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ChemCloud Exercises: Management & Finance

Purpose: Hands-on walkthrough of ChemCloud for Management and Finance teams, covering analytics, reporting, AI-powered insights, and strategic oversight of procurement operations.

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What We Want to Get Out of This

  1. Show how an end-to-end workflow works — from reviewing portfolio health through to strategic insights and compliance
  2. Demonstrate the capability of AI — see how ChemCloud’s AI agents surface summaries, risks, and opportunities from your data
  3. Feel how an AI agent can be like an additional member of the team — delegate tasks, ask questions, and let it handle the reporting

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Before You Start

  • Log in to the ChemCloud demo environment
  • Keyboard shortcut to remember: Cmd+K (Mac) or Ctrl+K (Windows) opens the AI search/chat anywhere in the app

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Exercise 1: Review Product and Approval Status (~10 mins)

Objective: Get an overview of your product portfolio — how many products, what’s approved, where are the gaps.
1

Browse Products

Go to Products in the top navigation. Browse the product list and get a sense of the overall picture.
2

Check Approval Status

Look at the approval status across products. How many are fully approved? How many have gaps?
3

Check Supplier Coverage

Look at which products have multiple approved suppliers vs. single-source.
4

Try the AI

Open the AI Chat (Cmd+K) from the search bar in top navigation and try:
  • “How many products do we have? How many are fully approved?”
  • “Which products have single-source suppliers?”
  • “Where are the biggest gaps in our approval status?”
Expected Outcome: Clear picture of product portfolio health and approval gaps.

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Exercise 2: Explore Purchasing and Pricing Data (~15 mins)

Objective: Review sourcing and quoting data to understand pricing trends and supplier relationships.
1

Browse Recent Requests

Look at recent sourcing requests and the quotes that have come back.
2

Review Pricing

Look at pricing across suppliers for key materials. Are there obvious patterns or outliers?
3

Try the AI

Ask strategic purchasing questions:
  • “What have we spent on [material] in the last 6 months?”
  • “Which suppliers are we most dependent on?”
  • “Where are we paying more than we should be?”
  • “Are there materials where we haven’t requested a competitive quote recently?”
Try to push it — ask about spend categories, budget comparisons, or cost savings that may not be explicitly captured.
Expected Outcome: Insight into purchasing patterns, pricing trends, and supplier dependency.

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Exercise 3: Review Supply Chain and Delivery Performance (~10 mins)

Objective: Get a sense of what’s on time, what’s late, and whether there are recurring issues.
1

Browse Deliveries

Look at recent orders and deliveries. Check what’s in progress and what’s been completed.
2

Try the AI

Ask operational questions a manager would ask in a weekly review:
  • “Are there any overdue deliveries right now?”
  • “Which suppliers have the worst on-time delivery rate?”
  • “Have we had any COA failures in the last month?”
  • “What’s our average lead time across suppliers for [material]?”
Expected Outcome: Overview of delivery performance and supplier reliability.

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Exercise 4: Ask the AI for a Management Summary (~10 mins)

Objective: This is the big one. Ask the AI to give you a management-level summary of procurement operations.
1

Ask for a Summary

Ask the AI: “Give me a summary of the current state of our procurement operations.”
2

Drill Into Risks

Ask it to highlight risks — supplier concentration, approval gaps, quality issues.
3

Ask for Opportunities

Ask it to identify cost-saving opportunities or areas for improvement.
4

Test the Limits

Ask it about something it definitely shouldn’t know (e.g., market forecasts, competitor pricing). See if it admits when it doesn’t have enough data vs. when it guesses.
Expected Outcome: AI-generated management summary with risks and opportunities identified.

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Exercise 5: Compliance and Documentation Review (~10 mins)

Objective: Review the state of documentation across your products — are specifications up to date? Are there expired documents? Are there gaps?
1

Browse Documents

Look at the document status across products and approved materials.
2

Try the AI

Ask compliance-focused questions:
  • “Which documents are expiring in the next 90 days?”
  • “Are there any approved materials missing required documents?”
  • “Give me a compliance summary for [product]”
  • “Which products don’t meet their target approval count?”
Expected Outcome: Clear picture of documentation compliance and upcoming expiries.

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Exercise 6: Open-Ended AI Exploration (~10 mins)

Objective: Just play around. Ask the AI whatever questions come to mind from a management perspective.
1

Dashboard Questions

What would you want on a procurement dashboard? Ask the AI to generate it.
2

Total Cost of Ownership

Ask about the total cost of ownership for a product — not just unit price.
3

Supplier Risk

Ask about supplier risk assessment or diversification.
4

Try to Break It

Ask something the system definitely shouldn’t know. See if it admits uncertainty or confidently gives a wrong answer. Screenshot it if so!

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Things to Note

  • What questions did you want to ask that it couldn’t answer?
  • Were any responses wrong or misleading?
  • Did you manage to get it to confidently give a wrong answer? (Screenshot it if so!)