The Challenge: Turning Manual Reports Into Better Customer Conversations
Converging Networks Group (CNG) has used strategic business reviews for years to help customers understand service trends, technology risk, lifecycle needs, and upcoming priorities. The challenge was that the process was entirely manual. As Director of Managed Services at CNG, Anthony Davilo built each review from scratch, pulling information from the RMM, ticketing system, project history, and CSAT data before turning it into a polished Word document.
“That could easily take four hours for a small customer, but eight hours for a large customer,” says Anthony. “If I had multiple customer meetings that week, I would have to start a week in advance.”
With no marketing department to lean on, Anthony also created the visual assets himself in Adobe Illustrator so customers received a report that was clear and professional. The finished product was valuable, but the time spent assembling it reduced the time available for customer-specific analysis, planning, and follow-up.
As CNG grew, the issue was not simply producing more reports. The team needed a repeatable way to give every customer a consistent review experience, connect recommendations to business priorities, and spend more of the meeting discussing decisions instead of explaining disconnected data.
The Solution: One Platform to Connect the Customer Story
“We were going to have to hire somebody just to keep on top of the reporting,” says Anthony. “We wondered, can we get the value out of a tool, keep the operating costs lower, and still provide the same value to our customers? And the answer was yes.”
When CNG discovered Lifecycle Manager, the immediate benefit was not just faster reporting. The platform brought asset data, assessments, goals, roadmaps, and budgets into one place, giving the team more time to interpret the information and explain what it meant for each customer.
CNG adopted Lifecycle Manager and Lifecycle Insights around the same time, using Lifecycle Manager for asset visibility and Lifecycle Insights for assessments and customer reporting. When ScalePad combined the products into a unified platform, CNG could present one connected story instead of moving between separate tools. Assets, assessments, goals, roadmaps, and budgets could be reviewed together in the context of the customer’s priorities.
“The reporting is unmatched in Lifecycle Manager,” says Anthony.
Adding Quoter made that customer conversation even clearer. “I don’t have to go into HubSpot and pull up a PDF quote anymore,” Anthony says. By surfacing project costs directly beside an initiative, CNG can help customers understand what is being recommended, why it matters, what it may cost, and where it fits in the roadmap. “It’s so much easier to have it all in one place and makes it much more seamless to present initiatives to clients.”
The Results: Clearer Planning, Faster Reviews, Stronger Relationships
By centralizing customer information and standardizing the review process in Lifecycle Manager, CNG created a more consultative experience. The team can prepare efficiently, present recommendations in context, and give customers a clearer way to decide what should happen now, what can wait, and how each initiative fits the budget.
- Less time building reports, more time serving customers. Before Lifecycle Manager, preparing for a customer review could consume most of a workday through report exports, formatting, and visual design. Now, a review that once took up to eight hours can be prepared in about half an hour. “I just did an SBR the other day that I kind of let slip,” says Anthony. “I was able to get that done in 30 minutes.” Those recovered hours can go back into understanding the account, preparing guidance, and following through after the meeting.
- Customer investments tied to a clear plan. Lifecycle Manager gave CNG a consistent way to connect recommendations to documented needs, business impact, timing, and budget, so customers could make informed decisions about investments that made sense for their organizations. As a result, customer-approved initiatives had helped CNG reach 177% of its quarterly NRC goal through account management rather than new-business acquisition.
- A consistent experience as the team grows. When CNG hired two new account managers, onboarding them across twelve separate platforms would have been difficult and slow. Lifecycle Manager gave them a shared view of each account, allowing them to become productive in weeks. “The barrier to understand accounts is extremely low,” says Anthony. “They don’t need to understand every underlying tool that’s collecting data. They just need to be able to speak to the results.” That consistency helps customers receive the same planning experience regardless of who leads the review.
- Business conversations customers can act on. With assets, assessments, roadmaps, budgets, and initiative costs visible in one place, CNG’s reviews shifted away from technical data dumps and toward practical planning. “We focus the conversation around what clients want to accomplish with their business and their money,” says Anthony. “It’s their business. We’re just here to be the guide.”
For Anthony, that shift from selling to guiding is the core of the model. Customers can see the need, the business impact, the timing, the cost, and the tradeoffs in one conversation. They remain in control of the decision, while CNG provides the context needed to prioritize responsibly.
Lifecycle Manager has become central to how CNG maintains customer context, prepares reviews, and supports account managers. It gives the team a shared place to connect technical findings to customer goals and financial planning without turning the review into a product pitch.
The result is a process that works better for both sides: CNG can prepare efficiently, and customers can make informed technology decisions at a pace and budget that fit their business.