Stitch Inventory Integrates With Xero Accounting: Two Small Business Lessons


Stitch LabsStitch Labs recently announced the integration of its inventory management software with Xero, a cloud accounting application.

The Stitch – Xero integration means that after a one-time setup, information and transactions can sync up between the two applications without needing to update the two accounts separately or re-key information manually.  Plus, customers get more granular data to understand their businesses better.

In an official announcement on the Stitch Labs Blog, the company explained the simple rationale for the move. Marketing Strategist and Community Manager Camille Brenkwitz wrote: “We hope this new integration will help many of our existing customers and bring on some new ones.”

In other words, the message is:  integration is good for customers.

Just as you are hearing a lot more these days about “cloud” software, expect to hear a lot more about product integrations. For business systems, integration of one vendor’s product with another’s can make it easier, cheaper and better for the end customer — i.e., for you.

This is one of several reasons the cloud is so valuable today. Cloud apps (a highfalutin term for a software application you get access to over the Internet) can make integrations easier to accomplish.

Cloud Integration: A Key Vendor Strategy to Serve Customers

Product vendors have two choices when it comes to product strategy.

One choice is to offer an all-in-one solution.  In other words, vendors build features into their products to serve the customer’s entire process, end to end.  However, it can take years to build all those features.  In some cases, it can make the product more expensive for the customer.

The other choice is to partner with other vendors already serving a function or slice of a process.  This way, customers already comfortable with using another product for a particular function don’t have to switch.  They continue using the product their staff is trained to use.

Stitch Labs has chosen the latter strategy.  Its integration with Xero is not its first.   In 2012, Stitch added integration with eight other partners including Shopify, ShipStation, PayPal, Big Commerce, Amazon, Google Drive, SAIL, and Storenvy.  The company says the partnerships are part of a customer philosophy to build a set of services “automating some of your most tedious operational activities.”

No matter which strategy is chosen, the end goal is the same:  make it better for the customer.  A well-executed strategy that focuses on the customer avoids errors and delay that result from “gaps” in the workflow.  Instead of requiring manual action, data can be passed along electronically from one step in the process to the next.

What Small Businesses Can Learn

Stitch Labs’s strategy of partnerships provides a good lesson for small businesses — in two ways.

1) Think outside the box about your own product and/or service strategy.  Ryan Lawler of  TechCrunch observes that Stitch Labs’s approach is aimed at solving the typical kind of problem faced by small businesses.  They have important and complex workflow issues necessary to run their businesses. Tech integration can make it easier for them. Look at how you can make things easier for your customer by integrating your product with other products that your customers use.

By the way, you don’t need to have a product to “integrate” with another provider.  Even if you offer a service, there may be a way to “integrate” a vendor’s product into what you do. You just need to think about how to make it easier on the end customer you serve.

Let me give you an example, using accountants, a quintessential service provider. These days many accountants interact with information from clients electronically, by working directly in the client’s accounting system or capturing data directly from it.  Clients don’t have to download spreadsheets or email information back and forth.  Instead, the accountant logs in to the client’s accounting system, balances the books,  and performs other activities. In a way, the accountant has “integrated” its service with a product the client uses.

It’s valuable for the client, because you don’t cause them unnecessary manual work. You’ve made the client’s operations more efficient.

Think about that model and how your business could offer similar benefits to your end customers.

2) Consider the vendor’s integrations when choosing technology.  When you are in a position to shop for  technology to run your own business, look for applications that integrate with systems you already use and don’t plan to stop using.  That should be near the top of your shopping checklist.

You don’t want to have to manually enter information from one system into another. Not do you want to jump through hoops such as downloading and then uploading spreadsheets.  Doing so just institutionalizes inefficiencies in your operations.

If your business is like my small business, you don’t have people or time to spare.  An hour saved here, two hours saved there, week after week, can really add up to higher profits.


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Anita Campbell Anita Campbell is the Founder, CEO and Publisher of Small Business Trends and has been following trends in small businesses since 2003. She is the owner of BizSugar, a social media site for small businesses.

4 Reactions
  1. “Doing so just institutionalizes inefficiencies in your operations.”

    What an important statement! This should be taken into consideration for every business decision you make.

    • Thanks for highlighting that.

      We hear a lot about “cloud apps” and “integration” and “in the cloud” but all too often the words remain just lingo. Nobody takes the time to translate the advantages of integrated cloud apps to the day-to-day running of your company.

      – Anita

  2. Martin Lindeskog

    Anita: Do you see that future versions of stand-alone Enterprise Resource Planning systems will be more integrated with other, external tools?

  3. Great news!!! Stitch and Xero are now integrated! This is very useful information for all existing and new customers. Thanks for sharing with us…