A chat with 2023 ILANZ Award Winning Team, Xero
A quick chat with Xero, the winning team of the 2023 Chapman Tripp Private Sector In-house Team and Artemis In-house Innovation Award.
How did it feel to win the Chapman Tripp
Private Sector In-house Team of the Year Award? And then again for the Artemis In-house Innovation Award?
I think it’s fair to say that we were both thrilled and surprised! Particularly as we had been finalists for the last few years but missed out. We were so pleased to have the hard work of both the Justice League and our business partners recognised in this way. So pleased in fact, that both trophies have been on a trans-Tasman victory lap around our Auckland, Wellington, Melbourne and Sydney offices!
What were a few of your teams 2023 Conference highlights?
It’s always so energising to spend time in one place with colleagues and friends old and new - and I think we feel that particularly in our team as we’re spread through Aotearoa, Australia, the UK, US and Canada. So one highlight for our team has to be that ‘kanohi ki te kanohi’ or face to face time. The amazing line-up of speakers can’t be overlooked though - Jehan Casinader’s ‘Common Ground’ session was a firm favourite amongst our team.
Your team launched several new initiatives over the past year. One of these is the new self-serve Procurement tool. Tell us about this tool and how it has helped your wider organisation.
Working with our Procurement colleagues, we’d identified that there was an opportunity to streamline the activation of the hundreds of supplier contracts Xero enters every year. In line with Xero’s values, we challenged ourselves to identify a threshold for supplier arrangements for which we could empower Procurement to self-serve on, in line with a set of clear, beautiful guidelines and templates we produced.
Our valued partners at Hudson Gavin Martin also help us with the volume of supplier contracts via our well-established “procurement resourcing solution”, effectively acting as an extension of the Justice League when we need that extra capacity.
The combo of the self-service model and the procurement resourcing solution helps our supplier contracts get done faster, and frees up time for the Justice League to spend on the other things that matter most for Xero. There are a lot of exciting growth plans happening at Xero and these procurement initiatives have vastly improved our ability to flex our capacity and approach when we need to.
How did your team earn the internal nickname, the ‘Justice League’?
A very smart group came up with the name during a team offsite back in 2019! It reflects the fact that we have non-legal team members who are also working towards justice - we have compliance, governance, government experience and other professionals too.
Not only do we have Justice League as our nickname, but we also have our very own JL Slack Emoji.
What is next for the team at Xero?
For now we’re resisting the urge to constantly re-tell our business colleagues about their award-winning legal team! (Though our CEO did half the job by giving us a shout-out on our global All Hands call). And next we have a very exciting project underway to update our operating model and refine the support we give Xero as our business moves into the next phase of growth.
Our Southern Hemisphere team during our 2022 meet-up
The ILANZ Awards are presented at our Annual Awards Dinner, following the ILANZ Conference. This year's Awards Dinner was sponsored by Niche Recruitment.