How it works
From a question to answers you can use.
An afternoon of your time to set up, about two weeks to hear back, and findings at the end that you can put in front of a committee.
Start
Say what you want to know
Your part: A few sentences, in your own words.
Describe what you are buying or deciding, and what you are unsure about. Add any documents you already have, such as a draft specification or last year's review.
Soundings reads them. What they already tell you, the interviewer will not ask suppliers again, and anything worth knowing before you start is pointed out to you.
Draft
Check the questions
Your part: Read it through, change what you like.
Soundings drafts the whole thing: what you want to learn, and the questions that get at it. Rewrite any of it yourself, or ask the assistant beside it to make a change for you.
Say what is off limits, such as the budget or the scoring, and the interviewer will neither confirm nor deny it. Then try the interview yourself, exactly as a supplier will meet it.
Audience
Choose who to ask
Your part: Accept the suggestion, or bring your own list.
Soundings suggests who to invite from what you are buying: the firms that supply it, and the ones you might not have thought of. They come from our panel of UK suppliers, built from Companies House and public registers.
Or add your own contacts, or share an open link. Anyone who has opted out is kept out automatically.
Launch
Invitations go out
Your part: One click.
Invitations are sent in your organisation's name, with reminders, and say plainly who sent them and why. Every link leads to a page where a supplier can check the email is genuine.
Interviews
Every supplier is interviewed
Your part: Nothing. Carry on with your week.
Our AI interviewer spends about 15 minutes with each supplier, by voice or by typing, on a phone or at a desk, whenever suits them. It has read your brief and knows what is already on file about the firm, so it does not ask what you already know.
Where a questionnaire would take the first answer and move on, it follows up when an answer is thin, and asks again, another way, when a question was not really answered. Every firm gets the same core questions; only the follow-ups differ.
A supplier can stop and come back later, leave a question for the end, or mark anything confidential so it is never quoted. Nothing they say is scored.
Findings
Read what the market told you
Your part: Read, question, share.
Findings are written up under each of the things you set out to learn, with the surprises called out separately. Every figure opens the answers behind it, and every answer opens the conversation it came from.
Ask follow-up questions in plain English and get answers drawn only from what suppliers said. Download the findings or share them with colleagues. Over time, you can ask across every sounding you have run.
Afterwards
A record you can stand behind
Your part: Keep it for as long as you need it.
Who was invited, who read which conversation, who changed what: all of it is logged, and the log cannot be edited. If a procurement is challenged, that is your answer.
Recordings and transcripts are deleted after the period your organisation sets, between six and sixty months.
Bring us the question you can't answer from a desk.
We will show you a finished sounding and set up your first one with you.