Count the emails on your last RFQ. Not the quote — just getting to it.
The typical sequence: the RFQ goes out. Two days later you follow up. They reply asking for the drawing, which was attached but got stripped by their mail filter. You resend it in another format. They quote in the body of an email, with no lead time. You ask for the lead time. They reply.
Six messages, four days, and you still have to retype the quote to compare it.
Where each of those emails comes from
Look at what each message was for and a pattern appears:
The follow-up existed because you couldn't tell whether they'd seen it.
The drawing request existed because attachments are unreliable and there's nowhere else for the file to live.
The missing lead time existed because nothing told them which fields you needed — they wrote what they usually write.
The retyping existed because their format isn't your format and never will be.
None of those are failures of effort. They're consequences of using a medium that carries text and files but no structure and no state.
What a link changes
Send one link instead. The supplier opens it and sees the part, the quantity, the drawing, the date you need, and a form with the fields you need answered.
Four things follow:
The drawing is at the link, not in the attachment. It doesn't get stripped, doesn't get too big, and doesn't need resending in another format.
They can't submit a quote missing your fields. Lead time isn't forgotten, because the form asks for it.
You can see whether it's been opened. That single fact turns "chase everyone" into "chase the one who hasn't looked" — a smaller job, and a much less annoying email to receive.
Every quote comes back in the same shape. Comparison stops being data entry.
The objection, taken seriously
"My suppliers won't use a portal."
Often true, and worth being precise about why: they won't create an account, remember a password, and log in to quote a job they might not win. That's a real cost you'd be pushing onto them, and the busiest suppliers — the good ones — will push back hardest.
What works is the version where the link is the access. They click, they see the RFQ, they quote. No account, no password, nothing to remember. If an account appears at all, it happens after they've quoted and it's for their benefit, not a gate before it.
If a supplier still refuses, that's fine — email them the RFQ and enter their quote yourself. One supplier out of five doing it the old way costs you a few minutes. It doesn't invalidate the other four.
What it doesn't fix
It won't make a slow supplier fast, and it won't get a shop that's at capacity to quote your job.
What it removes is the overhead that was never about supplier speed: the resends, the missing fields, the not knowing, the retyping. In most RFQ cycles that's the majority of the elapsed time — and unlike supplier capacity, it's entirely on your side of the line to fix.