The job of a procurement team is to get the right materials to the right place, at the right time, for the right price. But when managing 300+ raw materials from 50+ suppliers, across 600+ orders a year—using your ERP supplemented by spreadsheets, emails, and SharePoint—this becomes complex, inefficient, and costly.  A fragmented procurement system like this leads to higher COGS, higher headcount and increased risk of failures in the supply chain. ChemCloud has just released a set of features that allows manufacturers to digitise their supply chain - and bring their procurement processes into the 21st century.

Schedule a demo to join the 100+ other manufacturers who are digitising their supply chain with ChemCloud.

What does a fragmented procurement system look like in practice?

Sales figures are at every manager’s fingertips ("we are up 7% vs last year") and the focus of every dashboard. But questions like "what is your annual raw material spend?" or "what percentage of spend goes to your biggest supplier?" are harder to answer.  This is because data is fragmented and stored in multiple places.  Approved materials stored in a spreadsheet - and only the lab has access to it.  A monthly RFQ email that BCCs all of your account managers, followed by the time consuming process to log all the quotes in a spreadsheet.  An Open POs report in your ERP, that you copy and paste into a spreadsheet, to send to each of your sites. A ‘COAs folder’ in sharepoint where every COA from every delivery lives. An SDS Register in an excel file, that is updated once a year.

Fragmented procurement system increases your costs

A fragmented approach to procurement increases costs in three ways:

1. Higher COGS: When your time is taken up by the day-to-day busy work of transactions it is hard to look at your procurement strategically, leading to procurement that favours incumbents and sees costs gradually rise over time (particularly in tail spend)
2. Additional FTE:  A supply chain team member can manage 60-80 orders/month with traditional tools. As a business grows, so does the headcount, adding unnecessary cost.
3. Supply chain risk: With complex sets of information fragmented across systems, your supply chain is exposed to more risk - this could be single-supplier risk (because it wasn’t clear that there was only one approval for a key raw material), single person risk (because all this information is ‘in the head’ of the procurement person), or production-risk (because the team didn’t realise a key material was not on track for delivery).

ChemCloud’s new set of features digitises your supply chain

ChemCloud has released a new set of features that brings procurement in chemical industry into the 21st century. No more spreadsheets. No more lost emails. No more “Where’s my stuff?” phone calls.  ChemCloud has built a system that integrates seamlessly with your ERP and now allows manufacturers to manage all of their procurement in the one place and maintain direct relationships with their existing suppliers:

📜 Approved Materials List – Centralise your repository for raw materials, suppliers, and documentation (SDS, COAs, specs).

⚡️ RFQs in 3 Clicks – Send RFQs instantly and let ChemCloud AI automate quote ingestion.

📦 Orders & ERP Integration –  Create draft POs and auto-notify losing suppliers.

🚛 Delivery Tracking – Track all incoming shipments & COAs in one place.

📊 Analytics & Insights – Get real-time pricing trends, supplier performance, and approval insights.

Is ChemCloud for you?

If your supply chain is time-consuming, complex, and manual, you’ll see immediate benefits. Our best-fit customers either:

🔍 Source 25+ commodities – Constantly issuing RFQs, tracking quotes, and sourcing new suppliers

OR

📝 Operate in regulated industries – Where approvals, documentation, and compliance matter (e.g., personal care, food & beverage, agriculture).

Typically, this means you have already set up some sort of system (probably in excel) to manage your quotes and deliveries.  This might be a quotes spreadsheet, or a list of approved materials.  If you have got this far - then you will love ChemCloud.

Before you ask ... these are the four questions that are probably top of mind

Automating procurement tasks and increased analytics that helps you to manage your spend sounds like a no-brainer to most manufacturers. But there are four questions that have probably come straight to mind.

But what about my suppliers and account managers?

Good news: Nothing changes. You still send POs to your existing suppliers, have the same conversations with your account managers, and maintain the same negotiation power. In the same way your account managers might use Salesforce to send you a quote, procurement managers can use ChemCloud to send and receive an RFQ.

Local distributors are already leveraging our supplier portal to streamline quoting, send price lists and give milestone order tracking.

My ERP is the source of truth - do I still use that?

Yes, your ERP remains the source of truth. We have built ChemCloud to work around ERP software - so Purchase Orders, Inwards Goods all still happens in your ERP. Anything procurement-related you do in email, a spreadsheet or on SharePoint - that is what ChemCloud replaces.

We have seen many customers go through ERP migrations, and we wouldn't wish it on anyone. We can integrate with whatever ERP you are using.

OK… but how does ChemCloud make money?

Under this model, ChemCloud charges a subscription fee. Based on initial analysis of 25 customers, the ROI on that subscription fee is 2-3x, through a combination of COGS reduction and less FTE dedicated to supply chain

How did we get here and why are we doing this?

For the last three years we have been building a platform that allows manufacturers to find new suppliers.  Our customers have loved the digital interface, and wanted to use the platform to manage all of their procurement, so that everything is ‘all in one place’.  In response to customer feedback, we have built out the software in a way that manufacturers can use it to manage all of their tasks. We have been testing this functionality with buyers and suppliers for the last 6 months, and we’re now ready to release it to the broader industry.

‍

‍

‍