Buying guide
Questions to resolve before a chemical margin pilot
A credible pilot starts with one bounded commercial decision path, named source evidence, a responsible business owner, an agreed measurement baseline, explicit human approvals, and an exit plan. Northra should not be selected on promises of autonomous action, guaranteed recovery, or replacing the systems that remain the source of record.
- Content owner
- Northra
- Last reviewed
- 2026-08-03
Evaluation checklist
Twelve questions for a cross-functional buying team
What data is required?
The minimum depends on the chosen use case. It normally includes scoped product and account identifiers, relevant price or transaction facts, the applicable contracts or approved clause fields, and the agreed market or cost evidence. A pilot should name required and optional inputs before transfer and should expose gaps rather than broadening access silently.
Does Northra replace ERP, CRM, market-data, BI, or pricing systems?
No. Northra is designed as an insight and action overlay. Source systems remain authoritative for transactions, contracts, customer records, and licensed market observations; Northra connects governed context and preserves the decision trail.
How are contract terms supported?
The relevant signed document and version remain the source. Extracted fields must retain their source location and confirmation state. Ambiguous, conflicting, or incomplete terms route to human review and cannot silently become an eligible pricing action.
Who curates product and feedstock dependencies?
Northra can organize proposed relationships and supporting evidence, but the customer-designated domain owner confirms the relationships that affect commercial decisions. Unconfirmed links remain visibly unconfirmed.
What authority does AI have?
AI may assist mapping suggestions, summaries, explanations, and rationale drafting within approved data boundaries. It does not confirm contract facts, approve a recommendation, export a customer action, write back to a source system, or validate realized value.
How is value measured?
The pilot defines a comparison basis, scope, period, currency, source versions, calculation method, and realization evidence before reporting value. Identified, eligible, approved, implemented, accepted, and realized amounts remain separate states.
How is double counting prevented?
Each realized effect needs an agreed attribution rule and a reference to the action, period, affected records, and evidence used. Overlapping actions or periods must be reconciled before value is included in the recovery ledger.
What happens when evidence is incomplete?
The result becomes unavailable, ineligible, or needs review according to the missing evidence. Northra should show the gap and responsible next step rather than filling a material commercial field with an unsupported estimate.
Who owns implementation?
Northra owns the agreed product configuration and delivery work. Customer owners remain responsible for source access, domain confirmation, commercial decisions, legal interpretation where required, and approval of customer-impacting actions. Exact responsibilities belong in the pilot agreement.
How long does a pilot take?
Timing depends on data readiness, contract availability, scope, security review, and owner capacity. The public site should not guarantee a duration. A working session can establish the sequence and evidence needed for a realistic plan.
How does security review begin?
Start with the public trust center, then identify customer-specific hosting, residency, processor, access, retention, and evidence requirements. Private architecture or contract artifacts follow the appropriate review path rather than being published openly.
What happens at pilot exit?
The parties agree the data-return, export, retention, and destruction responsibilities by data class. Customer-specific commitments are contractual; the public site does not replace them. Critical decision artifacts should remain exportable in the agreed format.
Sources and boundaries
Public references used on this page
- Northra trust center
Northra. Public operating boundaries for source traceability, data handling, bounded AI, and human authority.
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