In 2007, Balu Sharma unveiled his answer to a fragmented landscape of supplier relationship management tools. Sharma founded SaaS-based SupplierSoft with a plan to give manufacturers one master system for product quality management, purchase order automation, invoice and payment visibility, and environmental compliance.

Since the company’s launch, its SupplierSoft Platform, with modules for Product Compliance Management, Supplier Audits Management, and Supplier Risk and Qualification Management, has attracted the investment dollars of some marquee manufacturers, including semiconductor equipment maker KLA-Tencor and high-tech standout Novatel Wireless.

Meant to replace a sometimes dizzying array of spreadsheets and e-mails for tracking supplier activities, the SupplierSoft offering is built on Salesforce.com’s Force.com platform and delivered as a Web-based solution that customers pay for by yearly or month-to-month subscriptions.

Novatel called on the start-up to help manage its relationships with two contract manufacturers in Asia, where all of Novatel’s 3G data modems are produced. As a global company, says Jose Alatorre, senior director of quality and post-sales at Novatel, “different regulations,” including REACH, RoHS, and others, “impact us, and we have to demonstrate compliance with these.”

Thus, before SupplierSoft, Alatorre’s employees had to ensure that the bill of materials for every new product included only compliant parts, a process that demanded tedious e-mail interactions with the contract manufacturers and manual data entry of the material declarations that Novatel needed for every new part.

The SupplierSoft system brought valuable automation to the process, Alatorre says. “As soon as we load a product BOM, [the system] will validate if any of those part numbers have material declarations against them.” If a declaration has not been filed, the software automatically e-mails a request to the supplier. When the supplier replies with the information, it is transferred into Novatel’s back-end system without user intervention. “Just from a resource perspective, I would venture to say that 50% of my workforce will be freed up to do other activities,” Alatorre says.

SupplierSoft’s early focus has been on the high-tech industry, but Sharma says target sectors include medical devices, pharmaceuticals, and industrial manufacturing. And he hopes SupplierSoft’s connection to Salesforce.com might help grow the SupplierSoft customer base, which now numbers fewer than 10. The two companies are discussing the possibility of some cross-selling, Sharma says, though an agreement has not been formalized.

“We want to build a profitable company,” Sharma says, and then seek venture capital — without selling an 80% stake, he adds.

Data Points

Year founded: 2007