“It started with a large manila envelope and a very small garage office.”

The origin story of EDEX Information Systems Yes, we literally started in a garage. In 1994, the California Department of Industrial Relations posted flyers in every workers’ compensation courtroom announcing their new electronic data exchange system, known as “EDEX”. The Division of Workers’ Compensation was actively searching for companies to design and build products that would communicate with the state’s EDEX system. Chris Floyd, a claims examiner and computer programmer for a disability insurance company in Jackson, California, was handed one of the flyers by his boss who asked, “Chris, can you create this software?”. His answer was yes. Chris spent his daytime hours working as a claims examiner, and his evening hours working in his small garage office at home designing the new software. A few months later, Chris’ software he dubbed “EDEX Express”, had been tested and approved by the State of California and was now being used by every claims examiner in the insurance company to access court records and injured worker data directly from the Division of Workers’ Compensation. Examiners could easily retrieve case data, file lien forms electronically, and monitor court cases for hearings and other activity. Chris soon realized many other companies in the workers’ compensation sector could benefit from using his unique EDEX Express software, so he asked his employer for permission to offer the EDEX Express service to the public. They agreed, and within a few weeks EDEX Express had its first two paying customers, a pharmacy in southern California and a doctor’s office in Oakland. Chris was tasked with overseeing this new side business he called “EDEX Technologies”, so he printed a little sign and taped it to his garage office door.

The small home in Jackson where it all started.

The original “EDEX Technologies” sign on the garage office door in 1995.

1995 to 2000 - The early years of EDEX Technologies. For the next few years, Chris continued to handle his claims examiner duties during the day while also adding new features to his EDEX Express software at home in the evenings. New customers were onboarded weekly, and his small side business was beginning to become much more hands-on. After five years of running the EDEX Technologies side business, and burning the candle at both ends, the time had come for Chris to make a very difficult decision - keep his regular paycheck and healthcare benefits working as a claims examiner, or quit his job and focus on growing the EDEX business full-time. After much discussion with his wife Teresa, and some difficult negotiations with his employer, Chris and Teresa purchased the rights to the EDEX software Chris had created for his employer and together they struck out to grow their new business. 2001 to 2002 - EDEX Information Systems is born. By March, 2001, the user accounts had grown substantially and Chris knew he needed to incorporate the business. Unfortunately, another company at that time had a similar name, so the California Secretary of State would not allow the name EDEX Technologies. Undeterred, Chris decided “EDEX Information Systems” was a good alternative, and on March 16, 2001 our company was “born”. Corporate expenses quickly piled up, but sales slowed. Chris and Teresa were struggling to make ends meet. Like many small start-up companies, there were no piles of cash reserves or deep-pocket investors to provide growth capital. They ate mac & cheese and ramen, and tapped out every credit card just to keep the company afloat. Chris continued to burn the midnight oil, working into the early morning hours every night to enhance the software and create new features. During the day, he would work the phones to handle customer support and set up new clients. There were never enough hours in the day to get everything done, and Chris and Teresa knew they desperately needed to hire some employees - but couldn’t afford to. As fate would have it, in May of 2002, an unsolicited phone call changed the course of our company. 2002 to 2005 - Child Support, AutoTrack, and our first full-time employees. On the phone that May afternoon was Erik Tannenwald, an investigator for the San Diego County Department of Child Support Services. One of the new features Chris had been developing was an enhancement he named “AutoTrack”. The new feature automatically tracked injured worker cases and provided immediate notifications and event triggers when certain events occurred. From his years working as a claims examiner, Chris knew automatic tracking would be a great benefit for larger entities with a high volume of cases. Erik had heard about AutoTrack and wanted to learn more about it. Impressed at its feature set, Erik ordered the new AutoTrack service for the 100,000 cases his agency had, and a few weeks later a check for almost $23,000 arrived in the mail. EDEX Information Systems now had the working capital it desperately needed to ramp up its operations. Over the next year we hired three new outstanding full-time employees, Steve King, Andrea Macon, and Julia Burns. None of them knew anything about California Workers’ Compensation claims, but each brought with them unique skill sets to help EDEX Information Systems quickly establish itself as the industry leader in customer support, product features, and ease-of-use. 2006 to 2011 - EAMS OCR filing and the birth of our document mailing services. EDEX Information Systems continued to grow, adding hundreds of new accounts each month and tracking billions of dollars of receivables for our customers. New features were regularly added, and additional employees were hired to fill the growing staffing need. Our corporate office moved a few times to add more space, and we transitioned from old desktop computer servers and a wireless modem to state-of-the-art Dell rack servers. To handle our growing data processing needs, we relocated our operations center to a high-security data center in Sacramento. In 2008, the state launched its new EAMS system (“Electronic Adjudication Management System”), which allowed paper OCR (Optical Character Recognition) document filing into the court dockets. Our customers constantly expressed dissatisfaction with the poorly-designed EAMS OCR system created by the State of California, and frequently asked us to come up with solutions to fix the state’s problems. Chris reached out to his friend David DePaolo, CEO of Workcompcentral.com, and jointly our two companies founded DWC Direct, a document filing company that collected and validated data from our customers, then printed high-quality OCR documents and mailed them to the DWC courts where they were scanned. DWC Direct’s service saved our customers countless hours of time and frustration, and helped transition EDEX Information Systems into the world of document mailing. 2012 to 2014 - EAMS JetFile and party mailing services. By 2012, the DWC had replaced their problematic OCR filing system with a new electronic form filing system they called JetFile. Since OCR forms were no longer needed, we repurposed our printing equipment to solve another huge problem our customers regularly faced - document service to case parties. We created a new document mailing service for EAMS form filings, allowing our customers to have us submit EAMS filings electronically and then print copies of their filing documents we mailed to every case party. Using this new service, customers no longer needed to print, fold, stuff, and mail documents themselves. Instead, all the printing and mailing was handled by DWC Direct employees. As the DWC Direct business started to grow, additional partner-owners were added, but technology issues, cost overruns, and multiple partners with different visions caused the mailing service to struggle. Chris Floyd decided to separate from DWC Direct and have EDEX Information Systems build a better, faster electronic JetFile system and a more robust document mailing service. By the end of 2014 our new services were up and running. 2015 to present - Nationwide mailing service for any document. EDEX Information Systems designed its new JetFile and document mailing services from the ground up, paying close attention to the small details and adding features customers needed such as company name and logo branding, return envelopes, check payment, and same-day mailings. We expanded our mailing services outside of California workers’ compensation, and today have thousands of users in states throughout the country. Our core EDEX and EAMS services are still widely used by insurance companies, claims administrators, attorneys, healthcare providers, investigators, translators, copy services, and many other professionals. We continue to take great pride in the customer service we provide to our users, and the fact that our first five employees have been happily serving our customers for over 20 years.

The check that launched our company.

- Christopher Floyd, Founder/CEO EDEX Information Systems, Inc.

One of our original AMD K6-based desktop computer servers and wireless antennas.

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