Speya works on the suppliers you already have with the same precision it brings to new ones, and at a scale manual review can't match. Ask a question once and it researches every supplier at the same time, surfacing what's easy to miss reading company websites or checking external compliance lists one supplier at a time: an NGO report naming a subcontractor, a legal case that never made headlines, a credit rating that's quietly slipping. Every answer comes from a source you can check, in a consistent format across your whole list, so you can compare suppliers fairly and monitoring can catch it the moment something changes.
If you are looking for new suppliers rather than working with ones you already have, see Sourcing new suppliers with Speya Auto.
This guide walks you through bringing your base in, deciding what to track, and where to go for the details.
In this article
Why bring your existing base in
Start with your list
Decide what to track
After your first results
FAQ
Why bring your existing base in
Screening a base against a framework: certifications, sanctions, financial health, whatever your policy requires.
Understanding the environment your suppliers operate in: country conditions, regulatory exposure, logistics dependencies, cost pressures. These affect a supplier without being about the supplier itself.
Benchmarking what you have against alternatives in the market, so you're not walking into a renewal or a negotiation with only your current supplier's numbers.
Monitoring for change, both what's happening with the suppliers you already have and what's appearing in the market that you don't have yet.
Cleaning up supplier data that's gone stale: dead links, holding companies instead of the operating entity, missing basics.
Speya researches from what's publicly available, the same way it does for new candidates.
Start with your list
Bring your suppliers in two ways: upload an Excel or CSV file for a full list, or add a handful of known names directly in chat. Either way, they land in a list that behaves exactly like a search result, so everything below applies the same way regardless of how they got there.
See How to import your existing suppliers for the full import walkthrough.
Decide the scope first. Bring in your whole base, a single category, or just the strategic partners you want to look at closely. The method is identical either way, you're only changing who the questions apply to.
Action: if you don't have website URLs for every supplier, bring them in anyway and ask Speya to fill in the URLs as an enrichment. A missing URL just add one more step later, it doesn't block the import.
Once your suppliers are in, Speya can research almost anything about them, in whatever shape suits the question:
Reasoned research for open questions there's no single fact for, like how exposed a supplier is to a cost pressure or a market shift.
Verification against a hard requirement for the yes or no checks a policy or a framework demands, like a certification or a sanctions status.
Adverse media and controversy checks, surfacing negative coverage you'd otherwise only catch by chance.
Scores and scales for anything you want to compare across suppliers at a glance: a risk level, a fit score, a similarity ranking against a reference supplier.
Trends over time for anything worth tracking as it develops, so you see the direction, not just the current state.
This is a glimpse of what's possible, not the full method.
Decide what to track
You do not need to know exactly what to check before you start. Ask a broad question, see what Speya researches, and refine it once you see what comes back.
A thin question: | A better one: |
"Check for corruption issues." | "Has this company had any investigations, charges, or convictions for corruption or bribery, involving the company, its owners, or its leadership? Answer yes or no, with the event, date, and source if yes."
|
The second version gives Speya the shape of what a good answer looks like. The first gives it a keyword, and Speya still returns something to react to. Either way, Speya researches each question across every supplier at once, with a source behind every answer, and asks before it commits to anything ambiguous.
For the full method, including how to frame a question well, read the kind of answer you get, and improve a result that's close but not quite right, see Researching your existing supplier base.
After your first results
Once you have answers across your base, there are three directions to go.
Reach out to suppliers to complement what's missing. If something you need for an audit or a disclosure isn't publicly available, ask the suppliers with a gap directly. Select them and ask Speya to draft outreach requesting exactly what's missing. Replies come back into the same list. See How to send emails with RFx.
Monitor for changes and updates. Set a schedule and Speya tells you when something moves, whether that's a certificate lapsing on a supplier you already track, or a new supplier appearing that matches criteria you've set. See How to monitor suppliers for change.
Share your findings. Export the list to share with people outside the platform, or build a spreadsheet you can keep updating from Speya, so what you learn becomes a data point for future analysis or decisions about a supplier or a product focus. Speya re-checks on a schedule and tells you only when something genuinely changed, whether that's a certificate lapsing on a supplier you already track, or a new supplier appearing that matches criteria you've set. See How to create a Spreadsheet.
FAQ
Can I ask about one supplier, one category, or my whole base the same way?
Yes. The method is the same regardless of scope, just say who the question is about.
Do I need to decide everything to track before I start?
No. Start with one question, see what comes back, and add more as you go. See [Researching your existing supplier base] for how to refine a question that's close but not quite right.
How much of my base can I bring in at once?
Upload handles a full list at once. Adding suppliers by name in chat works best for a handful at a time, up to around 20. See [How to import your existing suppliers].
Can I use this to find new suppliers, not just work with ones I already have?
No. This workflow is for suppliers you already work with. To find and qualify new suppliers, see How to run a sourcing case with Speya Auto or How to find new suppliers with Discovery.