Tony

The Sunderland University BSc. in Information Technology has a fantastic syllabus that left me very well placed for a career in ERP consulting. I joined Andersen Consulting straight from University as an experienced hire on the strength of the course and the industrial placement. Following a couple of years working with MAC-PAC, I cross trained to SAP and joined the ABAP team based out of the solution centre in Hammersmith where I worked delivering solutions for remote clients. From there I joined a SAP VAR (Value Added Reseller) convinced that the SME market was where the next wave of interesting work would be.

The work was certainly interesting. I gained exposure to nearly every aspect of SAP as projects covering the entire scope of SAP would be delivered with 4 or 5 consultants.

After a year of reading the manual and then having a go I'd had enough. I joined a tier 2 consultancy where I stayed for several years. During this time I worked on many projects all over the world; however, I was always doing the same work. I didn't add a single skill in 4 years, I deepened those I already had, but was being bypassed for all the new SAP developments.

Since joining Bluefin in the summer of 2004 I've had very varied roles. My first task was to study for the BW certification exam. The support and advice that the other consultants offered was fantastic, as several other consultants were completing certification at the same time there was always someone to bounce questions off. I've since worked on an upgrade, a proposal for a million pound plus project, scoped the high level requirements for KPI reporting in a major university, resolved several technical issues on an ITS solution following a landscape change and developed a solution to allow query output to be used on PDF documents. All in 6 months! This was exactly the diversification and support I was seeking with a move to a younger more agile consulting practice.

I've worked at several consultancies during my career. All have promised much around growing employees, claiming to offer training and a chance to develop new skills. Bluefin Solutions is the first consultancy to deliver on these promises. The friendly feel of the organisation means that knowledge sharing actually happens, in addition to the usual informal networks each employee is set objectives and allocated time to build the knowledge capital. This means that you're never alone on site. In many ways Bluefin offers the best of both worlds, the support of a major consultancy together with the diversity of work that is associated with a smaller consultancy.