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)
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