About Us

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, a Senior Adviser to the Office of Government Commerce, is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Purchasing and Supply and held senior positions for over 30 years in central government, higher education and local government. He was responsible throughout for initiating and implementing collaborative and innovative strategies for procurement, shared services, outsourcings and organisational re-engineering. Savings from his initiatives have exceeded £1bn.

Colin was the 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. Third party spend by the authorities amounted to £7bn a year.

Colin was the:

  • first Director of the North Western Universities Purchasing Consortium
  • first Director of the Benefits Agency Contracts Organisation (which he created and where he pioneered a category management approach to central civil government procurement),
  • the first Director of the Research Councils’ Procurement Organisation (which he created)
  • created and led the Research Equipment Affinity Group.

He was a founder member of the Central Unit on Purchasing, which was the forerunner of the Office of Government Commerce.

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), an associate of Manchester Business School and has been appointed a Senior Adviser to the Office of Government Commerce. He is a regular speaker at national and international conferences and training events, and is a regular contributor to professional journals. He has been a member of European working groups on Procurement, Innovation and Sustainability.