Your customer service rep clicks to open a policy in Applied TAM. Then waits. And waits. The loading wheel spins for fifteen seconds before the policy finally appears. Multiply that by 200 policy lookups per day across your team, and you’ve got nearly an hour of daily productivity lost just to loading screens.
Everyone complains about TAM being slow. Your staff has learned to click on something and then start another task while waiting for it to load. Vertafore support says it’s “within normal parameters.” And you’re left wondering if this is just how agency management systems work, or if there’s actually something fixable causing the problem.
Spoiler: it’s almost always fixable. But the solution usually isn’t what most agencies think it is.
Why “Applied TAM Is Just Slow” Is Wrong
There’s this accepted wisdom in the independent insurance agency world that Applied TAM is inherently slow and you just have to live with it. Agencies compare notes at conferences and everyone nods knowingly about TAM performance issues.
But here’s what’s interesting: some agencies run TAM smoothly with minimal performance complaints. Same software, completely different experience. The difference isn’t the software—it’s the infrastructure underneath it.
Applied TAM is database-intensive. Every click, every search, every report is querying a database that’s probably storing years of policy data, documents, notes, and activities. When that database lives on infrastructure that wasn’t designed for this workload, performance suffers.
The Infrastructure Problems Nobody’s Addressing
Most independent agencies are running TAM on:
Undersized Servers
That server you bought five years ago when the agency had 40% fewer policies and three fewer staff members? It’s struggling. TAM’s database has grown, concurrent users have increased, and the server hardware hasn’t kept pace.
Insufficient RAM
Applied TAM needs memory to cache frequently accessed data. When there’s not enough RAM, the system constantly reads from disk instead—which is dramatically slower. Your server might have 16GB of RAM when TAM’s database and concurrent users really need 48GB or more.
Slow Storage
If TAM’s database is sitting on traditional spinning hard drives instead of SSDs, every database query is limited by physical disk speed. This single factor can be the difference between snappy performance and the frustrating delays your staff experiences daily.
Network Bottlenecks
Your office network might be running on infrastructure from 2008. Switches that can’t handle modern traffic loads, WiFi that gets congested during busy times, network cables that weren’t installed properly—all of this creates delays between user workstations and the TAM server.
Outdated Workstations
TAM might run on the server, but if your staff is using computers with 4GB of RAM and old processors, the client-side processing that happens in TAM’s interface still lags. Opening documents, switching screens, loading reports—all of this requires adequate workstation resources.
None of these issues show up in Applied’s system requirements documentation because they’re not about TAM itself. They’re about the infrastructure environment TAM depends on.
The “Solutions” That Don’t Actually Work
Agencies frustrated with TAM performance typically try a few things that provide minimal improvement:
Database Maintenance
Running Vertafore’s database optimization scripts might help slightly, but if the underlying infrastructure is inadequate, you’re just rearranging deck chairs. The fundamental bottlenecks remain.
Archiving Old Data
Yes, this can help. But unless your database has decades of ancient data, it’s probably not your main problem. And you often need that historical data for renewals and policy research anyway.
Upgrading to Applied Epic
Some agencies assume their performance problems will be solved by switching to Applied’s newer platform. Sometimes this helps, but often agencies discover Epic has different performance issues because they’re still running it on inadequate infrastructure.
Complaining to Vertafore
Support will run through their standard troubleshooting, maybe find a few minor issues, but ultimately tell you performance is within acceptable ranges. Because from their perspective, it is—they’re measuring technical metrics, not user experience.
The real solutions require looking at the infrastructure environment holistically, which is where specialized IT solutions for insurance agencies become necessary.
What Actually Fixes TAM Performance
When agencies work with IT solutions for insurance providers who understand Applied TAM’s infrastructure requirements, several improvements typically happen:
Server Right-Sizing
Analyzing actual TAM usage patterns—concurrent users, database size, peak activity times—and ensuring the server has adequate CPU, RAM, and storage to handle the workload comfortably. This often means significantly more resources than Vertafore’s minimum requirements suggest.
Storage Optimization
Moving TAM’s database and document storage to SSD or NVMe storage dramatically improves query response times. The difference between spinning disks and solid-state storage for database workloads can be 10x or more.
Network Infrastructure Assessment
Identifying and eliminating network bottlenecks. This might mean replacing outdated switches, improving WiFi coverage, fixing poorly installed network cabling, or segmenting network traffic so TAM database queries aren’t competing with file transfers and video calls.
Database Configuration Tuning
SQL Server (which underlies Applied TAM) has hundreds of configuration parameters that affect performance. Most agencies are running with default settings that weren’t optimized for their specific usage patterns and data volumes.
Workstation Standards
Ensuring staff computers meet reasonable performance standards. TAM doesn’t need gaming PCs, but it does need adequate RAM, modern processors, and functioning network adapters.
Regular Monitoring and Maintenance
Proactive performance monitoring that identifies issues before they become major problems. Disk space running low, RAM utilization trending upward, database query times increasing—these are all early warning signs that prevent performance crises.
The Remote Work Factor
TAM performance problems got worse for a lot of agencies when staff started working remotely. Suddenly everyone’s accessing the database over VPN instead of local network, adding latency to every transaction.
This exposed infrastructure weaknesses that were tolerable when everyone was in the office but became intolerable remotely:
Insufficient VPN Capacity
Your VPN solution might handle a few remote users fine but chokes when half your staff is remote simultaneously.
Home Internet Variables
Some staff have great home internet, others are on marginal connections. TAM performance varies wildly depending on who’s working where.
Bandwidth Consumption
Remote access to TAM generates more network traffic than most agencies anticipated. Without proper bandwidth management, VPN performance degrades during peak times.
Agencies that addressed these issues systematically saw remote TAM performance improve dramatically. Those that just told staff “it’s always slow when remote” are still dealing with productivity losses and staff frustration.
The Cost-Benefit Reality
Here’s the conversation that needs to happen more often in agency principals’ meetings:
What does TAM performance degradation actually cost?
- 30 seconds of delay per lookup, times 200 lookups per day, times 5 staff members equals 5 hours of wasted time daily
- That’s 25 hours per week, roughly 1,200 hours annually
- At an average cost of $40/hour, that’s $48,000 per year in lost productivity
- Plus the opportunity cost of what your staff could’ve been doing during that time
- Plus staff frustration and turnover risk when people get tired of fighting slow systems
What would it cost to actually fix it?
Proper infrastructure upgrades—server improvements, storage optimization, network enhancements, professional configuration—might cost $15,000-$30,000 depending on your current situation and agency size.
That’s a 2-6 month payback period just from productivity recovery, before even accounting for improved staff morale and reduced technology frustration.
Yet most agencies keep tolerating slow TAM performance because they haven’t done this math. They just know the upfront cost feels expensive without calculating what the status quo is costing them.
Why General IT Support Misses This
Your regular IT support person probably isn’t qualified to properly diagnose and fix Applied TAM performance issues. Not because they’re not competent, but because this requires specialized knowledge:
- Understanding how Applied TAM’s architecture works
- Experience with SQL Server performance tuning for insurance databases
- Familiarity with insurance agency workflows and usage patterns
- Knowledge of Vertafore’s specific infrastructure recommendations and best practices
General IT consultants treat TAM like any other line-of-business application. But TAM has unique characteristics and requirements that generic IT approaches don’t address effectively.
This is why agencies benefit from working with IT solutions for insurance specialists who’ve dealt with TAM performance issues dozens of times and know exactly where to look and what to fix.
The Questions to Ask If TAM Is Slow
Rather than just accepting that “TAM is slow,” ask some diagnostic questions:
- When was the last time someone assessed whether our server resources are adequate for current usage?
- Are we running TAM’s database on SSD storage or traditional hard drives?
- How much RAM does our server have, and how much is typically in use?
- What does our network infrastructure look like, and when was it last upgraded?
- Are performance issues worse at certain times of day, suggesting capacity or network bottlenecks?
- Do some users experience better performance than others, indicating workstation or connectivity variables?
If nobody can answer these questions confidently, that’s your sign that TAM performance issues aren’t being addressed at the right level.
What Better Performance Actually Enables
When agencies finally get their TAM performance dialed in, they’re often surprised by the operational improvements beyond just “things load faster”:
Staff actually use TAM’s features instead of working around them. When searches and reports are quick, people use data effectively instead of relying on memory or paper notes.
Customer service improves because reps can quickly access information while clients are on the phone instead of asking them to hold repeatedly.
Producers spend more time selling and less time fighting with technology to access the information they need.
New staff get up to speed faster because they’re not learning a system that’s frustratingly slow on top of being unfamiliar.
The difference between adequate and poor TAM performance affects every aspect of agency operations. It’s not just about loading screens—it’s about whether your technology enables or hinders productivity across your entire organization.
Most independent agencies are leaving significant productivity gains on the table because they’ve accepted that Applied TAM is “just slow.” It doesn’t have to be. It just requires the right expertise to identify and fix what’s actually causing the problems.
