The Challenge
Before Syntro, RFQs took the team 60+ hours end-to-end, across manually exporting CSVs from their PLM (Arena), identifying suppliers, and pulling drawings manually from a shared folder, all to draft individual supplier emails.
Comparing bids meant searching for data scattered across engineering, ops, and finance, and sometimes required re-quoting vendors when internal numbers were not aligned. It took hours to review multi-line quotes, accurately cost, and manually re-key data across systems for each of the ~900 made-to-spec parts in a typical order. With engineering iterations resulting in rapid BOM churn, spec changes often didn’t reach procurement in time, resulting in expensive wrong-rev orders.
We go out and send emails like it’s the 1990s to 15-20 suppliers...doing this by hand across a thousand parts is inviting mistakes.
AlexOperations, HyphenAlex built his own tool for a searchable quote history, but hit three blockers: multi-part and multi-level supplier quotes arrived in too many diverse formats to parse reliably, integrations to Alex’s inbox and ERP were too complex for him to implement himself, and he simply didn’t have the bandwidth to maintain or scale it. When he saw Syntro, he instantly recognized the value of a pre-configured product purpose-built for hardware manufacturing that would go live in less than 72 hours.
What Syntro Delivered
Today, Syntro drafts and sends multi-vendor RFQs directly from Alex’s inbox, normalizes every reply into one apples-to-apples comparison, writes the awarded PO straight to ERP, and flags component shortages before they stall a build. Syntro also tracks every BOM for design revisions to ensure every outstanding sourcing event is up-to-date.
A full machine sourced in hours, not weeks
Sourcing full BOMs, from starting RFQs through comparison to issuing POs, went from 60 to 6 hours.
~10% lower cost on made-to-spec parts
Because Alex can now quote across 5 times the suppliers in a fraction of the time, he cut made-to-spec part costs by 10%.
Missing quotes caught in seconds, not minutes
When a supplier quoted only 7 of 8 requested parts, Syntro flagged the gap instantly, turning a 30-minute line-by-line check into a 30-second one.
~50% less PO admin time
Automatically writing awarded POs into the ERP, emailing chosen and declined suppliers, and tracking follow ups and acknowledgements cut Alex’s admin time by 50%.
New BOM costing streamlined
With historical purchase and quote history tied to every BOM line item, Alex is able to cost new BOMs faster and more accurately. Syntro supplements this with external data, including off-the-shelf part pricing, in a single pane of glass.
One system of record, no more tribal knowledge
100% of supplier activity now lives in one shared system instead of a personal inbox. Syntro mapped quoting and purchase history to every BOM line item to streamline new BOM costing.
Syntro allows us to more accurately order things from the right suppliers more quickly, so we can save money, get higher quality, and plan more effectively. I get back valuable time to focus on strategic problems: improving the product, managing the team, actually building.
AlexOperations, Hyphen
What’s Next
Syntro delivered for Hyphen across our four-S value framework. A two-person operation now runs sourcing at the scale of a much larger one (Scale), sources a full machine in days instead of weeks (Speed), and recovers valuable hours that used to disappear to admin (Savings), all with no system to stand up or rip out (Setup). With the core loop live, Hyphen and Syntro are extending it to cover additional areas of the BOM-to-PO workflow.
Sourcing a full machine used to take 60 hours. With Syntro, it’s 6 and we were able to cut part costs by testing new suppliers we would have overlooked in the past.
DanielCo-Founder & CTO, Hyphen