We’re not usually driven by titles but this one means a lot to us. It’s a very proud moment to become a Xero Platinum Partner because it represents a coming of age for our business – we’ve reached a level of maturity and that’s something to celebrate for any small business.

In 2010 we brought on our very first Xero customer, today we service more than 400 customers in 4 different countries. During that time, app trends have changed, SaaS companies have come, some have gone, but one thing remains constant – our affiliation with Xero. We see Xero not as an app but the pillar of SME business, the focal point of a business software solution, we see Xero as a platform. It’s the backbone of ours and many businesses.

Today we become the first cloud integrator in the world to be a Xero Platinum Partner and possibly the only Xero Platinum Partner that isn’t an Accountant or Bookkeeper. This achievement puts us in the top 2% of Xero partners, a place usually reserved for the big accounting firms. It affirms something we already knew, that the role of an accountant is changing and so is the pecking order. Despite the perceived food chain, we know our clients come to us first for Fintech advice.

Of the 400+ customers we have on Xero, more than 130 are using one or many add-ons for a total combined eco-system of more than 70 apps. That means we have helped our customers integrate Xero with more than 70 different online applications. When others are talking about SaaS and the cloud, we are the ones actually doing it.

Despite this, there are those (Xero NZ included) that fail to recognise Cloud Integrators as an industry. So we won’t be complacent and we’ll continue to educate the market that what we do isn’t Accounting, Bookkeeping, nor is it I.T, what we do is business automation through app integration, and we do it in person not via Team Viewer or video.

For now it’s important to celebrate our success, to thank the team for all their hard work, to thank our clients for their ongoing support and most importantly thank Xero for providing us with the encouragement, tools, and framework to do what we do.

Without Xero we wouldn’t be ALTSHIFT.