The company describes his return this way: “In his new role, Alastair will be responsible for developing new product offerings that support Xero's growth strategy and platform vision. His initial focus will be on banking and payments opportunities.” The COO’s duties have been taken over by chief platform officer, Duncan Ritchie. Also interesting is the company’s cash flow report for the third quarter ended September 30. About $4 million went for marketing and advertising for the quarter, compared to about $9.1 million for the nine months, which, not surprisingly, means the spend rate is accelerating. (Quick, how much did Intuit’s QuickBooks Super Bowl ad cost?) The same thing is true for staff costs outflow of about $8.7 million for the most recently ended quarter, compared to $9.1 million for the year to date, showing the impact of hiring.
XERO AFTER BANKING, PAYMENTS APPS Featured
Xero is developing products for banking and payments. That brief bit of information came in an executive officers update filed by the company in New Zealand on January 22. The update reported the return of former COO Alastair Grigg last month after a four-month sabbatical. Grigg comes back to the New Zealand-based marketing for low-cost cloud accounting software as general manager, platform ventures.
