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About Marc1 Ltd
Created in 2003, Marc1 Ltd has established itself as a first choice consultancy for many private and public sector organisations. Public sector organisations can access it through Buying Solutions framework agreements and it is also on the OGC ERF framework agreement. Please contact us for details.
Marc1 Ltd is an established ‘thought leadership’ consultancy, with many articles, conference presentations and well received conference programmes. Colin Cram is a regular conference chair.
Marc1 has access to an exceptional range of consultants, dedicated to delivering outstanding and on-going results for its clients.
Colin M Cram FCIPS
Managing Director, Marc1 Ltd
Colin Cram, a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Purchasing and Supply, held senior procurement positions in the public sector for over 30 years, including central government, higher education, scientific research and local government. He was responsible throughout for initiating and implementing innovative strategies for procurement, shared services, outsourcings and organisational re-engineering. He developed and successfully implemented strategies to tackle monopoly supply situations. In creating several leading edge procurement organisations and collaborations, he was responsible for third party spends of up to £7bn a year. Cash savings from his initiatives exceed £1bn pa.
Colin’s positions have included:
- Director (and founder) of the North West Centre of Excellence. This led the drive for efficiencies through collaboration, joint procurement and better practice across 47 local authorities.
- Its scope included procurement, construction, shared services, health and social care and the national lead for local passenger transport.
- First Director of the North Western Universities Purchasing Consortium, increasing membership from 13 to 22.
- First Director of the Benefits Agency Contracts Organisation (which he created and where he pioneered a category management approach to central civil government procurement).
- First Director of the Research Councils’ Procurement Organisation (which he created and which was the first procurement organisation in the public sector to provide a complete procurement and contracting service to independent bodies)
- Head of the Research Equipment Affinity Group (which he created), a collaboration of universities to reduce the costs of research equipment.
- A founder member of the Central Unit on Purchasing, which was the forerunner of the Office of Government Commerce and which, in turn preceded the Efficiency and Reform Group.
When in the Cabinet Office in the early 1980s, Colin pioneered public sector outsourcing policies.
Colin also pioneered an initiative to identify the scope of benefits fraud and which led to the continued drive, which started in the early 1990s, to address this.
A Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Purchasing and Supply, Colin is a member of SOLACE (Society of Local Authority Chief Executives), a guest Member of IACCM (International Association for Contract and Commercial Management), was appointed a Senior Adviser to the Office of Government Commerce and is an Honorary Associate Fellow in the Manchester Institute of Innovation Research in Manchester Business School. He is a regular speaker and chair at national and international conferences and seminars, is a regular contributor to professional journals and web-sites (including the Guardian’s Public Leaders Network) and a regular broadcaster.
Colin has been a member of EU working groups on innovation, procurement and sustainability, has been an ‘expert witness’ to UK Parliamentary committees, including the House of Lords Science and Technology Select Committee enquiry this year into public sector procurement and innovation. He contributed to the Office of Fair Trading report, ‘Commissioning and Competition in the Public Sector’ (issued on 15 March 2011) and contributed to the recent New Local Government Network publication on shared services, ‘Shared Necessities’.
Colin wrote the influential ‘Towards Tesco’ report for the Institute of Directors, which demonstrated how public sector procurement should be structured in order to enable the effective management of this huge spend, deliver the huge savings that are needed and implement procurement related government policies – read the article here.
Colin is results driven and combines vision and innovation with strong leadership, communication, practical and change management skills. His breadth of experience of the public sector is almost certainly unrivalled. He runs a successful consultancy, Marc1 Ltd, with a reputation for its thought leadership.
Colin runs a successful consultancy, Marc1 Ltd, with a reputation for its thought leadership.
