Chelan County PUD – Customer Success

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COMMISSIONERS: Kelly Allen, Garry Arseneault, Carnan Bergren, Steve McKenna, Randy Smith GENERAL MANAGER: Kirk Hudson

October 15, 2025
Dear Frix Technologies Team:

On behalf of the Licensing and Compliance team at Chelan County PUD, I want to extend our sincere thanks for the incredible work your team has done in scanning and organizing thousands of our documents, some of which date back more than 100 years and span three of our hydroelectric projects.

This project first began during the PUD’s move from the old headquarters to the new one, and what started as a relocation effort quickly became a multi-year journey to preserve and modernize our records. When I joined the department in 2021, I inherited boxes upon boxes of historical files; and now, more than five years later, we’re finally reaching the finish line thanks to your help.

Our Licensing and Compliance team has always been a bit unique within the PUD. We had our own dedicated document vault; a long, narrow room lined with file cabinets and shelves that were packed and stacked with files and boxes. The overflow even spilled into the hallway where our cubicles were, with more file cabinets and shelves surrounding us. My only regret is not taking “before and after” photos of the transformation. I’ve attached a photo (page 2) of the final boxes when we moved to the new building 2 years ago as a small tribute to how far we’ve come.

Your team approached this daunting project with professionalism, responsiveness, and genuine kindness. You were detailed, organized, and fun to work with which is a rare and welcome combination. Thanks to your efforts, our team has saved over 2,000 hours of work, not to mention the broader time and resource savings for the PUD.

We’re deeply grateful for your partnership and for helping us preserve this important part of our operational history. It’s been a pleasure working with you, and we look forward to continuing our collaboration in the future.

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Unstructured Information In The Modern Office

What is ‘Unstructured Information’ (UI)?

Unstructured information (UI) is any record, file or document not in a database, or some kind of system.

It is all the boxes of paper records from the last 30, 40, or 50 years.  It is of all the digital files on shared drives since 1995.  Its never been filtered and each year it just grows.  Today, digital UI is the fastest growing data segment.  It’s also a target for cyber-crime and bad actors.  Opening any unstructured file attached to an email is the most common path to data breach.  Simply put, UI is a security risk.  it’s also a productivity drain and it’s costing organizations plenty in productivity and turnover.

People Naturally Want to be Productive

There was a time (think pre 1990) when filing was a strict process.  This structured filing process began to disappear after 1995 when desktop PC’s allow anyone to file, in any manner.  People casually named important files from their perspective, but a different person couldn’t find it because their perspective was different.  If people can’t find information, it causes them to be unproductive and dissatisfied.

Each year a younger generation enters the workforce and struggles with a condition created years before their time.  FreeDoc ® can fix this.

FreeDoc ® has developed a process to correct UI, to empower your people and protect your enterprise.

The FreeDoc ® Process – Structuring Workplace UI

FreeDoc ® restructures enterprise UI with a 5-step process * to filter file past disposition and then serialize these into a secure database.  Then you can manage information programmatically, by policy.  Finding the right record can be simple, predictable, and fast.

Benefits

  • Increased employee retention
  • Increased service to the public market
  • Reduced risk to the enterprise as a whole

Employee satisfaction, efficient operations and legal compliance are the natural outcomes and benefits of structured records management.

In this light-hearted presentation given to Seattle ARMA Washington State employers, FreeDoc ® Managing Consultant Peter Frix shows the relevance and benefits from structuring records into a serialized data base.

* IDC (2000); McKinsey (2012).

** Disposition Authority Number (DAN) – Washington State Common Records Retention Schedule (CORE).

 

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