Colin Read

Past

• Consultant at 4C Consulting
• Consultant (Contractor) at Marketing Supply Chain
• Strategy Consultant (Contractor) at Cairneagle Associates

• Associate at L.E.K. Consulting
• Co-founder at Blade ICE (Sole Proprietorship)

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Education

• University of Cambridge
• University of Cambridge

Recommended

1 person has recommended Colin

Connections

50 connections

Industry

Management Consulting

Colin Read’s Summary

Currently working in procurement consulting

Colin Read’s Specialties:

Due diligence, scenario modelling, interviewing people who work in an industry.

Colin Read’s Experience

• Consultant

  4C Consulting

  (Privately Held; Management Consulting industry)

  September 2008 — October 2008 (2 months)

  Primarily responsible for a sourcing project for a regional retailer which involved writing an RFP and building a cost model to evaluate returns
  - Frequent client contact to manage data requests and generate buy-in
  
  Conducted fuel and temporary labour benchmarking for a distribution contract, including drawing conclusions and writing the presentation

• Consultant (Contractor)

  Marketing Supply Chain

  (Privately Held; 1-10 employees; Management Consulting industry)

  June 2008 — July 2008 (2 months)

  Analysed and drew conclusions from detailed supply chain data for a major UK retailer. Of particular importance was achieving clarity and reliability even though the supplier-sourced data was highly inconsistent
  
  Helped present information to the client's steering committee and answer the questions which resulted

• Strategy Consultant (Contractor)

  Cairneagle Associates

  (Partnership; 11-50 employees; Management Consulting industry)

  February 2008 — May 2008 (4 months)

  Brought in on a team of five to help write the corporate strategy for a large ($1Bn rev.) travel management company
  
  Research work focused on analytical and qualitative understanding of industry profit pools and cost structures
  
  Quantified the future impact of inter-player and macro-economic pressures on cost structure, revenues and industry structure

• Associate

  L.E.K. Consulting

  (Partnership; 501-1000 employees; Management Consulting industry)

  August 2005 — August 2007 (2 years 1 month)

  Extensive VDD and CDD work covering retail, manufacturing and service industries across Europe
  Particular focus on understanding sales by channel and type to understand the distribution of value within a company
  
  Varied analytical work, requiring spreadsheet design, pivot tables, macros to enable financial projections, database analysis and risk modeling
  Performed sales analysis on $17k of IMS Health data
  Constructed a historical London bus contract database
  QC of spreadsheets to a standard suitable for client handover
  Taught Excel to junior staff and prepared a VB web-query guide
  
  Developed time management skills as a result of 50-50 allocation, long working hours, the need to meet deadlines and work undertaken for non-UK offices
  
  Phone interview experience with clients, customers and competitors in many industries
  Managed and ran European interviews of senior physicians paying €200 each in France and Germany

• Co-founder

  Blade ICE (Sole Proprietorship)

  (Sole Proprietorship; 1-10 employees; Consumer Electronics industry)

  February 2001 — August 2005 (4 years 7 months)

  Helped a friend set up and run an import and distribution company specialising in high end car audio equipment from the USA. I produced the system which worked out prices, profits etc. for each product based upon the current exchange rate.

Colin Read’s Education

• University of Cambridge

  MPhil , Manufacturing Engineering , 2004 — 2005

  Several client-site projects working as a self-starting team of 2 including:
  Assessed feasibility of customer financing and presented to the CEO and some board members in a multinational engineering company
  Researched and formulated a market entry strategy for a high tech startup
  Developed and implemented capacity planning for an engineering SME
  
  Improved my ability to work with people from different backgrounds as many students were from international backgrounds
  
  Extensive travel, both within the UK and internationally to visit factories and work on client-sites

• University of Cambridge

  MEng , Chemical Engineering , 2000 — 2004

  Activities and Societies:

  Rowed for university lightweights, Tae Kwon Do

Additional Information

Colin Read’s Interests:

Rowing, CULRC 2004, Property investing

Colin Read’s Groups:

•    Cambridge University Alumni Group
•    Cambridge University Lightweight Rowing Club (CULRC)

Colin Read’s Honors:

Cambridge University Entrepreneurs 1k winner 2003/04

Colin Read’s Contact Settings

Interested In:

• job inquiries
• reference requests
• getting back in touch