XD HAX 2017 is Xero’s first virtual developer challenge. Sponsored by AWS, the challenge was to create innovative apps and enhancements using cloud technology to benefit small business. With no limit on creativity or what we could build, we were encouraged to think outside the square.
What Exsalerate does for Customers
Exsalerate is CRM for growing companies! We help our customers scale by embedding 
a sales process and improve retention by focusing on the clients that need some love.
Why Do XDHax?
We love working with the Xero API because it allows us to extract and display data in meaningful ways to help business owners and salespeople become more successful.
We’ve released incremental updates to our Xero integration since we first connected to Xero in 2014. However, some pieces of the puzzle were missing. Our sprint goal was to release some key features based on our user feedback in time for Xerocon Melbourne 2017 which coincided with the XDhax timeline, so why not?
What Did We Do?
Our upgrade consisted of four features:
- A new Account Management Dashboard
- Xero Data Enrichment
- Creating draft Xero invoices in Exsalerate
- Importing quotes from Xero to Exsalerate
What Do the Changes Mean for Our Customers
Account Management Dashboard
Companies told us they spend a fortune acquiring new business but needed a better way to look after existing customers because the cost of losing a client really hurts your bottom line.
Our Account Management Dashboard provides users with a snapshot of all clients in their portfolio so the Account Manager can view key information about a client in an easily digestible bite-sized tile.
We display comparative revenue for each client across three key periods – Month to Date, Year to Date and the last 12 months, we also display the clients lifetime value, any overdue invoices and links to the last completed activity and the next one planned.
We group the clients based on how long it’s been since the Account Manager (or your company) was last in touch, and allow you to apply filters to view a key segment of your client base.
Xero Data Enrichment
To achieve the segmentation necessary for the Account Management Dashboard to function we need to enrich the Xero data file. So we built bulk update tool so users can easily update fields that are not available in Xero such as:
- Account Manager
- Sales Rep
- Rank
- Branch
- Region
- Referral Source
- Industry
We also display the comparative sales data so users can easily apply ranks to their clients.
Draft Xero Invoices
We added the ability to create a draft invoice in Exsalerate so users can access inventory items and send an invoice to Xero ready for approval. You can also nominate who needs to be notified to approve the invoice, we then send an email with a deep link to the invoice in Xero.
Xero Quotes
After continued requests from our users to see their Xero quotes in Exsalerate we decided to hack the existing process to import quotes into their pipeline.
When a quote is created in Xero we assign it to the appropriate customer at the correct stage in the sales process and automatically add a task to the account manager to follow-up. The PDF of the quote is visible to all team members in Exsalerate and the quote becomes part of the pipeline.
To achieve this, users need to add their personalized @exsalerate.com email address as a recipient when sending the quote from Xero.
What did we get out of It
We’ve realized that we’re just scraping the surface of #AI and #automation of account management. So that’s where we’re putting all our creative thinking.
Taking part in XDHax was an awesome learning opportunity for our team, and the real winners have been our users!
