First, there is equipment and techniques.

Perhaps the biggest and most important is distillation; it was perhaps known of
before alchemists, but they (in conjunction with physicians) used and expanded it
and used it to spread knowledge of distilled spirits of wine etc, and through their
experimenting discovered mineral acids, made by distillation.
The mineral acids are useful in testing and producing pure gold and silver and of
course the concepts of acids and alkalis was to play some part in the formation of
chemistry as a separate discipline.
Alchemists in general were responsible for using and passing on all the general
techniques of chemistry, from solution, calcination ,distillation, cohobation,
coagulation et, without which the chymists and early chemists would have had a
much harder time in the 17th and 18th centuries. Because of the alchemists they
had these techniques and a vast array of substances ready and waiting to be used.
These varied from ammonium chloride to various minerals, acids, mercuric chloride,
oxides of metals etc.
There is also the harder to estimate expertise associated with manipulating matter,
which accumulates with practise and which can be passed on in the way of better
furnace designs, the types of crucibles to be used etc. Of course the latter is also
where artisans work and alchemists work overlaps. For instance, alchemists and
goldsmiths were interested in proportions of matter, e.g. of how much silver or lead
was in this gold coin. They were both interested in weighing and the earliest
illustration of a balance in a glass case to allow accurate measurement is in a late
15th century alchemical manuscript.
Furnaces and heat were important too, in a more detailed way than to the normal
artisan. Alchemists probably helped invent all sorts of useful and not so useful
furnaces, and their activities provided the seed or source of various more modern
methods of heating used by the early scientists.
The second category was ideas about how the world worked. That is what makes it
alchemy, the tying together of practical work with a philosophy of matter, of how
and why things worked, rather than the artisanal I do this, it melts and changes
colour and I cast it into the mould, I dont need to know how and why it does it.

Which is a bit unfair to artisans, some of whom were alchemists and many of whom
must have had their own ideas about how things worked, but because they didnt
write them down or communicate with others and discuss things like that, we dont
really know what they thought.
The alchemists inherited the standard ideas of how the world works of their period,
but they discussed them a lot and their variation and how it explained what they
observed. For instance the author of the Summa Perfectionis, a 13th century
alchemical book, explained the meltings and reactions he saw by means of an early
form of corpuscular theory, and other alchemists elaborated upon the four elements
theory. A corpuscular theory is, roughly, where everything was made up of little bits
of stuff which interacted with each other, and it was important in proto-scientific
discussions in the 16/17th centuries.
The alchemists argued about what things were, how they worked etc, and following
on from medieval natural philosophy, looked to experiments to demonstrate which
view was correct.
Again, without alchemists, the chymists would have had to invent it all themselves,
thus retarding the growth of science by a century or two.
Alchemists contributed to an incredible number of future uses of chemicals:
metalworking, inks, paints, and cosmetics, and the preparation of extracts and
liquors. It was alchemists who first figured out how to isolate zinc and phosphorus. A
German alchemist developed a porcelain material. Its creation broke Chinas
centuries-old control over one of the worlds most valuable products. These
contributions proved valuable to the societies in which alchemists lived. And they
advanced civilization.