Martyn Bullerwell, new chief executive of Telefónica Tech UK&I, talks to Margaret Canning about its commitment to NI, AI and its continued support of the Belfast Telegraph IT Awards
The company, which employs around 320 people here, is chief sponsor of the Belfast Telegraph IT Awards, a role it’s held since 2021. The awards ceremony takes place on November 14 at Belfast’s MAC Theatre, and will be hosted by comedian Andrew Ryan.
In a demonstration of its commitment to NI, he says Telefónica Tech UK&I just signed up to a further 10 years at its offices in Titanic Quarter in Belfast.
In 2021, Telefónica Tech UK&I, part of a Spanish-owned business, gained a footprint in NI following its acquisition of German company, Cancom. Back in 2019, Cancom had acquired Northern Ireland IT firm Novosco.
Martyn’s route to the leadership role at Telefónica Tech followed a similar trajectory as he had founded a business which was later taken over by the business.
The father of three says he’s “a very honest and transparent person”. “I’m very proud to be to be able to take the role of CEO. My background is very much as a technologist and I come very much from a technology standpoint.
“I did an IT degree and since then I’ve been working in IT all the way through, and very much fell into management when I started my own business.
“For me it’s a very proud moment to be given an opportunity to run such a successful and diverse business across the UK and Ireland, and Northern Ireland.”
Martyn has lived in the south-east of England all his life. After studying IT at Surrey University, he worked at the business intelligence consultancy where he’d done his placement.
“I met some very like-minded people and at a fairly young age of 24, I made a decision that I wanted to be my own boss and run my own business and build something with a fairly unique culture of people first, and technology and value and quality first.”
He founded Adatis Consulting with two others to provide technology solutions for all levels of organisations. “It was a big step at the age of just 24 to actually running a business and managing people and payroll and all those things.”
Its growth continued over 15 years, but Covid was a turning point. “When you run your own business through something like Covid, you realise the level of stress can be quite significant so we chose to exit the business.”
Adatis was sold to Incremental, which was then taken over by Telefónica Tech. “I was very very invigorated when we got into the acquisition by Telefónica Tech because I could see the opportunity.
“Even through we are part of a big corporation, there are parts of the business that are very agile, every like-minded, very people-first and culture-first.
“The NI business is very well aligned to how I like to run a business.”
The Belfast operation provides technology solutions to business through managed cloud IT services. It also contains company-wide accounting, marketing and HR teams.
It has built up a strong reputation in enterprise health, and was responsible for the roll-out across Northern Ireland health and social care trusts of the Encompass records system.
Martyn has special praise for Ellen Dickson, the company’s vice president of enterprise health. “I see enterprise health as a huge opportunity and Ellen is an incredible person and absolutely brilliant.
Martyn Bullerwell, Telefónica Tech UK&I
“We’re actually leveraging our skills and ability in NI to drive learnings down into the business, led by the Belfast team, and into the NHS in England.
“With the clinical knowledge and experience of Ellen’s team, we’re educating the rest of the UK, and supporting Spanish health organisations.”
He says the company is keen to continue its support of the Belfast Telegraph IT Awards. “We’re incredibly proud of the NI business and what that’s achieved and the growth we’ve seen.
“The awards are something we’re very keen to continue being title sponsor of and it’s a critical part of our business. It’s something for us in whole group to be incredibly proud of, that we support NI in the way that we do.”
As well as the enterprise health team, there are also operations within Telefónica Tech UK&I in Belfast focused on cloud, cyber security, business applications and data & AI.
“The data & AI team in NI hasn’t grown hugely but it’s definitely a space I want to look at, and how we leverage more of our capabilities. We know there’s a huge wealth of talent in NI.
“We’ve just renewed for a long time the NI office there and our commitment is continuing to grow.”
Our interview takes place soon after Silicon Valley AI chipmaker Nvidia becomes the world’s first $5trn company as hype around AI companies continues to mount.
He says he’s giving AI a cautious welcome. “AI is a huge topic now, everyone’s very keen on what organisations can do with AI, what it means for them, what it means for people.
“It’s about how we can ethically leverage AI in England, Ireland and across the whole of the UK. That is is really important to us.
“It is in an interesting space right now, but what a lot of people don’t realise is that AI’s been around for a very long time. If you look at Amazon, and you’re given a recommendation ‘if you like to buy this, you might like that,’ that’s effectively a machine learning algorithm that we call AI. A lot of organisations have been using AI almost unwittingly.”
In Telefónica Tech UK&I, he says the company is making extensive use of Microsoft’s Copilot technology. “We make sure everybody has access to that as technologies that help and assist performance of coding and development.
“We usually use AI to help with bid management and allow us to write better and more compelling bids based on previous bids.”
But he is not in agreement with Amazon’s decision to let go of thousands of stuff as it makes increased use of AI. “I think that’s the wrong way to look at AI. I think the right way is, it allows you to do more with same number of people.
“For us it’s about how we enable companies to use it in an ethical way and how we use it in an ethical way.”
We see in it an ability to save time and be more efficient, more accurate, higher quality and higher value, but certainty not something to save money with
He finds it useful in his leadership role. “I’ve got to be honest, I use it on a daily basis, including using it to help temper emails.
“It’s to consider ‘does this have any specific connotations’, ‘do I need to reconsider how I’ve written this to achieve a certain outcome’. I think that’s really powerful and gives it that sense-check.
“There’s a lot we use it for but it’s in pockets and definitely as a productivity-helping agent rather than replacing jobs.
“We see in it an ability to save time and be more efficient, more accurate, higher quality and higher value, but certainty not something to save money with.”
He thinks ultimately we will come to use AI in the way that we use Microsoft Word – a constant aid in work but something that eventually fades into the background.
“It is all potentially over-hyped, and the cost of running some AI models is very high because of the cost to the environment of data centres, and it’s trying to level out where it’s going to make sense and where it’s not.
“I think we’re going to see an interesting shift in years to come in how we use it and I think it will be just another tool much like Microsoft Word.”
He admits he only made his first visit to Belfast and the offices of Telefónica Tech UK&I here October. “I’ve been quite siloed in my data and AI world, but the rolling hills out the back of the docks where the office is, is an incredible view.
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“We’re intending to come over more, and something we’re keen to do is rebuild the kind of culture pre-Covid where people worked together and enjoyed time in the office together and time outside the office together.”
But that will stop short of ordering people into the office for a set number of days. “There is no intention to bring a mandate. Our preference to have people work together but where you mandate it, you don’t have the right culture. It’s about the carrot and not the stick.”
He’s looking forward to the awards night on November 14, but adds: “There’s always a little bit of trepidation when you’re having to make a speech in front of a comedian.”