As I sat in my office during the last week of 2024, I couldn’t help but think back over the last year. It’s been nearly a year since I became TASC’s CEO. This past year, I have spent time listening. To our distributors, our customers, and employees too. But I haven’t been only listening; I have been analyzing and learning too… what we do well and what we need to improve.
During our annual company meeting in October, I announced the start of a new era at TASC, the Growth era. Not getting back to growth. Not return to growth. Just GROW. After over 20 years working at TASC, I have seen the times of tremendous growth, stable growth, and low growth. Regardless of the type, growth is necessary for our sustainability, plus it’s a lot of fun too!
I shared at the meeting that we are on our way up. Our sales continue to grow. Our customer retention is increasing and is at levels that rival pre-pandemic times. We have the broadest number of offerings in our market. No other TPA comes close. And after 5 years and over several millions of dollars invested… our technology is state-of-the-art and is the foundation that will take us to the next level.
The truth of the matter is… TASC is in a great place!
There are three ways we grow at TASC. The first is through our sales efforts. This year we made a multi-million-dollar investment to expand our sales force, and we plan to expand again in 2025. As part of this investment, we will improve our marketing to increase awareness of our brands. You will see us do more promotions, be more aggressive with our message, and continue to highlight what differentiates TASC from the competition.
The second way we will grow is through acquisitions. We paused acquisition activity for a few years and in 2024 we restarted it. Our history of over 25 TPA acquisitions over the last several years is a formula that has worked for us to accelerate our growth. We have the resources, technology and offerings to win opportunities.
The third way to grow is by retaining our customers and introducing our customers to TASC’s more than 50 different service offerings to help them with their benefit needs. At the same time, encouraging their employees to participate in the benefit accounts their employers offer them. Also important for customer retention is to consistently meet service level expectations and to communicate more often and effectively with our customers. That will be a focus this year.
At TASC, we have a long tradition of being a high performing organization. We are engaged and have the desire to win, we take pride in what we do and hold ourselves and our colleagues accountable to achieve. We strive to meet the expectations of our customers and are disciplined to follow the TASC ways of working. This is what high-performing individuals and organizations do; they achieve!
I know that the change of the last few years and its transformational nature has been hard at times for our customers and employees. It’s hard to think about benefits differently. It’s hard to learn a new way to sell. It’s hard to learn new technology. It’s hard to learn a new way to serve and do our job. However, it’s not supposed to be easy and anything worth doing is generally hard. In the words of Duke University Women’s Basketball coach Kara Lawson, “It’s how we deal with the HARD that matters.”
I know there will be those that say it can’t be done. They will say TASC can’t succeed and that TASC’s plan to grow won’t work. I wouldn’t bet against an organization that isn’t afraid of a little hard work!
Happy New Year!
