About Aligned Tek
Aligned Tek is an award-winning managed IT services provider based in Birmingham, Alabama, and Richmond, Virginia. Their mission is to empower businesses with robust cybersecurity and dynamic IT support.
- Size: 23 employees
- Location: Birmingham, Alabama & Richmond, Virginia
- Clients: Public sector and professional services
- Core Services: Cybersecurity and compliance
- ScalePad Products: Lifecycle Manager X
The Challenge: Moving Away From Reactive Project Management
Kirby Watson, President of Aligned Tek, knew that in order to grow his business, he needed a sturdy base for client management. “It doesn't matter how many new clients you can bring on,” he says. “If your operations aren't solid, they'll leave.”
But getting there was easier said than done. When he bought the business in 2022, he thought he was getting the MSP equivalent of a well-loved house—a bit dated, but nothing a fresh coat of paint couldn’t fix. What he’d actually inherited had some foundational cracks: “We quickly uncovered that we were overstaffed and our pricing was way off,” he says. “We were losing close to $70,000 a month.”
While he and the team scrambled to fix these issues, they had little time to think about how they were managing accounts—and how that might be contributing to their challenges.
“We were just doing renewals and reactive project management,” he says. “If we pitched something in the last quarter, there would be no record of it. Our recommendations would often get ignored by clients until something broke.”
That led to negative experiences for clients, who would come back and blame Aligned Tek whenever a piece of equipment failed or a license lapsed. Plus, without clear client roadmaps, it was nearly impossible to identify expansion opportunities to help them grow—which was their ultimate goal.
“Lifecycle Manager X has done wonders for our project revenue. We've exceeded our monthly project revenue forecast every month this year. —Kirby Watson, President, Aligned Tek
The Solution: Using Lifecycle Manager to Deepen Client Relationships and Become More Proactive
After a few years spent stabilizing the business, Aligned Tek began the process to acquire another MSP. “As we did our due diligence, one thing that stuck out is the results they had with growing their internal clients,” says Kirby.
That led to the discovery that the company they were evaluating was using Lifecycle Manager, which had played a huge role in their success. “They had this model where clients expected monthly calls. They were trained ask, ‘What do I have coming up, or what equipment is getting to the end of life?’” That level of proactivity was something Kirby and his team hadn’t reached with their existing clients—but they could see how transformative it would be to their business.
Once the acquisition was complete, Aligned Tek upgraded to Lifecycle Manager X and started rolling out the tool to their existing client base. For the first time ever, they had all their opportunities outlined for the year, with target dates based on the roadmaps they’d created.
The Results: More Revenue, More Confidence, and More Client Trust
With full visibility into their upcoming opportunities, the team was able to be more proactive than ever before—and that’s had a huge impact on their business. Some key results they’d achieved include:
- Smashing their project revenue goals. “Switching gears from reactive to proactive account management increased our project and our labor revenues substantially,” says Kirby. “We've exceeded our monthly project revenue or budget forecast every month this year, and we're at 194% of our objectives, year to date, for project labor dollars.” That’s their biggest first quarter ever—and they’ve continued to exceed their targets every month.
- Improving forecasting. Being able to look ahead lets them better serve their customers while seeing—and taking advantage of—more revenue opportunities. “We’re giving clients 18-month forecasts on their equipment. We're having monthly meetings with them. We're uncovering more projects,” says Kirby. “We now have dashboards built where we see the exact dollar amount for our project opportunities for the next month.”
- Bettering client relationships. Being more proactive with planning and touchpoints has led to increased client trust. “Some clients are happy to sign off on everything for the year at once and trust us to roll it out as it comes,’” says Kirby. But even for those who don’t do upfront approvals, being better informed has changed the tone of the conversation: “It’s gone from ‘Why did you not tell me about this, it crashed, and now I'm a day out of business’ to ‘Hey, that thing you’ve been telling us about finally broke, let's get another one.’ They're not blaming us.”
- Increasing employee effectiveness and satisfaction. For the internal team, the depth of insights provided by Lifecycle Manager has been nothing short of transformative. “Before her first meeting, my vCIO came running into my office with a printout of a presentation, saying ‘Look at everything I can show the client!’” says Kirby. “Lifecycle Manager gave her this superpower: the confidence to go in and tell clients, ‘I know what I'm talking about, I have everything here for you.’ And it immediately helped her open up opportunities and get things across the finish line.”
Lifecycle Manager X has given Aligned Tek the tools it needs to continue to grow and expand—not only through its existing client base, but also more potential acquisitions. “We will likely make another acquisition, towards the end of this year or next year,” says Kirby. “We feel really confident we've developed our platform for future growth. And a big part of that platform is Lifecycle Manager—it's so essential to our project and professional services revenue.”