London 26th June 2017: iRiS, the leading Guest Experience Platform provider to the hospitality industry, announced today that founder Jason Jefferys has taken on a new role as President and that Chris Newton-Smith has joined the company as Chief Executive Officer (CEO).
Since founding iRiS, Jason Jefferys has led the evolution of the company into the premier provider of Guest Experience Solutions to the hospitality sector. Jason has built a global, award winning organisation which has won major global clients, including Marriott and Accor, and developed strategic partnerships with Oracle and Microsoft. The success of iRiS has been recognized with awards for Effective Mobile Marketing by MobileMarketing and for Most Innovative Technology by Hospitality Technology Next Generation (HTNG). Jason has been recognised for his leadership and was awarded Entrepreneur of the Year by The Information Technologies Company in 2014. After nine years as CEO, Jason is to take on the role of President with Chris joining the team as CEO.
Jason explains “As a business that has grown considerably over the past few years, we have all found that our roles have expanded and been stretched and now is the right time to bring in additional talent and skills to the leadership team. Chris has an exceptional record in developing tech business and I am confident that Chris will accelerate the business to the next level. We are very lucky to have him join iRiS”.
Chris added “I’m excited by the huge market opportunity that iRiS has, as digital transformation of the Guest Experience becomes a priority across the hospitality industry. The combination of market-leading technology and excellent people means that this is a great time to join iRiS. iRiS has a well-deserved reputation as an innovator and for its focus on its customers’ success. I look forward to working with our customers, partners, and
Jason and the team to make iRiS the market leader in Guest Experience Solutions. I can’t wait to get started”.
iRiS Chairman, Roger Taylor, comments “Chris brings an incredible wealth of knowledge and expertise of scaling software companies in a high growth environment with major enterprise customers. His appointment is timely in light of the significant opportunities we have as large enterprise customers in the hospitality market choose to work with iRiS on their key challenges which our technology platform is designed to solve".
Chris is an experienced technology executive with a strong track record in global enterprise software companies. He was most recently the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) at Redknee Solutions Inc, a leading provider of business-critical billing and charging software and solutions for communications service providers. He was previously the General Manager for Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) at Redknee, where he led the company’s successful growth in the region. He has held senior positions in sales, product management and marketing, strategy, and operations at Redknee and LogicaCMG Telecoms (now Mavenir) in Canada, Germany, and the UK.
