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Andrew Hirst
Andrew Hirst is Head of Sales – Partner Success & National Accounts at Xero, the cloud accounting platform, based in Brisbane, Australia.
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Sep 30, 2026
The Future of Accounting & SaaS in the AI Era | Andrew Hirst, Xero
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14:12Joe McCordHOST
As these firms grow, what's the biggest challenges that you see them facing and what makes the ones that succeed stand out from the rest?
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14:23Andrew HirstGUEST
Well, if you look at the fastest growing firms at the moment, if you look across the I'll talk about the top 30 firms because after that it becomes really hard to compare the firms.
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14:31Andrew HirstGUEST
It's easy when you get information from the AFR each year to see how the firms are all growing.
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14:36Andrew HirstGUEST
So the fastest growing segment is the, I'll call them the wholly owned national mid-tier firms.
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14:40Andrew HirstGUEST
So that includes RSM, BDO, Grant Thornton, Kelly and Partners, Findex mainly.
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14:49Andrew HirstGUEST
So they have a top-down approach in terms of management, leadership and strategic direction.
12 MINS LATER
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26:48Joe McCordHOST
But, I mean, you know, maybe you don't have a nuanced perspective on this, but if you do, do you believe the traditional SaaS model is genuinely effective? under threat uh and what would the most successful sas companies of the next five years uh what do you think they should be doing differently than what they're doing so