Snoqualmie-based Freedoc (www.freedoc.com) says
it specializes in paperless solutions, and the company practices what it
preaches. Owner/manager Wayne Gray spoke recently about how scanning
piles of paper can make a company run more efficiently.
How did Freedoc get started?
Early in 1998 I was
working for a nuclear services company. The paperwork required to do
that type of work is very cumbersome. One day several of us were
compiling the paperwork to get ready for a job. A friend stopped by to
visit and saw the mountain of paper we were working on. He suggested we
scan it and take a CD with us instead of a briefcase full of paper. We
stopped and looked at each other like the little light bulb above our
heads had just clicked on.
The entire crew had laptop computers
that we used in the field so we used the CD to access our paperwork. The
idea was born to start a company to do the scanning service for other
companies.
What got you personally interested in doing this
work?
My previous career in the nuclear power industry was
becoming boring and the travel that was required was taking a lot of
time away from my family. With Freedoc I saw an opportunity to start a
new high tech venture and be one of the first scanning companies in the
Seattle area.
The possibilities were and still are endless with
more companies trying to go paperless every day and I think we are
poised to take advantage of that business.
Why do you feel
there is a need for what you provide?
We hear all the time
that the wave of the future is the paperless office. Until you visit
several offices you really don't have an appreciation for how much paper
most businesses deal with. We are called in to give estimates to a wide
ranging client base including medical and financial institutions,
transportation and manufacturing companies, government and education
facilities just to name a few.
We see offices where they have
lost or misplaced documents, someone misfiles a document that takes the
next person hours to find or they need a document that has been moved to
an off site storage area. Providing scanning services to our customers
has allowed them to streamline their operations and save a great deal of
time and money.
Our most gratifying jobs are those that have
jump-started the growth in a customers company. For example, we scanned
a bank of over 20 file cabinets for a client. The office space they
recovered allowed them to hire two new sales people who in turn brought
in more business for their company.
What kind of challenges
does your company face?
I think our biggest challenge is to
get our word out and educate the business decision makers that they can
save a significant amount of money and time by transferring to an
electronic format for their information. When management realizes that
information is one of the most vital, strategic assets any organization
can possess then they will see the ease and safety that they can operate
in with their information in an electronic format.
Our customers
who have taken the leap to an electronic format are thrilled and swear
they will never go back. So the benefits are real, it is just getting
the business decision makers to take the initial leap to the new
technology.
What are your main goals for the year ahead?
My main goal in building the company is to increase our
client base. Freedoc has many loyal customers who continue to give us
repeat business, year after year. It is easy to get comfortable just
taking care of these customers, with whom we have developed strong
relationships. However, in order to grow the company we need to acquire
new customers at an accelerated rate.
We recently purchased new
hardware that will allow us to increase the amount of production we can
do at any given time, so we are prepared to let more Seattleites in on
the secret of electronic document scanning.
do you know a
Seattle company we should cover? Let us know about it. Send your local
profile candidates to dan@computeruser.com.
