history of Capital ID
Like all good stories, the beginning of Capital ID was part vision and part circumstance and made unique through the people brought together to deliver on the vision. A little over 8 years ago the story began with an unexpected opportunity to involve technology in the marketing process and change the way a major utility company conducted its marketing operations.
Being a marketing director, I was always fascintated with the crucial role IT played in ALL aspects of any business, but never in brand management, marketing communications, procurement of print collateral, automation of marketing collateral, and process management of marketing campaigns. Since marketing expenditure is usually one of the highest expenditures and marketing efficiency is crucial for growth, marketing seemed like THE place that technology could really make a difference. The utility company was smart enough to realize this opportunity and Capital ID was quick to help them realize the benefits of marketing operations technology.
We realized right away that most medium sized and large companies face the same challenges as this utility company and Capital ID was born! . Why the name? We thought it was a ‘Capital ID’ (a capital idea! a great idea!) and ID still stands for identity (great identity).
This was 2002: When version 1.0 of ID manager was launched the utility company jumped on board. Capital ID had it’s first customer and the utility company had a partner that completely focused on marketing automation and driving marketing technology to the next level.
Soon after, others came to see the same we did, a little later we met with the marketing director and the CMO of one the largest staffing companies in the world. They wanted technology to play a crucial role in brand management and marketing operations management and they were looking for a solution. That was the birth of ID manager.
Now ID manager is deployed worldwide and is the central platform for marketing operations (you can download a white paper here).
The years later were a great journey. We successfully convinced marketing directors of the largest organizations in different segments of the importance of marketing operations management and why ID manager was the best solution. They already understood the importance. They just needed convincing that ID manager was the best solution!
Five years later we had over 50 successful implementations - 10 of these being global. We have become the marketing leader in the Netherlands and Europe in marketing operations software, with the the greatest team of specialists (consultants, project managers, sales, software developers, implementation specialists, interaction designers and a support group).
So here we are today: a great idea meeting history, now with great local and international clients, a great team and offices in the Netherlands, UK and US.
Dennis Steen – August 2008