A Barrington-based startup company developing software for small businesses will unveil itself this week at a prestigious biannual conference known for offering the world a first look at innovative new technologies.

BatchBlue Software LLC is developing and marketing software for small businesses that have limited IT budgets and staff and need easy-to-use, flexible software solutions to manage their businesses, said Pamela O’Hara, BatchBlue’s president.

“A lot of small businesses are just not embracing technology the way they should,” O’Hara said “Technology should be leveling the playing field for them, but in a lot of ways you have to have a full-blown IT department and a lot of money to spend on customizations and integrations and third-party vendors setting up and maintaining your software before you can reap the benefits. What we’re saying is, it shouldn’t be so hard for small businesses to take advantage of some of this stuff.”

O’Hara is a veteran of the IT industry who worked for a series of Web developers and co-founded a successful IT company before moving with her husband to Rhode Island from Washington, D.C., in 2001.

She got the idea to start BatchBlue last year while doing consulting work for a local online publishing firm struggling with a customer relationship management software system that was unable to do what the company needed.

“I said, you know, there should be a way to do that,” O’Hara recalled. “There should be an inexpensive way for you to track more than just what the standard offerings are tracking – whether it’s CRM software, there is supplier management software, there is accounting software, but none of these things are working together to allow you to customize them out toward your business.”

O’Hara started BatchBlue with Sean Ransom, the company’s vice president of technology; Riley Lynch, its senior software architect; Adam Darowski, its user experience designer; Michelle Riggen-Ransom, the company’s communications director; and Keri Calhoun, its operations manager.

Aside from O’Hara, all of BatchBlue’s employees are former colleagues at Amazon.com, where Ransom and Lynch worked as senior programmers.

The team has been working out of their homes and at coffee shops for several months, and has developed a private beta product that is already being used by a number of small businesses, including a boutique international travel company, a garden design shop and a local handbag maker, O’Hara said.

BatchBlue plans to market its software products primarily to “Web-savvy, wired and mobile small businesses” with 25 or fewer employees, she said.

“These are people who do not have large sales forces, so that type of software is really just overwhelming, when you open up your software and you have about 25 choices for managing your sales leads and you maybe have one sales rep working for you,” O’Hara said. “Our software lets people really build out the types of information they’re collecting about their customers and about their suppliers in whatever way is meaningful to them.”

This week, BatchBlue will formally launch itself when it unveils a public beta product at DEMOfall 07, a conference occurring Sept. 24 to Sept. 26 in San Diego which O’Hara described as “an industry giant in the world of launching pad conferences, the place to see about new companies and new product launches.”

The conference’s organizers chose to showcase BatchBlue as one of 70 new companies and products that will be featured following a comprehensive interview and review process of more than 700 applicants, O’Hara said.

“We get to wear sort of a badge of honor that we’ve been through their rigorous scrutiny and we are doing something a little different,” she said.

“I think that’s their mantra, is they’re trying to find the companies not necessarily with some groundbreaking technology, but somebody who’s going to help a market shift in one direction or another or help bring a whole new thought to some sort of process that’s happening in the technology.” •