1st Blog Post – New Year, New CPC

Date: 6th Feb 2018   By: Joshua Wood   length: 5 minute   Tags: People  

first blog

Welcome to the first ever edition of the new CPC monthly blog.

First let me introduce myself; my name is Joshua Wood and I am the Training & Administration Officer at CPC. I have been with CPC for over 3 and a half years and if I’m honest, I’ve loved every minute. If you’ve ever attended one our regional Procurement Advisory Group meetings, or stopped by our offices in Salford, chances are we’ve crossed paths (I was the guy that asked you a dozen times if you wanted milk in your tea).

So why did we decide to start this blog? We will be casting an eye on the sector generally, discussing the most pressing matters of the day and our experts will be providing guidance on a vast array of relevant subjects along the way. If there's a topic you'd particularly like us to cover, then please drop your suggestions through to me at [email protected].

As well as being one of the education sector’s foremost purchasing consortia with almost 5000 members, the CPC is also home to 25+ members of staff who are some of the friendliest and most capable people you could hope to meet. Every month I hope to bring you a little insight from behind the scenes at CPC HQ so you can get a feel for the staff that make this place tick. Whether it be a quick interview with one of the team or an informal update on what they’re all up to, I will endeavour to keep you informed on how we’re working hard to improve our service and make this the best purchasing consortium possible.

The new year looks particularly exciting for CPC, we have some big plans in the pipeline that we look forward to sharing with you soon so watch this space. In the meantime, I thought I’d cover off what we consider some of our biggest achievements from last year.

The most obvious highlight from last year was our merger with Tenet Services. Following months of work crossing I’s and dotting T’s, the merger became official in May and since then both teams have been busy learning from each other as well as becoming firm friends. The merger is a manifestation of both company’s commitment to better serving their customers needs. With both teams working together, the whole procurement journey can be managed whether that be with the support of CPC or the hands-on approach of Tenet.

In addition to the merger we also launched the brand-new CPC Apprenticeship Scheme in September. CPC provided funding for the placement of 15 apprentices nationwide to bolster the procurement community and to start training the next generation of procurement professionals. The scheme has been received especially positive feedback from those colleges who received the funding and we are hopeful that we can continue to support our members in this manner for many years to come. We’ll be bringing you more information on our apprentices as their courses go on over the next 16 months so stay tuned for that.

2017 also saw CPC roll out a new tendering software option for our members to more adequately serve their procurement needs. The Multi-Quote tendering e-software from ADB Software has been very well received by our members so far and we look forward to working with ADB to improve the platform going forward. Along with the new software we also launched some frameworks that we had never offered before; in 2017 our Employee Screening, Leasing Services, Total Facilities Management and Cashless Payment Systems were launched and have proved a big hit with members so far. We are always trying to cover off as much of our members needs as we possibly can by extending our range of frameworks and we will have even more for our members in 2018.

We’re already working hard to make 2018 our best year yet and this blog will be there every step of the way to keep you updated on how we make that happen. if you want to keep in touch and get even closer with CPC, then follow us on Twitter Facebook and LinkedIn.