My Favorite Projects From 2016

As 2016 comes to a close, I’d like to reflect on some of my favorite accomplishments from the past year working at KHM Travel Group. We have made great strides to improve our security, workflows, and the tools we provide – all with one goal: to enhance our agents’ businesses and lives.

Noteworthy Projects I’ve Worked On &/Or Managed

Enhancements to New Agent Process (Onboarding & Training)

  • We consolidated the storage of Agent Profile Forms, W-9s, Driver’s Licenses, and Credit Card information with a secure 3rd party system with 256-bit encryption.
  • We integrated a forced password reset for new users on our Agent Portal (membership-based educational site).
  • We disabled name editing in the Agent Portal in order to direct agents to fill out the Agent Information Update form so we can verify names and update them on all our systems.
  • We developed new training modules for our agents in which we will be able to track their progress.

Improved Processes Within the Company

  • We researched and implemented a new password storage & management system so that team members can securely share login credentials. My team trained coworkers on password best practices and on the new system.
  • We set up version control (with Bitbucket) for three of our custom themes.
  • We merged our main brand’s WordPress installation with our blog’s WordPress installation. By the end of this year, we will only have one WordPress installation per domain (the way it should be).
  • We developed a lightweight boilerplate template to reduce turnaround time when creating new landing pages. The new boilerplate utilizes external CDN-hosted scripts and PHP’s include() function to ensure important or time-sensitive information doesn’t become outdated.
  • We identified and deleted 24 unnecessary plugins across two of our sites. Some were features not being used; Others’ functionality was recreated within the theme.

This year has been one filled with great teamwork, enhancements to security, and simplification of our code. I can only hope that 2017 yields similar results!