Business of the Year Award - Awards for Excellence 2023 - video Dailymotion

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David and Alison Dorricott from AFD Software speaking after the company won the Business of the Year Award at the 2023 Media Isle of Man Awards for Excellence.

Transcript

00:00 So I'm here with our first winners of the night,

00:03 David Dorricott and...

00:05 - Alison Dorricott.

00:06 - Alison Dorricott from AFD Software.

00:09 From humble beginnings from a startup in an attic,

00:12 AFD is now the world's leading postcode software warehouse

00:17 and you have just won business of the year.

00:20 So every time you go on a website

00:23 or you phone a call center and someone says,

00:26 what's your postcode?

00:27 There's a purpose to that, isn't there?

00:29 - There is. - And you're behind it.

00:30 Do you want to explain how it all works?

00:32 - It's not just in moving goods and services.

00:34 When the business started 40 years ago,

00:36 of course the internet wasn't really a thing

00:39 and ordering things online wasn't really a thing either.

00:43 Usually we exchange correspondence through the post.

00:46 But since the postcode was introduced in the UK

00:50 60 years ago and now more recently,

00:53 about 20, 30 years ago in the Isle of Man,

00:56 it's become the de facto geodemographic indicator

00:59 for the whole UK.

01:01 What does that mean?

01:01 It means that all of the political divisions across the UK

01:06 and the money that follows them

01:08 are all related to postcode.

01:10 So if you're a university or a college,

01:11 it's really important that you know

01:13 where your students came from

01:14 because there might be a bit more funding for that student

01:18 if they're from a deprived area.

01:19 It's also, we have this horrible expression,

01:22 the postcode lottery.

01:23 There is a postcode lottery.

01:24 I do happen to be a customer.

01:25 But the postcode lottery is often that

01:28 if you live in a certain area,

01:30 you get a better school or a better hospital

01:32 or a better health service.

01:34 So, and it's really quite a unique thing

01:37 about the British Isles.

01:38 We count ourselves in on the Isle of Man

01:40 because we use them just as much as the islands across.

01:44 But the postcode actually defines almost everything.

01:47 You know your postcode because it's based on letters,

01:49 not numbers.

01:50 The Americans opted for zip codes,

01:52 which nobody can remember.

01:54 But the UK system has been a huge success

01:57 since it was first introduced just for sorting letters.

02:00 - And you have an impressive commitment to the environment

02:06 with your building particularly.

02:07 And you've also received a Biosphere Award, I understand.

02:11 - Yes, we're really blessed.

02:13 We sit in the Northern Plain of the Isle of Man.

02:15 We're unusual in that big technology business

02:18 is in Northern Man.

02:18 And we look south to North Beryl and Skyhill.

02:22 It's a really wonderful place.

02:24 25 acres, an ex-farm that was developed as a film studio.

02:27 But when we founded in 2014, it was laying derelict.

02:31 But we just thought someone needed to love it.

02:32 And we've been loving it for six or seven years.

02:35 And now we've got a sculpture garden.

02:37 We've got a wonderful landscape.

02:38 - And we've got the biggest solar array on the island.

02:41 - And the biggest solar array in the Isle of Man.

02:43 We've got five years now of actual statistics

02:45 from renewable energy.

02:47 The biggest Tesla battery in the Northern Hemisphere,

02:51 but it's actually in these parts.

02:53 And so we have this amazing ability

02:55 to store our daytime solar energy, use it at night.

02:58 And in winter, when the sun doesn't shine,

03:01 there's quite a lot coming out.

03:03 We can also buy our energy overnight,

03:06 which helps the MUA load balance,

03:09 and then burn it during the day.

03:10 So we've proven what you can do.

03:12 We've also found the chinks in renewable energy.

03:15 And we're just kind of focusing on

03:17 what do we do when the sun doesn't shine?

03:19 (silence)

03:21 (silence)

03:23 [BLANK_AUDIO]

Business of the Year Award - Awards for Excellence 2023

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