Cloud accounting royalty joined the podcast this week in the form of Xero’s first UK managing director Gary Turner. In 2021, Turner took the decision to step back from Xero after nearly 13 years at the helm.

During his time with the Kiwi cloud company, Turner took them from three employees and a turnover of £56,000 to an annual income of £150m from around 850,000 customers.

Since his decision to leave Xero, he has taken on a range of responsibilities including mentoring, investing and starting a newsletter about running a fast-growing business and the leadership lessons he learned along the way.

Speaking to technology editor Tom Herbert at AccountingWEB HQ, Turner outlined his views on the current state of the software market, which he feels is in a state of flux as the pendulum swings from a range of interconnected best-of-breed solutions back to a more consolidated approach.

“If you look at pretty much any market, product category and industry at any time, it’s likely to be in the process of either being bundled or unbundled,” he said. “The last ten to 15 years has been the pendulum swinging away from a bundled, suite approach in the world of software into a huge explosion of innovation, new products and services.

“My sense is the pendulum might start to swing back towards bundling of the thousands of apps that are out there”.

Turner also discussed how artificial intelligence could shake up the world of technology. “It’s a great tech demo at the moment,” he said. “But like any new technology there will be a lot of hype that will die down and then people will get to work building some really practical applications for it.”

“And what does AI mean for the future of accounting advisory?” he added. “Will it ride shotgun on calls with clients telling them how to optimise their cashfllow?”

To listen to the full interview click on the play button at the top of the page or search for ‘AccountingWEB’ on your podcast player of choice.

Podcast written and hosted by Tom Herbert and produced by Will Cole.