Some of the answers that decide a supplier only live inside the supplier: real prices at your volumes, lead times, capacity, and certificates or sustainability data they don’t publish. Speya takes on the supplier conversations that get you those answers, and nothing goes out until you send it.

Every answer lands on the right supplier row, next to your research, so your list stays the one place where you compare and decide.

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Pick by where the answer lives:

Research narrows the list to credible candidates. An email gets you the answers that let you choose between them or close a gap, whether that’s a price or lead time, a compliance confirmation, or sustainability data for a supplier assessment. The most efficient pattern is to enrich first, then email only for the gaps.

Before your first email, choose where it’s sent from under Settings › Email account: connect your own Outlook or Gmail, or use Speya Mail, your workspace’s shared address.

Add your signature there too, and Speya includes it in every draft.

1. Type to Speya what to ask.

“Draft an RFI to the shortlisted suppliers. Ask whether they can supply [product, exact spec], their indicative price at [volume], and lead time.”

Speya adds the request as a step on your list, adds a contacts column and an Email column, finds any missing contacts, and selects every supplier shortlisted as the best fit for your case. It then writes a separate email for each supplier, addressed to their contact, so every supplier gets their own conversation and replies land on the right row.

The drafts collect in the Email column, and you can click any supplier there to see exactly how Speya wrote to them.

To pick recipients yourself, use Select suppliers in the table.

2. Check contacts where it matters. Speya sends to the primary contact for each supplier and prefers enquiry addresses such as sales@ or info@ over HR, careers, or press addresses, so you don’t need to check every row. If a primary contact looks like a support address, just open the contact list on the row and mark a sales contact as primary. A contact you add by hand becomes the primary contact by default.

3. Review the email drafts. Click Review and send to read the emails before you send. Speya writes the request as a template, and each supplier under Recipients gets their own copy. Click a supplier to read their copy, edit the text, or add people on Cc or Bcc.

To change a draft, click Ask Speya to edit and describe what you want. You can keep refining as many times as you need. A copy that has been changed is marked Edited, and Restore to template takes it back to the original draft.

While Speya is writing, Send stays greyed out, so nothing goes out half-written. Click Stop if you want to interrupt.

4. Attach any files. Use Attach files, the first button in the email toolbar, to add a spec sheet, drawing, or a form you want filled in. Attach a file from your computer, from Workspace files, or from your earlier chats.

5. Send. Send a single email, or send them all together in one round. Each supplier receives their own email from your connected mailbox or Speya Mail, so from the recipient’s side it reads as a direct one-to-one message, not a visible mass mailing.

Once you send, the Email column shows one status per supplier, coloured by whose turn it is: yours, Speya’s, or the supplier’s. Beside the status, Speya adds a short note, such as “Sent 4d ago”. Replies come back to the same place.

Choose the route by what you want to do:

Speya remembers every email you’ve drafted from the chat and sent, so you can send it to more suppliers from your list at any time. Click Draft email in a supplier’s Email column and choose Add from chat, or select several suppliers and choose Add Draft to send to all of them in one round. If a supplier has no contact yet, Speya finds their email address automatically. Suppliers an email already reached are skipped, and Speya tells you how many, so nobody gets the same email twice.

You can read and answer replies in two places: from your supplier list, or from Notifications. Either way, the conversation opens in the supplier panel on the right.

Click the email status in a supplier’s Email column. The supplier panel opens on the right at the latest reply. The panel gathers every email thread with that supplier, together with monitor updates and an overview of your research.

Notifications in the sidebar collects all your ongoing conversations and the monitors that have updates. Switch between your own mail and your team’s mail, and use the folders to see replies in Inbox, the emails you’ve sent in Sent, drafts not yet sent in Drafts, and monitor updates in Monitor.

Click any email conversation and it opens in the supplier panel on the right, the same as from your list.

Speya reads each reply and summarises what the supplier said, so you don’t need to read through a long reply. What happens next depends on the reply:

Either way, nothing goes out until you send it. To change a draft, type @Speya in the email or click Use @Speya, and describe the adjustment. Reply, Reply all, and the To, Cc, and Bcc fields work as in any inbox, and your answer goes out from the mailbox the conversation started from.

Speya also writes the answers into your columns, wherever a matching column exists. A price lands in the price column, a certification in the certification column, and the cell cites the supplier’s email, with a link that opens it.

Get a summary by email

Speya emails you a summary of new supplier replies and monitor updates, every Monday at 07:00 by default, with a link back into Speya. To change how often, click Notification settings at the top of Notifications and choose Weekly, Daily, As it happens, or Off. The setting applies to your own account user.

Every conversation has a status, so you see what needs your attention without opening each one. Speya sets the status for you: it reads each reply as it arrives, works out what kind of answer it is, and explains how it read it in a grey box under the email.

In Notifications, the statuses are listed under Labels in the sidebar, with a count for each. Click a label to see only those conversations.

Speya has written an email that’s ready for you to review and send, either a first email or a reply to the supplier. Click it to open the draft. In Notifications, drafts collect in the Drafts folder.

Your email has gone out, and you’re waiting for the supplier to reply.

Speya needs you to confirm something or make a decision before it can write your reply. It asks you in the conversation, with answer options to pick from.

The contact is away. Speya reminds you to pick up the thread when they’re back.

The conversation is on hold, for example after the supplier asks to be removed from your mailing list, or when there’s no working address. Nothing more goes out until you click Resume engagement. Speya then drafts a follow-up that suggests a way forward, such as continuing at another address, for you to review.

The email bounced, for example because the address doesn’t exist. Speya asks you how to continue, and you can pick another contact from the supplier’s contact list to send to instead. If none of them fits, Speya can write to a general address and ask for the right person in a specific role, such as sales or quality. You can also click Fix address to correct the address yourself, or tell Speya to pause or skip the supplier.

The supplier has declined, for example because they have no capacity, or you’ve asked Speya to skip them. When a supplier declines, Speya also drafts a polite closing reply for you to review.

When a supplier doesn’t reply, Speya prepares a follow-up 3 business days after your email and again 5 business days later. When the contact is out of office, Speya reminds you to pick up the thread when they’re back. Each follow-up is a draft for you to review. The conversation shows when it’s due, and you can cancel it there.

Mark conversations as important. To flag conversations yourself, select them in Notifications and click Mark as important. You can mark a single thread or every thread with a supplier. Marked conversations get a yellow Important tag and collect under Labels, so you find them again quickly.

Your outreach round is done when the suppliers that matter have replied and their answers are sitting in your columns. At that point the decision-relevant data, both what you researched publicly and what the suppliers told you, is on one list in one view. From here you can ask Speya to shortlist your top suppliers with reasoning, or open a follow-up round with the ones still worth a conversation.

You can also have Speya create or update an executive summary for the project, or complement an existing Excel evaluation model with your real sourcing data. See How to create a Spreadsheet.

To keep your chosen suppliers tracked for changes over time, see How to import and track suppliers with Monitor.

Every prompt here is something you type to Speya. They’re grouped by what you’re asking suppliers for, with a description of what each does.
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Do the emails come from my email address?
Yes, if you connect your own Outlook or Gmail under Settings › Email account. Your emails then go out from your mailbox. Every incoming reply is also saved in your mail client, so your organisation keeps its own copy. Without a connected mailbox, emails go out from Speya Mail, your workspace’s shared address, and replies land in Speya only, not in your own inbox.

How many suppliers can I email at once?
Up to 50 in one batch. To reach more suppliers, select the next 50 and send another batch. You can reuse the same email for every round. If you send from your own Gmail or Outlook, your provider’s daily sending limits also apply.

What if I correct an address after the email is drafted?
The email goes to the corrected address. If a send is retried, the supplier still only receives it once.

How do I know when a supplier has replied?
Speya emails you a summary of new replies and monitor updates with direct links, every Monday at 07:00 by default. Under Notification settings, choose Daily or As it happens to hear sooner, or Off to stop the emails. In your list, click the email status in the supplier’s Email column to go straight to their latest reply.

Where do I see all my supplier conversations in one place?
Open Notifications in the sidebar. It collects every ongoing conversation, with Inbox, Sent, and Drafts folders, and shows your own mail and your team’s mail.

Do the replies update my list automatically?
Yes, wherever a matching column exists. Speya updates the enrichment column based on what the email says and adds a direct link to the email conversation, where the information and its evidence live. Create the columns you want to collect before you send, because anything without a column stays in the thread.

There’s already a reply written under the supplier’s message. Did I send it?
No. When Speya has what it needs, it drafts your answer so you can send it in one click. To send something different, edit it, type @Speya in the email to have it rewritten, or remove it and write your own.

Can I export all the replies to Word or Excel?
No, and it isn’t meant to. Instead of a pile of emails, each answer is written into the matching column on the supplier’s row, so your list is the consolidated view. If you connected your own Outlook or Gmail, every incoming email is also saved in your mail client.

Can I bring the suppliers I emailed to the top of the list?
Yes, sort on the Email column and the emailed suppliers move to the top. To keep specific favourites at the top, pin them by right-clicking the supplier’s name. In Notifications, you can also mark a conversation as important. It stays in place but gets a yellow Important tag.

Does Speya follow up with suppliers who don’t reply?
Yes. Speya prepares a follow-up draft 3 business days after your email and again 5 business days later. Each follow-up waits for you to send it, and you can cancel it from the conversation. To nudge suppliers sooner, select or name them and ask Speya to draft a follow-up.

Can I copy colleagues on an email?
Yes. To, Cc, and Bcc work as in any inbox. Only you set Cc and Bcc, Speya never adds anyone there.

Why are so many of my “replies” just auto-acknowledgements or support tickets?
Two common causes. The contact may be a general or support address, so mark a sales contact as primary for the suppliers you care about. And emails sent from Speya Mail, the shared workspace address, can reach suppliers less reliably than your own work email, so connect your Outlook or Gmail under Settings › Email account.