Software product management platform startup Craft.io Ltd. has topped up its bank balance to the tune of $8 million after closing on a new round of funding.

The Series A round was led by JAL Ventures and included new investor Fosun RZ Capital as well as existing investors Inimiti and Ron Zuckerman.

Craft.io’s digital product management platform puts collaboration at the forefront and allows software design teams to communicate easily at any point on a product’s roadmap, from the earliest stages of discovery to the time it gets into the hands of users. One of the advantages of Craft.io is it allows companies to keep all of their product data in one place, informing product intelligence and making that information accessible to anyone within an organizations.

Craft.io Chief Executive Elad Simon told SiliconANGLE that the platform is uniquely focused on developing software, unlike platforms such as Jira, Monday and Wrike, which he said are more general-purpose product design and management tools. He said that although those tools are often used in software design, “they lack the specialty of being dedicated to a single use case in terms of the product depth and focus.”

Simon says a specialized tool could be useful for many organizations because these days every enterprise also has to be a software company, with the need to build digital tools for managing supply chains and mobile apps for customer engagement, for example. To emphasize that point, Craft.io notes that one of its biggest customers, the toilet paper manufacturer Kimberly-Clark Corp., actually has more software developers than Netflix Inc.

The CEO added that Craft.io’s platform is built with a focus on product managers themselves, as they play the most critical role in defining which software tools should be built and prioritized, and overseeing their development. One of the key components of the platform is a product layer, called “Guru,” that allows users to apply and leverage product management best practices with a single click. So, if a user wants to adopt a specific prioritization model such as “Weighted Shortest Job First,” she can simply go to Guru Views, select WSFJ and the system will create a dedicated WSFJ board and add all the relevant fields.

“Doing this gives users the experience of Excel with the knowledge of product management and seamless integration with downstream development tools such as Jira,” Simon explained. “Guru basically makes you better at being a product manager, just by using Craft.io.”

The proof is always in the pudding, though, and Craft.io insists its platform has proven itself popular, with the likes of Cisco Systems Inc., SAP SE and Danone S.A. also counted among its customers.

Simon said digital product managers have become pivotal in every kind of organization and can benefit from using specialized tools to do their jobs.

“This latest investment will help us advance our mission of enabling every organization to embrace product management methodologies and reap the benefits,” Simon said. “By empowering product managers with a unified platform for all of their work and data, and delivering insights at scale, we are providing a collaborative space where the entire company can rally around the goal of creating better software.”

Craft.io’s next steps will be to expand its go-to-market operation and develop more machine learning-powered decision tools to assist product management teams.

Image: Craft.io