Microsoft brings Power Bi to Xero

Xero has teamed up with Microsoft Power BI to help out small businesses, with the integration designed to provide the company's 600,000 users a better way to access and analyses information.

By integrating Xero financial data with Microsoft Power BI, the Kiwi cloud-based accounting firm hopes to deliver big data for small business so customers can directly connect with, and gain insight from, their business data through visualisation tools via Excel.

"Business tools today are smarter and more connected than ever and finally available to the small business sector," says Rod Drury, Xero chief executive.

"The accounting industry runs on Microsoft Office and we're delighted to further integrate with Microsoft's Power BI to give our users easier ways to access and analyse information from Xero and other sources to make smart, informed decisions.

Drury says integrations with Microsoft Power BI and Office 365 extend Xero's reach and usability and allows small businesses to extend their current Microsoft investments to easily view their Xero data alongside other critical business data, including Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Mailchimp, Salesforce, Google Analytics, Zendesk and Stripe.

James Phillips, Microsoft's corporate VP and GM of Microsoft's Business Applications, Platform and Intelligence (BAPI), says the integration brings together each company's strengths.

"Technology exists for us to transform and change what we can do," Phillips says.

"Microsoft's integration work with Xero brings together each of our strengths in cloud, productivity and business intelligence so our customers can more easily analyse and visualize their business data, share insights from anywhere within Office 365, and work with each other to get more done," he explains.

Angus Norton, Xero chief product officer, says Xero is deeply invested in the potential of big data for small business.

"We understand that the true value of data lies in the ability to extract insights and the story it paints around the health of their business," Norton explains.

"Xero is continually embracing new innovations and opportunities for our small business users and partnering deeply with one of the world's most loved productivity tools for business makes total sense to us," he says.

"Microsoft Power BI can now be accessed with a click of the financial system of record in Xero and paired with data from other advanced inventory systems – to surface new insights, and give precious time back to our customers to focus on their customers.

The integration between Xero and Microsoft Power BI will become available in March.