Edmund Zagorin

Edmund Zagorin's picture
About: 

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

Helpful tips to leverage the collective wisdom your various business teams have accumulated over the years.
Jul 14, 2022    0

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...

Your suppliers’ threat profiles will inevitably add to your business’ cybersecurity risk.
Aug 30, 2021    0

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...

Cost savings is always measured against a set of expectations, and these expectations are only made possible by quantitative analysis.
Sep 15, 2020    0

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. 

...

World Supply Chain
Apr 08, 2020    0

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...

Sep 12, 2019    0

How did you get into this field – was it purposeful or by accident?

My path into sourcing was very much by accident. The first sourcing projects I worked on were for independent films. Independent films are notoriously low-budget and chaotic, so it was always an adventure getting the right equipment and set of vendors for each commercial project. When I got into more traditional procurement management consulting later in my career, I focused on...
Jun 01, 2019    0
Negotiation is a fundamentally human act between two or more people. When it comes to vendor negotiations, this is driven by the prior (and future) relationship between human counterparties. While digital processes can support this mission, if a key decision maker involved in a vendor negotiation goes on vacation, changes jobs or gets hit by a bus, the negotiation will stall or scramble to reach a conclusion. It’s a good reminder that no matter what role...