The Predictive Enterprise: How Superhuman Supply Chains Transform Global Business - Hardcover

by Edmund Zagorin (Author)

Build a predictive enterprise that delivers faster-than-human decisions, eliminates procurement bottlenecks, and achieves full payback on AI investment in under 90 days

The Predictive Enterprise: How Superhuman Supply Chains Transform Global Business reveals how Fortune 500 leaders at are using AI to fundamentally redesign--not just automate--their procurement and supply chain operations. Built around a powerful framework with three pillars--Faster-Than-Human Decision-Making, Humanless Loops, and Outcome-Based Process Re-Engineering--this book shows executives how to move from reactive, bloated processes to predictive operations that deliver measurable results at enterprise scale.

Written by Arkestro Founder & Chief Strategy Officer Edmund Zagorin with a foreword by former GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt and a conclusion by three time Chief Procurement Officer Len DeCandia, this book delivers key insights on:

- Overcoming the three "double binds" that trap procurement teams--speed and cost, supplier rationalization and resiliency, and scale and efficiency--using predictive AI

- The Predictive Process Framework: how to replace static workflows with dynamic, outcome-driven process stacks that adapt in real time

- Responsible AI governance for suppliers, including a risk-reward matrix for deciding what to automate, what to augment, and what to leave to human judgment

- A step-by-step 100-day leadership playbook for CPOs and supply chain executives to build transformation teams, launch quick wins, and scale predictive initiatives across the enterprise

The Predictive Enterprise is a timely, essential read for C-suite executives, supply chain leaders, and procurement professionals at global enterprises navigating AI transformation and the reshoring wave reshaping manufacturing.

Front Jacket

Global enterprises face unprecedented disruption from trade wars, geopolitical conflicts, and extreme weather while being pressured to increase productivity, efficiency, and speed. The Predictive Enterprise shows how AI and predictive technologies are transforming supply chains to deliver exponential gains. Drawing from extensive experience pioneering AI applications in supply chain and procurement, author Edmund Zagorin reveals how major companies are leveraging these technologies to unlock astonishing value creation.

Through interviews with Global 2000 executives, The Predictive Enterprise explores the impact of AI-driven operating models on lowering cost structures and increasing the speed and scale of supply chain management and procurement teams. The book also examines how enterprises are rightsizing, rightshoring, and righttooling their supply chains, moving from labor arbitrage to AI as a way to rethink the geography of manufacturing. It reveals why faster-than-human speed is essential to meet customers' demands and win competitive advantage as the job of supply chain teams becomes fractally more complex.

The book addresses critical topics including third-party AI risks, AI governance best practices, and the potential for large enterprises to outsource AI risk to their suppliers in areas ranging from employee health benefits to leasing office space. It provides practical guidance on identifying high-impact AI use cases in procurement and supply chain, developing test-and-learn strategies to move from pilots to enterprise deployments, and how to pick winners from an often overwhelming sea of potential providers. Len DeCandia, former CPO of Johnson & Johnson and forty-year veteran supply chain and procurement executive also shares his playbook for the first 100 days of AI transformation, giving readers the knowledge and tools to navigate their own AI journeys successfully.

The Predictive Enterprise is essential reading for executives, supply chain professionals, and any leader seeking to capitalize on AI technologies that are reshaping global business. As supply chains grapple with an increasingly volatile world, this book provides the strategic framework needed to transform challenges into opportunities, headwinds into tailwinds, and risks into competitive advantages.

Back Jacket

PRAISE FORTHE PREDICTIVE ENTERPRISE

"By now everyone knows that AI's truly transformative effect on our economy won't come from simply replacing humans; it'll come from building whole new organizations and business models centered around AI's new capabilities. Edmund's book is one of the first attempts to think seriously about how to do that."
--NOAH SMITH, Founder and Writer at Noahpinion

"The Predictive Enterprise shows how business changes when AI can predict the outcome of a process before it begins. Rather than automating existing processes, enterprises are using AI to redesign our ways of working. The result is an enterprise supply chain that goes far beyond improved productivity and cost impact."
--TIEN TZUO, Founder and CEO of Zuora; bestselling author of Subscribed

"The Predictive Enterprise is a practical, timely, and fact-based guide for C-suite leaders navigating the impact of AI on supply chains, manufacturing, and global commerce. Edmund cuts through the hype with clear playbooks, real use cases, and frameworks leaders can actually use."
--KEITH KRACH, Former Chairman and CEO of DocuSign and Ariba; Former U.S. Under Secretary of State

"The Predictive Enterprise is a clear, compelling roadmap for how leaders can redesign procurement and supply chain around AI to unlock faster decisions, fewer manual steps, and measurable business impact. Packed with practical examples and hard-earned lessons, it shows why the next era of competitive advantage will belong to organizations that stop automating broken workflows--and start building truly predictive ones."
--CHRIS SAWCHUK, Principal and Global Procurement Applied Intelligence Practice Leader, The Hackett Group

"The time for reinvention is now. In an era where AI is transforming supply chains into strategic engines of growth, this book provides an essential roadmap for enterprise leaders. With a clear message for the C-suite from Len DeCandia, it equips executives to modernize operations, accelerate decision-making, unlock enterprise value, and lead lasting organizational transformation."
--LEI LEI, Professor and Dean of Rutgers Business School

Author Biography

EDMUND ZAGORIN is an American entrepreneur and inventor specializing in applications of artificial intelligence within supply chains. He is the founder and Chief Strategy Officer of Arkestro, the leading predictive procurement platform. Zagorin holds numerous patents for AI inventions and was recognized by the Institute for Supply Management as Supply Chain Management Executive of the Year in 2024.