Learn & Grow

Having visibility into certain Budget Items - even those not always directly covered in your services - can give your clients a more comprehensive and accurate tech budget for 2025.  Here are some of those overlooked but helpful inclusions: 1. Non-Contracted Software and LicensesShadow IT Costs: Subscriptions or apps used by departments without MSP oversight. One-off Software Purchases: These might not recur annually but can add up over time. 2. Third-Party Maintenance and WarrantiesHardware Maintenance: Contracts or extended warranties for devices like printers or specialized machinery. Non-Standard Support Costs: Items not covered by the MSP, such as specialized server or hardware support. 3. Training and CertificationsStaff Training: Technology related training or certifications, especially for compliance. User Adoption Tools: Resources like training sessions or internal tools that boost productivity on existing software 4. Data Storage, Backup and RecoveryOff-site Backups: Cloud or

When “not right now” or “I don’t have the money” are the usual replies to most of your recommendations, you should really think about making your Roadmaps a strategic and consultative conversation.  Here are some strategies that we will be talking about during our User Group Workshops:Understand the Root Cause Reframe the Value Proposition Simplify and Prioritize Recommendations Review and Adjust the Timeline Leverage Data and Evidence Engage in Collaborative Planning Educate the Client Build Trust Through Communication Leverage Risk-Based Contracting Be Prepared to Walk Away Understand the Root Cause Clarify Concerns: Schedule another meeting within the week to fully understand why the client is rejecting the roadmap or project. Ask open ended questions like, “What are your primary concerns with this recommendation?” This can reveal underlying issues such as budget constraints, lack of understanding, or misaligned priorities.  Identify Priorities: Ensure the recommendations align with

What makes an MSP? What are some of the challenges they face day to day? These are some of the questions the internal learning team asked a few industry veterans that ScalePad is lucky to call Rocketeers. ScalePad Rocketeers are dedicated to understanding the partners they service. With our new series, MSP Lens, we’re hearing from our channel team and former MSP owners on what keeps MSPs up at night and what challenges they’ve listened to from MSPs on the road. After watching this, do you relate to any of the challenges we talked about? Do you have any feedback on what our internal teams should focus on when training Rocketeers on what it means to be an MSP? Let us know in the comments below!

With the threat landscape continuing to grow, Trend 2 in Gartner's latest report particularly caught my eye. We’ve been talking about how critical it is for MSPs to get in front of certain conversations with their clients, lately regarding AI, but Cybersecurity remains a top issue and one that MSPs are in an advantageous position to help improve. Fostering a Partnership Mentality At a recent event, I had an MSP tell me that they “hate QBRs”. Putting on my curiosity hat, I uncovered that the issue was this person hates “selling all the time” and doesn’t appreciate the salesy nature of QBRs. He wasn’t wrong, as the industry has certainly been telling us for years that QBRs are the primary mechanism for increasing wallet share. But there’s a lot more to QBRs than a sales agenda. Whether you subscribe to the QBR mantra, or you have monthly check-in calls, these critical outcomes should be prioritized:Establish Common Goals: Begin every meeting by setting or revisiting common cybersecurity

If you’ve ever attended a ScalePad Ignition event, you’ll know that these highly anticipated partner events are an opportunity for us to look back at the year and forward to our growth. With a lineup of industry-leading speakers and new product announcements, our December 2023 Ignition was one of our best yet! If you missed out, don't worry.  Below, I’ve rounded up all the essential news you need to know from our December 2023 Ignition event! Understanding the ScalePad purpose: A Future in Harmony™ScalePad’s core purpose is to maintain a Future in Harmony™ for not just our partners but for our Rocketeer staff as well. But what does Future in Harmony™  truly mean? We follow a framework that guides our thinking on how we support you. There have been many needle-moving acquisitions in 2023, including Cognition360, ControlMap, Lifecycle Insights, and Quoter. With the help of our partners, in 2023, we accomplished 📣: Lifecycle Manager: 15M+ hardware assets managed 79M+ software assets m

Way too often, the Quarterly Business Review (QBR) is treated as a sales activity – an opportunity to get in front of your clients and sell them new warranties and products. Unfortunately, also way too often, MSPs don’t have the proper action plan in place for their QBRs and end up putting in plenty of effort but end up getting low results in return. The desire is to change to a low effort, high return business review should be the goal of every MSP. To do that, MSPs need to change their focus around the QBR. That means thinking about it as a strategy meeting, not a sales meeting. “It’s changing the perspective in that your value isn’t in the products that you sell from a sales perspective, but it’s in your strategy,” said Luis Giraldo, CXO with ScalePad. “The sales QBR is what challenges MSPs to deliver them successfully because the client sees them coming. They become a pushback exercise. It becomes ‘every time you have a meeting with us, you’re trying to sell us more stuff’ because

Whether it’s truly quarterly, yearly, or whenever the clients accept an invite – all MSPs want to run a successful Quarterly Business Review (QBR) meeting. Yet common planning mistakes can cause major problems like wasted time and resources and disengaged clients.Having good QBR meetings is the key to improving your relationship with clients and ultimately growing your business. Get started with these five best practices for planning your next QBR. 1. Define the Value of a QBR MeetingYour QBR meeting is a service, but have you thought about the value it provides? Defining the value of the meeting is an MSP best practice that helps you plan out what information to share.The value of a QBR may vary depending on the client. Start by identifying each client’s needs and how a QBR can assist them in achieving their goals. For example:Do they want to ensure a high level of security? Each QBR is an opportunity to review potential security risks like outdated operating systems or former employe

For the most up-to-date version of this article, please visit this link.Security Awareness Data: Breach Secure Now IntegrationIf you want the ability to communicate Security Awareness Training results/status in your Business Review Meeting, LCI now offers the ability to include Breach Secure Now (BSN) data in a couple of different reports in our platform.Specifically, you can view BSN data in: The User List A complete Breach Secure Now report is available in More Reports  click the Breach Secure Now Reports Tile.   Lastly, we have added a new component in Report Builder that allows you to bring in your BSN data. Note on ESS Color Coding:  We follow BSN cut scores for color coding ESS Scores.  The scale is:0-499 - Poor/Red500-629 - Fair/Yellow630-800 - Good/Green How to Enable the BSN Integration within LCI If in step #1 below, you do NOT see the Integrations tab, please contact LCI Support and we will work with LCI to get in enabled for you. Step 1: Enabling Lifecycle Insights as an in