ScalePad CEO On New Lifecycle Manager X: ‘It’s Time To Put The Customer At The Center’

‘This is about moving MSPs from service providers to strategic growth partners,’ says ScalePad CEO Chris Day. ‘The MSP space is evolving and clients want strategy, not just support. Lifecycle Manager X unlocks that customer success mindset, allowing MSPs to deliver more value, build trust and become indispensable business partners.’

ScalePad has launched Lifecycle Manager X, a major evolution of its flagship platform, positioning it as a customer success platform built to help MSPs align IT services with business outcomes.

“This is about moving MSPs from service providers to strategic growth partners,” ScalePad CEO Chris Day told CRN in an exclusive interview. “The MSP space is evolving and clients want strategy, not just support. Lifecycle Manager X unlocks that customer success mindset, allowing MSPs to deliver more value, build trust and become indispensable business partners.”

Lifecycle Manager is Vancouver, Canada-based ScalePad’s flagship platform designed to help MSPs manage, automate and elevate their client relationships.

At the heart of Lifecycle Manager X is a suite of new features including ClientIQ, which are AI-driven executive summaries; goals and success plans, which are tools that allow MSPs to tie recommendations directly to a client’s goals; budgets, which are forecasting capabilities that provide clarity on future technology investments; assessments, which are prebuilt templates for cyber risk and AI readiness; and strategic meetings and reports, which are tools to elevate quarterly business reviews (QBRs) into outcome-focused planning sessions.

Day said that Lifecycle Manager X, which was curated by partner feedback, is a deliberate step toward a new MSP identity. “This isn’t just a feature drop. It’s a shift in mindset. It’s time to put the customer at the center of the story,” he said.

“Honestly, I wish we launched this 20 years ago,” he added. “We’ve been trained to treat the PSA as the center of the universe, but it doesn’t support the part of the business that really matters after a customer is on-boarded—how to retain them, grow with them and have strategic conversations that drive mutual success.”

The platform also features AI embedded into workflows.

“AI is not here to replace the human side of MSP relationships,” Day said. “It’s here to give MSPs time back. If a QBR takes four hours to prep, that’s a problem. With AI like ClientIQ, we can surface relevant conversation starters in seconds. It’s about enabling, not automating, the human touch.”

Joe Markert, CEO of Berkeley, Calif.-based MSP TransformITive, said his company has been advocating for tools that help MSPs move beyond ticket resolution and into transformation leadership. “Lifecycle Manager X is the first platform that delivers on that promise,” he said.

“The real power of LifeCycle Manager X is in its ability to make customer success a reality for MSPs,” he told CRN in an email. “It’s not just a dashboard, it’s a framework for building trust, driving outcomes and becoming a true strategic partner for our clients.”

Looking ahead, ScalePad plans to add even more depth and capabilities to the platform. These include analytics integration, richer deliverables and a new alignment module to help MSPs identify standardization opportunities across client environments. All of it will be API-forward and built with extensibility in mind.

“We’ve built this with an open ecosystem philosophy,” Day said. “No data lock-in, full API support and tight integration with any tool you use.”

Lifecycle Manager X is available now to all Lifecycle Manager Pro partners.

“It’s time to draw a line in the sand. This industry needs to move forward,” Day said. “Lifecycle Manager X won’t solve customer success for you, but it will support that mission. Let’s stop talking about being strategic partners and actually start acting like it.”