The KX is the hub of Bluefin’s knowledge sharing culture. By aiding the support and collaboration of all consultants on client site, it has helped to drive the growth of technical excellence around the company. The KX acts as a benchmark for achievement and input into all of Bluefin’s employees well structured bi-annual appraisals.

The technology we use is reviewed during each business cycle. This ensures it is always up-to-date, fit for purpose, and is continually aligned to Bluefin’s strategy. The forums span all of Bluefin’s capabilities and are contributed to across all areas. In many instances, employees cross capabilities with their experience and know-how. Over the years, the KX has grown from 37 topic areas to 48, an increase which represents the growth of Bluefin and its knowledge capital.

An electronic Knowledge Management update is distributed monthly, which is overseen by Bluefin’s Knowledge Manager, Geoff Warriss. It contains a round-up of hot tips, latest news items, and the best contributions (as chosen by a guest editor - namely a selected employee). On a monthly basis, awards are also given to the most prolific, and the best contributor. On the back of these contributions, one Bluefin employee is chosen each year to attend an SAP conference abroad. The term ‘Points means Prizes’ has therefore never been truer. This has been hotly contested in the past and as a result, employees are fiercely posting to gain the edge. This is also linked with SAP Developer Network (SDN) contributions. The Knowledge Management update also acts as another channel of communicating further reading, and its structure is always open to feedback from its readers. This further cements the importance of a culture in which Bluefin values the sharing of knowledge and the importance of teamwork.

It was back in July 2006 when Bluefin’s KX hit the 3000 post mark, so passing the 6000 milestone is yet another significant achievement, and has further proven the commitment of Bluefin in continuing to develop and prosper from its knowledge share. The actual 6000 post was on the topic of CRM, the question revolving around the adding of a scroll bar to an R/3 transaction in the IC Web Client. This ended with the development of an SAP note.

Some selected posts for December 2007 Knowledge Management update were as follows:

• Connecting to a HTTPS source - a client challenge that was met with a targeted response from our Technology Practice.
• DTP’s, Full Loads, Init W/O Data Transfer and deltas in BI7 - a problem with the logic in SAP BI carrying out a dbo.sort which was resolved with some ingenuity by one of our consultants.

Commenting on this achievement, Geoff Warriss said:

Having cut my teeth in consulting many years ago for a large Global IT services company, the sharing of knowledge was pretty much stagnant in the workplace, so joining a leading edge SAP consultancy with a culture of openness and knowledge sharing,  was a breath of fresh air. I see this as one of Bluefin's key differentiators to other consultancies and am pleased to be involved in driving and building this empowerment within Bluefin.