MSPs know that client conversations can make or break a relationship. A faster Wi-Fi upgrade or a smoother backup solution might win polite nods, but what really gets executives leaning in are conversations about risk, outcomes, and strategy. That’s the space ScalePad wants MSPs to own.
Founded in 2015 as Warranty Master and rebranded to ScalePad in 2020, the company has grown from a warranty lookup tool into a customer success platform. Its suite now spans quoting, compliance management, backup monitoring, business intelligence, and vCIO tools—all designed to help MSPs show up prepared, run stronger QBRs, and walk out looking like the hero to their customers.
In this Q&A, Chris Day, ScalePad’s founder and CEO, talks about the company’s evolution, why owning the QBR is critical for MSPs, and how the right tools can help MSPs drive better outcomes in every client meeting. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Key Takeaways:
- ScalePad believes that MSPs deliver value by leading discussions that focus on risk, outcomes, and strategy—not just technology.
- The company’s evolution and acquisition strategy is focused on its mission of driving the MSP’s customer success and outcomes.
- A customer success platform, ScalePad believes, is the missing piece MSPs need to get into the boardroom and transition to strategic advisors.
MSP Success: You recently rolled out Lifecycle Manager X, which you’re calling a customer success platform that acts as an MSP’s client system of record. Why do MSPs need it?
Chris Day: The epiphany that we had is that this stuff is not handled by any tools out there today. And it’s bigger than just an add-on to your PSA. It’s about protecting your revenue, your clients, making sure when you show up for a meeting with them, they feel like you have a plan. They feel like, “We have the right people in the meeting, we’re talking about the right topics.” The culmination of all of that is what we’re launching with LMX … It is designed to address the needs of very, very large MSPs, the platform players, but it’s also able to be used by a one- or five-person MSP to do this for their clients as well.
MSP Success: That announcement came on the heels of two new compliance offerings, one free and one low cost. Why did you decide to do that?
Day: It really ties into the best conversations that MSPs can have with their customers. The conversations that drive the most positive change are around risk. If you walk in and say, “I can get you a better Wi-Fi solution, it’s going to be a faster and more reliable,” those conversations are a little long in the tooth for a lot of SMBs. When you have a solid risk conversation, it drives the improvements that you would like to see the customer have and the customer can get aligned with you.
By putting the free edition out there, MSPs are enabled to have that conversation at no cost. They can sit with the executive team at their customer, run through an assessment, show the results, and give them a concrete score. Then they can say, “Hey, you’re a 40 out of 100. Most of our customers in that field are in the 80s, and we can show you exactly why. These are the areas where you have risk.” And so what ends up happening is, the customer then has a goal not to be risky. So when you can get aligned that like—risk is something we do want to manage—then you can put forward a plan. That was the inspiration for making [ControlMap] available for every MSP.
MSP Success: I want to step back. You founded the company in 2015 as Warranty Master, and then you rebranded in 2020. Can you talk about your evolution?
Day: I started the company with my brother, and at the time I was still the CEO at IT Glue. So this was a passion project. We’d found this relatively small issue in the industry where people weren’t managing the lifecycle of infrastructure very well, and it was difficult to do. Warranty Master made it very easy to know exactly what you had, what you needed to replace, and what was aging. Over time, we started adding more and more functionality that was more customer facing.
Our vision is around the last mile—to make the subscribers of MSPs inspired with their experience. To do that, we have to get all the way down to the last mile. When you show up at a meeting, what’s your presentation materials? When you leave a meeting, what’s your follow-up look like? And what does my roadmap for this client look like?
That’s where the whole thing evolved. All the tools that we have deliver on that piece. It’s showing that we’re managing your risk, showing that we have a plan, making it easy to do business with us. Everything ties into the customer being the center of the story. Anything we can do to make our partners look like the hero is our objective. So now if we said, “What is ScalePad?” We’re a customer success platform, and that means we make MSPs look like rock stars with their clients.
MSP Success: Let’s talk about the tools. In 2021 you got some funding, and then you acquired Quoter, AdeptMC, Backup Radar, Lifecycle Insights, ControlMap, and Cognition 360. Talk about your acquisition strategy.
Day: I’ve been open about this. We probably bit off a little more than we could chew. We did a bunch of acquisitions in a very short time, and I think that the industry felt that too. The industry felt that we were on the back end dealing with integrating a bunch of software companies. It stifles a bit of innovation. But we felt that we had to do the plumbing necessary to be able to do things like launch [Lifecycle Manager X].
And I’m not talking about getting billing organized or single sign-on. I’m talking about really integrating these products at their core … All those acquisitions [are] all connected to the mission of customer success. It’s really about how can we put tools inside of MSPs that help them look like MVPs with their customers.
M&A is a big part of our strategy. We pressed pause on that for the two years [during the integration]. We’re not looking at anything this year, but we’re cautiously optimistic about starting that up again in the coming year or two.
MSP Success: Why did you decide to step in as CEO last year?
Day: It was five years that Dan [Wensley] was at helm. It’s a pretty great run. I think the driving force behind it was, I’m a technologist. What we’d acquired and where we aim to go with the platform side of the business, it was really my passion. Obviously being the founder, it’s an exciting opportunity for me. It was just a really good time for me to jump in. We have a lot of technology challenges and opportunities ahead. We’re still close with Dan [now CEO of GTIA] and he’s a major shareholder in ScalePad as well. So nothing but respect there for him.
MSP Success: Do you think that MSPs understand who ScalePad is today?
Day: It’s getting there. There’s still some partners, a small number, that think of us as [Warranty Master]. I think it’s going to be pretty clear with this launch of Lifecycle Manager X exactly who we are. We’re showing the vision, how all these pieces fit together and how they drive customer success.
MSP Success: What’s the biggest pain point for MSPs that ScalePad is trying to solve?
Day: I think the biggest pain point for MSPs is how to get in the boardroom with a customer and have the correct conversation. That’s where the magic unfolds. It’s not sending someone a PDF. It’s, “I’m going to show up to a meeting. I’ve got a select number of topics we’re going to discuss. I’m going to get input from you as the customer, and we’re going to design a solution together.” The one thing we want to solve is owning the QBR—allowing your people to prepare for, deliver, and follow up on those meetings in a way that inspires the customers to take action. And it’s not the action of doing the QBR— it’s the nuance of what gets said and what gets left behind and what are the next steps.
That’s what I think the industry has been missing for a very long time. The PSA does not solve that. The RMM does not solve that. Backup solutions do not solve that. Cybersecurity tools do not solve that. It’s the human element. And the best example is AI. I’ve been on a bunch of panels recently talking about AI, and folks are like, “Hey, how are we going to monetize AI and take AI out to our customers?” That’s the wrong question. The question is: “How am I going to have a conversation about AI with my customers and have that be an open discussion on what they are trying to accomplish?” You don’t need AI if you have no goals tied to AI.
So I think this is going to be the magic bullet for everything that comes next. The magic bullet isn’t the software. The magic bullet is we finally figured out the types of conversations we need to have with our customers and how we need to show up to those meetings to get them to take action.
