Edmund Zagorin
Edmund Zagorin is a procurement thought leader obsessed with the power of recommendations to fix broken processes and supply chains. Prior to founding Arkestro, Edmund worked as a consultant focused on data-driven supplier negotiations for large healthcare providers, contract manufacturers and multi-campus retail brands. Edmund is widely recognized as an expert on the emerging role of machine learning and artificial intelligence in procurement and has presented executive briefings on this topic to leadership teams.
From this author
Today’s procurement systems are not as sophisticated as they should be, as they fail to incorporate basic tenets of human psychology.
What do we mean by this?
As of now, the primary means of surfacing suppliers in the course of a search selection remains very arbitrary – qualify the suppliers then pick the lowest price. This process does very little to ensure the quality of the supplier and does not reflect what other business teams’ experience with the...
Suppliers are mission-critical partners for business success. Unfortunately, too often, an “arm’s length” relationship creates problems that are revealed only after it’s too late.
When suppliers feel conversations only occur after poor performances, the opportunity to have a productive, collaborative conversation may already be over.
That’s why regular conversations with your suppliers are critical. It’s important to ask them questions about...
Quantitative and scientific approaches to cost estimation have existed for decades and are increasingly accessible to procurement teams via technologies that automate data analysis.
In many cases, these new capabilities simply accelerate the manual work that procurement professionals were doing using pivot tables and advanced Excel functions (e.g., show only rows with less than five days lead time) that effectively filter large numbers of line items in seconds.
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To understand long-term transformations in supply chain and procurement technology, supply chain professionals must be able to understand present trends so they can help shape future realities. Experts believe the following predictions are viable hypotheses that we should consider for 2030.
Predicting the Strategic Sourcing Technology Landscape in 2030
1) Increase in Population: In 2030, there will be more people...