Certinia (formerly FinancialForce) has appointed Rick Caccia as Chief Marketing Officer. He will report to President and CEO Scott Brown and joins the executive team. He will oversee brand and creative, product marketing, global communications, demand generation, digital marketing and marketing operations.
Update
Due to personal reasons, Caccia has now left Certinia.
Scott Brown, President and CEO of Certinia commented, “I couldn’t be more excited to welcome Rick to our executive team. Rick brings a depth of experience from his tenure at high-growth companies—both public and private—including Google Cloud, Palo Alto Networks and Exabeam. Rick’s expertise, insights and industry knowledge will be instrumental as Certinia propels into the next phase of growth.”
What is perhaps slightly unusual is that Caccia has been appointed after the huge rebranding exercise has begun. It is something that many CEOs would want a new CEO to lead. However, Caccia joins a firm without the legacy of FinancialForce and can focus on the Certinia Services-as-a-business, opportunity-to-renewal platform.
Who is Caccia
Caccia joins having spent most of his career in marketing and product management leadership positions, either at various cybersecurity firms or responsible for cybersecurity products. For the last year, he was SVP and CMO at Cortex and Unit42, Palo Alto security operations business. He was also CMO at Red Canary, Chronicle (a Google/Alphabet security firm), Exabeam and ArcSight. At ArcSight, he led the marketing function through an IPO and its HP acquisition. Caccia also worked in product management positions at Oracle (again security), Ajax, Cohera and NetDynamics.
Certinia offers a new challenge for Caccia. He has a new brand to build based on a company that has a successful history in the professional services sector. Much of the brand messaging has already been set by Brown, focusing on demonstrating how Certinia solutions can join the dots across different functions within services business to help create connected and high-functioning organisations.
Rick Caccia, CMO of Certinia, commented, “Certinia delivers clear outcomes for customers, driving out complexity and improving operational effectiveness. In addition to building great products with a relentless focus on customers, the company has built a great culture that I am proud to join.”
Why Certinia?
This is a question that Enterprise Times commonly asks new starters when interviewing them. Caccia provides a solid answer in a LinkedIn post, where he says,
“Why did I join Certinia? Because services make products work for customers, yet are often treated as a burden or a drag. I have worked in many successful product companies, and not one would have succeeded without services professionals making things work for customers.
“The tech industry spent decades building tools to make the development process faster and more effective — the way teams build their products today is nothing like it was when I started my career. And yet, when ProServ teams roll in to make the solutions work and the customers happy, those teams and projects are managed very much like they were when I started my career: on spreadsheets, manually, using random tools…all producing higher costs, lower performance, and services being seen as an anchor instead of an engine.
“I was blown away by the Certinia platform, and am excited to join the team that is making the services part of business dramatically more productive and successful. We are bringing certainty to the business of services, and that sounds like a worthy mission to me.
“Can’t wait to work with Scott Brown, Deb Ashton, Ravi Narula, Heather Gille, Daniel Brown, and of course, John Turner (third time’s a charm!) and the rest of the Certinia team!”
Caccia previously worked with John Turner, Chief Revenue Officer of Certinia at Red Canary, and Google/Chronicle, where he held similar positions.
Enterprise Times: What does this mean
While Caccia has spent most of his career in the security industry, his broad and varied career should help Certinia in innovative ways. His focus has been in the B2B sector, and this experience should serve him well. What is impressive about his LinkedIn profile is the number and eloquence of the various references previous colleagues have given him.
It seems likely that Turner was instrumental in bringing Caccia to the attention of Scott Brown, and their previous working history should help cement a partnership that hits the ground running.
Due to personal reasons, Caccia left Certinia shortly after joining the firm.