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Business of the Year Award - Awards for Excellence 2023
Tindle News
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17/11/2023
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.
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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]
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