Jan Siegmund - Automatic Data Processing, Inc.
Management
I do. And I think that it is – as I think we've been trying to signal for, I think, probably three years if you go back to my notes, it's very hard because we're obviously in uncharted territories, because we were in something completely new. And it was a very comprehensive regulatory framework that required a lot of information from HR platforms, payroll platforms, benefit platforms, et cetera. And when you look back, we had two years of more than 12% new business bookings growth. And this is why we were cautious all along because that is a little strong. We were happy with it and we take it. It's good for our shareholders. It's good for ADP. It's good for our revenues. But it definitely felt like a fairly significant tailwind. And I think, in hindsight, it was obviously a big tailwind. Now, what has now added, I think, potentially to that pressure, which again we can't quantify scientifically is that we have, I think, a different environment politically that's creating some uncertainty, that certainly has impacted our new business bookings. We just can't put our finger on exactly to what extent. So as an example, we knew we had a grow-over issue just for ACA itself because we had already sold 50% of our addressable client base. But we did have some planned sales of ACA this year. And even though we've gotten some, it's significantly lower than plan, which is not surprising given the headlines and the frequent votes on repeal and replace of ACA. And so I think that's a second factor that I think was not certainly anticipated as we entered into this fiscal year in terms of our planning process. We knew we had to grow over the mathematical grow-over issue. Now we have what I would call the political issue. And then the third one that you mentioned, which again, is very hard for us to put our finger on, but I think you're onto something because we experienced the same thing back when we had the Y2K phenomenon in year 2000, where you do have some amount of pull forward, if you will, of business because we've seen this particularly on some of our wins last year from ERPs were quite high and elevated. And I think some of that, it appears, with the benefit of hindsight is, people on kind of older legacy technology trying to find a new solution for ACA. And by the way, some of that happened to us. So as we mentioned, before we think some of our retention issues last year may have been related to the same factor of people kind of just out looking for new solutions as a result of what I would call an event, which is a significant event called ACA. So I think all three things are a factor. We really wish we could put our finger on exactly how much each one is accountable. But unfortunately, we can't.