• last year
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]

Recommended