Stepping back to leap forward

If you’ve been wondering why my name hasn’t appeared in this column space recently, the answer is simple: I’ve been buried under a mountain of change.

Behind the scenes, our team has been hard at work transforming some of the core systems that power our company—something that’s taken significant time, energy, and no small amount of patience.

Over the past few months, we’ve transitioned to a brand-new Customer Relationship Manager (CRM) and an entirely new Content Management System (CMS). Both changes came with a steep learning curve for our entire staff. For our editors, the new CMS is particularly exciting, as it will allow them to publish print and online stories from one central platform. Previously, they had to duplicate their work by posting in multiple places—a clunky and time-consuming process. In a month or two, we’ll also be unveiling a new website that will better reflect the branding and visual identity of our print newspapers. It’s all part of our effort to modernize while staying true to who we are.

But getting here hasn’t been easy. In fact, it’s one of those rare times in business when you truly have to take two steps back to take 10 steps forward. The CRM transition, in particular, was a beast. Moving 15 years of client data was time-consuming and delicate. I personally spent well over 100 hours doing data entry, reviewing old records, and training our sales team on the new system—often simultaneously.

The good news? We’re finally on the other side of that mountain, and the results are already making a difference. Our previous CRM was more than 12 years old and built long before small businesses had fully adopted cloud computing—especially when it came to things like online payments. Our new system is a game-changer. Clients can now pay securely using a simple online link, and the entire billing system is integrated with QuickBooks Online. Internally, it feels like we jumped from 1999 to 2025 overnight.

Back in 2020, during the pandemic, I explored the possibility of putting all our systems on the cloud—but at the time, it was exponentially more expensive than hosting a server in my home office. That price barrier kept us in place for a while. But the cost of cloud computing has come down significantly in the years since, and that shift finally made this leap possible.

And it really is a leap. For the first time, our entire team is working in a fully cloud-based environment. I used to cross my fingers during every storm, hoping we wouldn’t lose power and take our local server down with it. Now, even if I lose electricity and internet at home, the rest of the team can keep working without interruption.

This has been a massive lift, and I’m incredibly proud of our staff for rolling with all the changes. Change is hard, but it’s also necessary. These new systems aren’t just modern tools—they’re building blocks for the future, both for us and for the businesses and readers we serve.

Thanks for your patience, and stay tuned for more updates—especially once we unveil the new website. We can’t wait to show you what we’ve been working on.