In 2012, a consulting firm that helped other companies change had a familiar problem of its own. Its employees knew things their colleagues needed to know. Getting that knowledge out of their heads, and into circulation, was another matter. Bluewolf’s response included short training videos, public employee profiles, and a peculiar little incentive: attract 50 clicks to a shared company link and earn a reward such as a $25 gift card. The cloud, apparently, could use a nudge.
- The work: make Salesforce fit sales, service, and marketing operations.
- The distinction: a specialist’s implementation experience, joined to IBM’s integration and design capabilities.
- The lesson: define the behavior you need before buying more technology.
The software was already there
Bluewolf occupies the space between a software purchase and a working business process. Salesforce supplies the platform. Consultants work out how customer records, sales opportunities, support cases, and people should move through it. That can mean redesigning a service experience, connecting financial systems, migrating data, or teaching employees a different way to work. A login is the beginning of that job.
Eric Berridge and Michael Kirven founded Bluewolf in 2000. In IBM’s 2016 acquisition announcement, Berridge dated its Salesforce consulting partnership to 2001. The early bet was on cloud applications and iterative delivery: build something useful, learn from its use, and keep improving it. Years later, he recalled furnishing the first office with tables and chairs accepted as payment from a client going out of business. Enterprise transformation had some very tangible furniture.
Consider HID Global. Growth and acquisitions had left the identity-security business with different technologies and ways of managing customers. Bluewolf’s 2010 account describes a global Salesforce implementation completed in five months. It created a shared customer record while accommodating different sales models. Support teams could record and share issues; managers could see channel activity. Standardization preserved meaningful differences between business units.
Give the project an edge
For a smaller deployment, Bluewolf tried putting a boundary around consulting itself. Bluewolf Go, launched in January 2017, offered fixed-price implementations with 30- or 60-day timelines. Its menu included Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, quoting tools, field service, and marketing automation. The offer was designed for customers with defined objectives, using prebuilt solutions to shorten the route to a usable system.
Diener Precision Pumps shows why that mattered. As its sales operation expanded in the United States and Europe, representatives tracked customers in separate spreadsheets. Management lacked a global pipeline view. In Bluewolf’s published case study, Diener chose the fixed 60-day package and went live in six weeks. The company reported that automated reporting saved representatives five to ten hours a week.
The important preparation happened before configuration: requirements, executive alignment, a defined process, and agreement on scope. A short deadline gave the customer a reason to prioritize decisions. The transferable idea is straightforward: give the first release a job small enough to finish. A complicated migration with unresolved requirements needs a different schedule.
The $25 lesson
Bluewolf’s own knowledge-sharing experiment exposed a similarly practical obstacle. A baseline survey found that roughly 80% of employees were open to developing their professional presence but needed training. People wanted help deciding what to share, whom to follow, and how to fit it into the day. Willingness existed. The route was unclear.
The #GoingSocial program combined instruction with employee profiles, Salesforce Chatter, and game mechanics supplied by Bunchball. Staff could earn recognition for contributing knowledge and participating. MarketingSherpa’s 2012 case study reported a 57% increase in internal social-network collaboration over almost four months. That measures activity, rather than revenue or the quality of every exchange. Still, it made the adoption problem visible.
“What people buy is the knowledge that these individuals have. They buy our people.”
Corinne Sklar, then VP of Marketing, Bluewolf, 2012
The gift card was one reward inside a larger system. Bluewolf’s later account emphasized a project owner, technical support, an executive sponsor, repeated communication, and continuing updates. Copying the badge without those commitments would miss the work that kept the program moving.
Why IBM bought the gap
When IBM completed the acquisition on May 12, 2016, Bluewolf had more than 500 employees, 12 offices, and over 9,500 completed Salesforce projects, according to the announcement. Named clients included Stanley Black & Decker, Sapa Building Systems, and Vodafone Hutchison Australia. Private-equity backer Riordan, Lewis & Haden exited through the transaction.
IBM brought analytics, experience design, industry consulting, and connections into larger enterprise systems. Bluewolf brought accumulated Salesforce delivery experience. Together, they competed in a market that includes Accenture, Deloitte, Capgemini, and specialist Salesforce consultancies. The distinction was the combination of platform specialization and IBM’s wider technical estate; buyers still needed to examine the proposed team and scope.
The business model followed the customer beyond launch. Bluewolf sold implementation and advisory work, while Bluewolf Beyond offered ongoing support and improvement for live environments. Its recurring service addressed a predictable reality: cloud software keeps changing, and so do the organizations using it.
The combination traveled. IBM and Bluewolf opened a dedicated Salesforce practice in India in 2018. In 2019, New Zealand property fund manager Augusta selected Bluewolf to improve investor relations through Salesforce. Those engagements put the consultancy in different industries and markets, with a recurring task: connect customer information to a usable service.
Bluewolf also made research part of its market presence. Its 2016-2017 State of Salesforce report drew on more than 1,700 customers worldwide. Although 96% of respondents saw innovation potential in Salesforce, 77% thought their companies could do more with their investment. That gap gave the ongoing-service proposition a useful context. Owning the platform and finding new value in it were different stages of the customer relationship.
AI inherits the same homework
Berridge’s 2018 TED profile described a consultancy where fewer than 10% of employees held engineering or computer-science degrees. His argument for humanities graduates gave the operating philosophy a human face: understanding people belongs in technical delivery.
Today, IBM presents this Salesforce work through IBM Consulting. A 2024 service document explicitly describes its Salesforce practice as “once Bluewolf.” By May 2026, IBM reported nearly 7,100 certified practitioners across more than 80 countries and recognition as a Leader in IDC’s 2025-2026 Salesforce implementation assessment. Those are figures for IBM’s broader practice.
The current offering adds Agentforce, watsonx, and enterprise-data integration. For buyers, the old homework remains useful: choose a measurable customer problem, establish who owns the data, agree on a first release, and fund improvement after launch. Without those decisions, a faster implementation can simply deliver confusion sooner.