a fixed point where businesses must move to ERP.
Rather than ERP implementation being the default, instead, the default can and should be that you continue to scale with Xero plus a best-in-class tech stack until and unless there is a critical reason why you need to move to ERP.
This was backed up by data from Mayday’s customer base:
- 46 businesses with over $100m revenue
- 62 businesses between $50m–$100m
And what made this argument even stronger was the balance.
This wasn’t positioned as “ERP is dead” - in fact, it was explicitly acknowledged that there will always be situations where certain businesses do need to make that move.
The shift is not about eliminating ERP; it’s about removing it as the default assumption.
The real purpose of CFO Techstack
One of the most powerful moments in the podcast came when David explained the purpose behind CFO Techstack:
“The underlying purpose is psychological safety.”
Many finance teams already suspect they can scale with Xero, but they lack the confidence, precedent or proof to fully commit to that path.
They see the pressure, they see the ERP narrative, and they don’t always see enough examples of an alternative working.
This is what CFO Techstack provides: normalising scaling with Xero and a best-in-class tech stack.
What the State of the Stack reveals
The podcast also broke down how modern finance stacks are being built, as described in the State of the Stack 2026 report.
They outlined four key layers:
- Core infrastructure (Xero + Mayday)
- Reporting (management, consolidation, insights)
- Operations (AP, payroll, spend, FX, inventory, billing)
- Planning (forecasting, FP&A)
The key takeaway? Finance teams are no longer relying on a single monolithic system. They’re assembling modular stacks based on their specific requirements.
And that shift is being driven by real usage. As Kevin Appleby put it:
“There’s a thirst out there in the CFO community to know more about what’s possible in tech, and it’s changing very, very fast.”
ERP trade-offs: cost, complexity and distraction
Another strong theme throughout the discussion was the practical reality of ERP transformation.
Kevin made a point that will resonate with most scaling teams:
“You really don’t want to be getting into a finance transformation unless you have a really strong business case.”
ERP isn’t just a system change; it’s a time, focus and resource drain.
This was reinforced by highlighting the advantages of modular stacks: better, cheaper, faster, and backed it up with examples of finance teams running sophisticated stacks at relatively low monthly costs.
What the podcast signals
This podcast explained the shift in mindset from:
“When do we need to leave Xero?”
To:
“How far can we go by building the right stack around it?”
Increasingly, finance leaders are choosing to explore that second path.
As David put it:
“Experience shows that for M of SMB businesses there is no ‘when you outgrow Xero’.”
This bold statement reflects a growing reality in the market.
The next step: webinar
The podcast was just the starting point.
Kate, Kevin and David will be joined by Felix Matthews to expand on this discussion even further in our upcoming webinar:
📆 Thurs 16th April, 3.15pm BST
They'll go into more detail on:
- Why scaling businesses are reconsidering the “ERP moment”
- What the State of the Stack 2026 data reveals
- How finance teams are using Xero + specialist apps to scale
- The real trade-offs between ERP and modular stacks
- When ERP genuinely makes sense, and when it doesn’t
The podcast challenged the assumption, now the webinar can show you what to do next.
Register now here.
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