DiCarta Upgrades Contract-Management Offering

Contract-management vendor diCarta Inc. on Wednesday launched a new version of its software designed to help companies manage all the stages of their contracts.

DiCarta Contracts Version 4 includes new functionality that lets users edit contracts in Microsoft Word without compromising any part of the contract or losing any of the control, management, and business-intelligence features that are part of the diCarta system.

The new version also features an Executive Dashboard that gives senior managers and execs a bird's-eye view of metrics such as contract productivity and the amount of money tied up in contracts. An Auditor's Workbench lets auditors check for contracts that may deviate from company policy and more easily check for compliance to federal and industry-specific regulatory compliance.

Contract management is a burgeoning market that's gaining traction. Gartner estimates the market will be worth more than $20 billion in software and services by 2007. The diCarta software is designed to help companies better-manage contracts and lower the associated costs.

"We think of contract management as addressing the full life cycle of a contract," says Mike Kaul, president and CEO of diCarta, a Silicon Valley startup that's raised $54 million since its founding in 1998.

DiCarta now has more than 11,000 users of its software at such companies as Aetna, Kraft Foods, and NBC, according to Kaul. And contract-management software has evolved from the kind of application that only a few users access for brief periods to an app that numerous people use several hours a day across an organization. "The good news is that there are now a lot of customers using contract management. But that means the software has to be useable," Kaul says. "The theme of version 4 is adoptability."