Semafone, the leading provider of data security and compliance solutions for contact centres has appointed John Donaldson to the role of Chief Finance Officer, as the company prepares to build on its record growth in 2016.

John brings extensive finance and commercial experience in the international telecommunications, technology and software sectors, most recently serving as CFO at Nowtel Group.

“It’s an incredibly exciting time to be taking the finance helm at Semafone”, said John Donaldson. “The company is going from strength to strength not just here in the UK, but also in North America and Australia. It’s rewarding to join such a highly-experienced team and to add my own knowledge of growing international companies to Semafone’s already solid business successes.”

Semafone CEO Tim Critchley said “We had an extremely successful year in 2016, realising a 65% increase in revenue and growing our roster of blue-chip Fortune 500 and FTSE 100 clients. I’m confident that John’s appointment will help continue this momentum and keep us on target to meet our ambitious growth goals.

“He brings with him an impressive track record of driving business growth, and has the technology and software expertise to back up his commercial skills, notably with ‘hosting services’ and the associated SaaS/recurring revenue business models, which is becoming increasingly important for Semafone as we add more hosted platforms. We’re thrilled to have John join the Semafone team,”

Mr Critchley said.

Semafone’s patented data capture method is fast being recognised as the global standard for gathering sensitive customer information securely, over the phone. The company’s solution has been adopted under licence by many of its peers in the contact centre and Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) compliance market.

Semafone’s solutions allow customers to provide sensitive information to contact centre agents, by entering the numbers directly into their phone’s keypad, rather than reading them aloud. The keypad tones are disguised so that numbers cannot be identified by their sound, leaving the contact centre agent free to continue the conversation with the caller. This means that customer data is protected and the organisation complies with industry regulations.