New Years’ Resolutions that Work
Man, what happened to the year? The decade is almost at an end as 2020 quickly approaches, and that means you should make your New Years’ resolutions count this time around. We all know the usual suspects:–read more, lose 15 pounds, finally take those Spanish lessons seriously–but what about some New Years’ resolutions for your business…say, your insurance agency?
Well, I’ve looked into ways to help Team Archway hit the ground running after the holiday haze finally wears off, and this piece from Forbes gave me a few useful ideas.
For example, even powerhouses like Houzz and CapitalOne found out this year, you can never invest too much in cybersecurity. If you have time this morningto check out the article (who am I kidding, no one is going to be productive today) and want to put some of these plans into action, we’re happy to help…shoot me an email to find out more.
What Year is It?!
Speaking of moving forward, if you’re still with an IT company that keeps your stuff in a data center, you might need to check the calendar…that day is dead. Whether hosted through your service provider or maintained onsite, data center hosting is just a clunky, outdated, and inefficient way to manage your resources.
The future is in the cloud, and around the office we’re big fans of Amazon Web Service and Office-365…instant access to anything anywhere is a pretty neat trick for companies with national or global reach. Microsoft put out an informative PDF on the advantages of cloud hosting, a report from Gartner agrees, and since those people are paid handsomely specifically to think about it, I do too.
Law of Unintended Conseqences
The employment environment is one of the innumerable aspects of life that has been impacted by the Internet. Remote and freelance work is becoming more popular than ever for a long list of reasons, and the fact is that if you’re a business that employs independent contractors, what’s going on right now in California might end up being of interest to you.
You see, we use a service called Upwork to get help with marketing projects and priority work that pops up, and we’ve actually gotten some really good stuff out of the folks we hire there, but the site (and my favorite UCLA Bruins basketball blog!) could be no more after the new AB5 bill has its’ say in today’s workplace.
Written as legislation to tame the Wild West that is the current gig economy, the bill has had some surprising effects on freelancers and the companies that employ them…it’s a tricky situation, but these are the questions we will have to answer as the way we work evolves.
The Last Word
All right, that’s about all for this week, but thanks as always for making time in your routine for my ramblings…especially since we’re all kind of winding down for the year.
I might be back in your inbox to mark the end of 2019, but in any event I want to wish you and yours a Merry Christmas (or Happy Hanukkah, even though I’m a day late for the party)!