You need the human judgement of a person, but you also now have tools with automation that make it easier for you to actually aid that human judgement.

– Diya Jolly, Chief Product & Technology Officer at Xero.

Today, I’m speaking with Diya Jolly, Chief Product & Technology Officer at Xero.

In this episode, recorded live at Xerocon Brisbane inside a blue Kombi van, we talk about . . .

• Reflections on leadership, childhood inspirations & her father’s influence
• Diya’s approach to customer-driven product development
• Highlights from recent Xero product announcements:

• • New homepage & navigation redesign
  • Enhanced Partner Hub
  • Intelligent bank reconciliation with human + AI synergy
  • Actionable insights for accountants & bookkeepers
  • The impact of user feedback and communication on product strategy

Timeline with Timestamps

00:00 – Meet Diya Jolly: Introduction to Diya’s role and background at Xero
01:08 – Childhood Inspiration: How her father sparked her interest in problem-solving
03:45 – Leading with Vision: Diya’s leadership style and mission-driven product design
04:43 – Xerocon Product Highlights: Top announcements and intelligent product evolution
07:03 – Trusting AI with Caution: Balancing automation with human judgment
08:06 – A Week in Diya’s Life: Customer obsession and product execution explained
09:53 – Why Bulk Deletion Matters: A small feature with a big community impact
10:59 – Prioritising Features: How Xero listens to customers to guide development
12:47 – Innovators Are Frustrated First: Why pain points fuel product breakthroughs

Diya, let’s check in. You are the Chief Product and Technology Officer at Xero.

Diya Jolly
Chief Product and Chief Technology Officer.

Heather Smith
Excellent. So really, a lot of roles and a lot of coverage there. So that’s quite impressive.

Now, Diya, I would like to go back and ask you if you could share with us the story of when you were 10 years old and you saw your father fixing an air conditioner, and he was explaining fixing the air conditioner, and what you learned from that.

What did you learn from those valuable childhood memories with your dad?

Diya Jolly
Wow. I’m impressed. How do you know that? Wow.

Okay, so my dad is an engineer who had his own business, and he built healthcare equipment for Indian villages to get healthcare equipment to India for cheap. So I grew up in the backdrop of him, like I used to go to his he had a small business, like 60 people or so. And I grew up in the background, backdrop of him running that business with a very clear mission, which is to help people right?

The date really clicked for me. When I was about 10 years old, we had like, this one air conditioner in our household, cruddy air conditioner. It broke, and he was trying to fix it, and as he was fixating, fixing it. I was sitting there, and he was explaining to me what he’s doing and how he’s thinking, and when I heard how he’s thinking, I’m like, I want to think like that. I want to do that. What is that? Right? And I think that is what led me to that. Then observing how he does it in his work, when he designs his products, that’s what led me to the career I chose.

Heather Smith
That’s just such a lovely story.

In terms of that time as a child, has that impacted the way you lead your team?

Diya Jolly
I’ve learned a lot from different leaders over time. Part of it is my dad’s leadership style, where he tends to empower people a tremendous amount believe in them. Part of it is learning from a lot of other leaders I work with in terms of, like, how do you motivate people, and how do you paint the big picture that is meaningful, which is why I personally love Xero, right? Like, this whole mission of helping empower small businesses and their advisors is a very powerful mission. But like, how do you take that, something that is that high-level, and make it more tangible through a product vision, etc. That’s what I’ve learned over time through other leaders.

Heather Smith
Fabulous. And we’re here at Brisbane Xerocon, and you did a keynote, and you’ve announced a lot of product which actually a lot of people are quite happy about.

What were some of the highlights of the announcements that you were particularly excited to share with the community?

Diya Jolly
Yeah, I think for me, one is Xero has always been known to be very easy to use and intuitive. But honestly, Rod Drury, Craig Walker, their vision was lasting till now, and software has changed. So how do we take the next step forward in a reimagined experience? With easier to use, intuitive but now, because of how technology’s evolved, also intelligent experiences. So you saw that with the home page and navigation. You saw that with the Xero Partner Hub, with the tools coming together, was something that was pretty ,as a as a person who’s both logical and creative, that is like the culmination of both of them coming together for something in a way that adds value. So that’s one, I think.

The second thing for me was just, I used to do my father’s accounts, and I used to enter his like bills, and I used to, like, print his invoices as a kid. So understanding the manual work behind everything, and taking some of that away from our partners, because they do a lot of it, and a lot of it is honestly done at, like, at times of the day where, like, it’s like late night, like taking time away from family or taking time away from other things. That was another area of like, hey, how do we do for me, like the bank reconciliation.

You need the human judgement of a person, but you also now have tools with automation that make it easier for you to actually aid that human judgement. So how do you design the whole thing in a way like, there are a lot of competitors will, like, automatically reconcile, but nobody gives you this ability to go, Hey, can you eyeball it? Can you make sure it’s okay? Here’s the supporting document, here’s the comply, here’s the like, audit trail, et cetera, so that you can be absolutely sure it’s correct. That was like, how do you take automations and make it actually helpful, versus a gamble was another thing.

And then finally, like, how do you help? Like, you know this, right? Accountants and bookkeepers will go in. They’ll have to download data into Excel. If they ask, get asked the question, they’ll have to munch the data. How do you take that and then turn it around? How do you make that entire process easier with our actionable insights piece?

Heather Smith
Yeah, absolutely. And in that, there was a couple of things that I really liked, eyeballing it and the audit trail and kind of that’s one of the things that freaks me out about AI. I want to physically look over everything and have that support me. In our community group, someone posted up a screenshot slide of Rod Drury at Xerocon over a decade ago, and what you’re announcing today was mapping to what he was saying that he wanted for the company.

Diya Jolly
Oh, wow, yeah.

Heather Smith
So that was very exciting.

I need to find a way email him back and say, Hey, we finally did it. That’s awesome.

Yeah, he’s quick to respond on Instagram, email, not so much. I know we’re here to talk about products and announcements, but I’d be really keen to sort of step back.

It’s my first opportunity to interview you. What does a typical day look like for you?

Diya Jolly
I don’t think there’s a typical day I can tell you what a typical week looks like. Lots of customer interactions, because if you don’t understand your customers, you can’t build for them. So 30+% of my time is in some way with customers, whether it’s one on one, whether it’s looking at their usage data, whether it’s looking at product ideas and what they’ve said, etc, and trying to make sense of it.

I think another 30% of my time, I’ve got a really good team, is trying to basically like, hey, if this is what we are hearing, how do we build it in a way? How do we get technology to help build what customers like, they need things we understand the technology. How do we bring it together to actually build something useful? Case in point for us, like for me, like bank reconciliation is something I’m very proud of, because I think we’ve done it in a way that actually genuinely works, versus just through automation, right?

Then I think 20-30% of my time is just like unblocking execution. So, like, if you get stuck in a design, if you get if, like, how do we tell our customers what we’re launching? Like, one of the things we haven’t done a good job of is actually 300 features. I don’t think people know what we’re launching and how it’s useful for them. So a lot of my time recently is on, like, Okay, how do we actually communicate to get the feedback that we’re doing the right things or not doing the right things? I’d say those are the large buckets my day divides into or my week device divides into generally and probably. This doesn’t add up to 100. Probably 20% is like, Hey, what should we be doing next? And how do I start seeding that right?

Heather Smith
Yeah, absolutely. And to that point about how are we getting the features across? I stumbled across bulk deletion of invoices and bills. There was this button, and I posted on about LinkedIn, and everyone jumped in and was really excited. And the guy actually came up to me yesterday at the keynote. He saw me there, and he was like, I didn’t realise what a big deal that button was going to be until I saw your LinkedIn post. And everyone was just their minds were blown and excited.

Diya Jolly
Which is why we love you, Heather, because you help us. You help us communicate. You do a great job, like communicating when we’ve done something good so that others can use it. Equally, giving us feedback from your community and telling us, like, Hey, you guys need to be paying attention here and doing a better job here.

Heather Smith
I always think it is actually communication, in terms of, very much getting that communication back through both channels, both ways.

How do you prioritise which features or integrations will get built?

Diya Jolly
So honestly, like our partner’s voice, small businesses voice, which comes in through a lot of different things, it comes in through Xero product ideas. It comes in through our research, our research team does. It comes in through these conversations we have. It comes in to me through LinkedIn and email, but also to my team, right? All of that gets aggregated.

Then I think what we do is the following. We try to look for like, where is the pain the most, and how can we then address the pain? Often, often people will say, and then, how do you cohort it into into a solution, right? Because somebody might say, the pain might be expressed as I’m trying to pick something more generic. Let’s pick payments, because that’s easy, understandable, probably by all our listeners. Somebody might say, Oh, you’re not, you’re not telling me my cash flow, but it might actually mean, no, I need to get paid faster, right? Yeah, so getting to the bottom of it, and clustering stuff, and then saying, Okay, there’s a big pain point I need here. How do we address it?

Heather Smith
Yeah, yeah. It’s interesting, because the very first time I saw Rob Drury speak, and I was sitting there going, oh my gosh, this is a frustrated man. I can’t believe he’s so frustrated about what he’s describing. And I’m like, all you need is go dah, dah, dah, dah. What’s his problem? But it was, he just wanted to go dah, dah and I didn’t understand that. And I was just like, going. I just absorbed all that frustration and just dealt with it. And it’s the people who are frustrated who actually move us forward.

Diya Jolly
Exactly, exactly, the people who see things can be done differently, right?

Heather Smith
Yeah, absolutely.

Diya Jolly
Yeah. And for us, it’s matching what we know can be done differently with where the pain actually is, right?

Heather Smith
Yeah, absolutely.

So let me finish with the most important question.

Any secrets about what you will be wearing at the Safari Glitterazzi Garage tonight?

Diya Jolly
You will find out. I will say this, we picked a theme that is extremely hard to find stuff for.

Heather Smith
Safari glitterazzi, for a start.

Diya Jolly
I’m like, I actually looked and looked and looked. And I’m like, this is hard. So I’m like, Okay, is it either gonna be Safari or glitter? And I’m gonna let you see which one it is.

Heather Smith
Oh, okay.

Diya Jolly
I’m not going to reveal it.

Heather Smith
I think you’re a safari girl. So we’ll see.

Diya Jolly
I will come find you.

Heather Smith
Thank you so much, Diya, for being on the Accounting Apps Podcast. It has been an absolute delight to have you on.

I welcome you back whenever you want to join us, and let us know about any feature functionality. Maybe every 50 features that you release, you can come back and we can do a top 50 of them. So thank you very much. And enjoy the rest of Xerocon.

Diya Jolly
Thank you for having me.

Heather Smith
Thank you so much.