San Carlos, CA December 10, 2002 Solutions provider diCarta today rolled out the latest version of its flagship contract management application, adding features to help companies track and meet their contractual obligations, a dashboard for contract pros and a new tool for creating templates.
The provider also announced the appointments of a vice president of worldwide sales and service and a vice president of marketing and business development, part of a shift in the company's focus from being a technology company to being a sales and marketing-driven organization.
diCarta said its Contracts 3.1, a follow-up to the 3.0 version released in July, provides new obligation management capabilities, enhanced controls and increased visibility for contract intensive enterprises.
The new Obligations Manager is intended to ensure that companies follow up on commitments and critical contract dates for their multitude of contracts. The software "captures" the key dates at the time a contract is authored and then triggers notifications to specified enterprise systems or personnel when action becomes necessary.
To provide additional control throughout the contract lifecycle, a contracting professional's dashboard now gives users a "heads-up" view of all pending tasks and contracts in progress. The idea is to provide contract pros with "fingertip" access into a company's shared, centralized repository of contracts as well as their own virtual filing cabinet of contracts. diCarta believes this feature could be particularly useful for companies with large volumes of contracts to manage.
Finally, diCarta said its new template editor simplifies the creation of templates, clause libraries, alternate language options and embedded business terms that drive external business processes. Company staff can then dip into a library of these templates to more rapidly create standardized contracts that meet corporate requirements, according to the solution provider.
"Our customers like Kraft, Aetna, NBC and McKinsey are looking to manage exceptionally large numbers of contracts and make sure that no obligations fall between the cracks," said diCarta President and CEO Mike Kaul. "With diCarta Contracts 3.1, we address the risk mitigation, profitability, and adoption needs of these companies which recognize that contract management is a critical component of a successful business."
In addition to the solution update, diCarta also announced the hiring of two senior sales executives. Former Interwoven executive David Cassady joined diCarta as vice president of worldwide sales and services, and former Netscape executive Ammiel Kamon came aboard as vice president of marketing and business development.
Commenting on the appointments, Kaul said that diCarta was transitioning from being a technology company to being more of a sales and marketing company. "Throughout this year we've focused on making our customers very successful on a rock-solid, mature enterprise product," said Kaul. "Now, heading into 2003, we are scaling up our go-to-market capabilities."
Cassady brings 19 years of enterprise sales experience to the company. Prior to joining diCarta, Cassady was vice president of Americas sales at Interwoven, and he previously held senior sales positions at Internet Security Systems, Network Associates and Amdahl.
Kamon is a former vice president with Netscape Communications, where he built Netscape's e-procurement and supplier relations business unit. During his five years with Netscape he also served as director of marketing for an e-commerce applications line and director of technology. Prior to Netscape, Kamon spent five years with Oracle Consulting, where he was practice director of the massively parallel consulting group.
The upgrade and appointments are just the latest signs that diCarta is looking to build momentum heading into 2003. The company named Kaul, a former Oracle vice president, to head the company in June and raised an additional $19.5 million in funding that same month. In November, diCarta moved to a new headquarters, more than doubling the size of its facilities to accommodate the company's growth.
Kaul said diCarta remains, to some extent, in "missionary mode," evangelizing the value of automating contracts management. On the other hand, he noted that diCarta has seen an increase in interest in contracts management in the marketplace. "We're getting phone calls coming our way, which is a nice treat," he said.
For more information on contract management automation, see the article "Digging Out from the Contract Clutter" in the January 2002 issue of iSource Business.
