When staff of AECgroup were recently invited to participate in the organisation's strategic planning process, we were given the opportunity to vote for "2001 Best Client of the Year Award". Projects we undertake for many of our clients are vast and represent their greatest challenges. By working side by side we can ensure our clients achieve maximum benefit from all our service including: organisational change, systems implementation, technology transfer, corporate imaging, marketing or advertising. This quarter, we are pleased to introduce to you one of our most favoured clients, Dalle Cort Financial Services.

Who is Dalle Cort Financial Services and what services does your organisation offer?
Dalle Cort Financial Services are a progressive financial planning group dedicated to creating wealth for our clients. We seek to create wealth for our clients to facilitate the achievement of "lifestyle with choice". We are based in North Queensland but service many different clients throughout Australia and the World at large. We are dedicated to establishing long-term relationships with our clients, as we believe that the wealth creation process is journey, involving many different stages and progressive steps right throughout your lifetime. Dalle Cort Financial Services specialise in a Wealth creation through the use of gearing (using borrowed funds for investment purposes) as well as Retirement Planning. Our dedication to our clients is achieving maximum return for the minimum amount of risk. Our mission statement encapsulates our organisation: "through innovative and progressive ideas, whilst embracing technology, we create wealth for all, affording lifestyle with choice".

What prompted the start-up of Dalle Cort Financial Services and is there any plans of expansion in the near future?
Dalle Cort Financial Services was founded over 15 years ago by Isi Dalle Cort, who remains today the principal and head financial planner. The business has now grown to an organisation of 8 (3 planners, 1 information technology and 3 support/administration) with plans to add another 2 to the ranks in the near future. Dalle Cort Financial Services was started with client service in mind, an ethic that remains our core focus to this day.

What services has AECgroup assisted your organisation with and why do you continue to use our services?
AECgroup has helped us with a number of different areas that we either don't have the expertise in or do not have the time resources for. Areas such as marketing and advertising, but more importantly has been the use of these services to position our business to our target audience. We now have a recognisable brand image in the North Queensland area as well as increased levels of name awareness.

AECgroup has played and continues to play an integral part in the positioning of our business. One major area of positioning ourselves as the major player has been moving into our new office which features a 70 seat auditorium to host our regular educational seminars, office design, recreational facility including basketball court.

Also, we found that our previous marketing efforts sent confusing or conflicting messages out. We now have a strategy that flows on from one logical step (eg name awareness) to the next (eg. Calls to action).

Bill Andrew from AECorganisational consulting has recently been working with us in the areas of organisation development, incorporating business systems and standardised processes. We know that change is an important part of any organisation but realise now that systems and procedures need to be put in place to allow us to react quickly to change and also to allow our core business activities (servicing our clients), to remain our core focus rather than administration.

The AECinfotec team has helped us develop our website so that it is not only a useful marketing tool but also a value added avenue for our clients. In particular our clients can now access their real time portfolio balances via dallecort.com from anywhere in the world.