Smart50 rank: 18
Revenue: $1.45 million
Growth: 73.01%
Founders: Michael Derin, 33
Based: New South Wales
Employees: 11
Industry: Finance and insurance
Website: www.azuregroup.com.au

Want to hold a board meeting and have your CFO attend? You might well find yourself on Bondi Beach, having an early morning surf with the 33-year-old who sees innovating the board meeting as a metaphor for the type of change he wants to bring to the staid accounting and financial strategy world for small and medium business operators.

Michael Derin began Azure Group, a Sydney-based chartered and financial services firm, in 2002, with the idea of offering strategic level commercial advice to SME clients.

SMEs often can't afford or attract experienced full-time chief financial officers, and consultants with that experience are hard to come by.

So Derin devised the role of an outsourced CFO for Azure's SME clients, where the SME can receive all the benefits of an experienced and talented CFO that are then combined with Azure Group's accountancy services.

He had the idea while working for another accounting firm, and even though they were interested they decided it wouldn't work for their company. "I decided to go it alone," he says. Derin began Azure Group with three clients and after one year, when one of his major clients began to dissolve, Derin realised he would have to "sink or swim" to keep his business alive. He started with offering potential clients complimentary reviews and also looked at Azure's service lines and set about packaging them in a way so they could be easily integrated and tailored to suit clients' needs.

He used his two sisters, Tanya, a taxation expert, and Natalie, a marketing and business development manager. Azure also recruited a number of highly talented tax specialists and CFOs.

Over the last financial year, Derin worked as CFO for nine companies and on average, he says, these companies experienced an increase in turnover of 19%, with the highest increase being 38%. Azure offers services in four main areas - accounting, taxation and compliance, corporate secretarial services and chief financial officer services.

It also acts as a strategic adviser to its clients when they are going through a listing or capital raising and maintains ongoing services for clients after listing, including the share register and related compliance issues. The company also manages mergers and acquisitions and tax restructures for clients in a range of industries including boutique investment, legal and mining.

Initially, Azure found it difficult to market the outsourced CFO service. "Azure was categorised as business coaches rather than an innovative chartered accounting firm," Derin says. So he hired a marketing firm and introduced a "complimentary review", which looks at a businesses structure, operations and financials and assesses how Azure can add value to the business.

The company now employs a full time in-house marketing and business development manager and has also undertaken an active public relations campaign to educate the market about the benefits of the CFO services as well as its growing service lines, he says.

Azure identified early the need to have an informative website to explain its range of services, to interact with potential and previous clients and to further strengthen the Azure Group brand and image. "We use the website to communicate our corporate personality," he says.

The website has recently been redesigned to increase its visibility through search engine optimisation strategies, improve the site's usability and incorporate the growing services and offerings to clients. Azure is also planning to feature blogs on the website to further instigate a conversation with visitors. "This also goes a long way to giving a face and personal element to the firm, as accounting is about dealing with people and instilling trust," he says.

Derin plans to hire more CFOs and recently opened an office on the Gold Coast to serve the growing number of clients. Azure will also be entering into a joint venture to launch a do-it-yourself accounting website for small business operators.