Features and benefits of Progent's best practices include:

• Individual Professionals
  Progent’s staff of IT consultants is composed of some the most experienced Microsoft and Cisco professionals in Northern California. Averaging more than 10 years of professional background per consultant, Progent's Microsoft and Cisco qualified experts bring a tested set of methods for solving technical problems, managing projects, and delivering consulting support. The technical depth of Progent's support staff allows Progent to offer your business a consulting expert with tested skills and an efficient approach for delivering quick and inexpensive network solutions.

• Reliance on Teamwork
  When required, Progent relies on a group technique to resolving the most stubborn technical issues. By leveraging hundreds of person-years of experience from Progent's Microsoft and Cisco certified professionals, Progent can rapidly and cost-effectively handle even the most vexing issues. Consulting with hundreds of customers and performing thousands of sophisticated implementation and configuration jobs annually offers Progent a special view on which techiques succeed and which don't. Subtle software interactions are a minefield for even the most skilled engineers unless they bring a long and varied history in hands-on work with a broad range of technologies.

• Corporate-wide Policies for Best Practices
  Progent has incorporated the combined background of its senior engineering personnel to create an internal, company-wide set of best practices intended to ensure fast, affordable resolutions of information technology problems and to measure and optimize client satisfaction. These practices include a strong emphasis on customer communication and support recording. Progent's Founder and President, Les Kent, has a 25-year track record of successful network consulting, corporate management, marketing, and operations. Progent's corporate-wide best practices are significantly influenced by Mr. Kent's background developing challenging technical solutions while working as a system designer, software developer, task manager, deployment expert and troubleshooter.

• Continuing Professional Education
  As an authorized partner with Microsoft and Cisco, Progent ensures that staff engineers undergo ongoing product and methodology education that contains valuable lessons and procedures for new product integration that have been gleaned from the practice of hundreds of thousands of computer experts worldwide. This promotes continually more efficient provision of support to Progent's clients.

• Internal Database of Problems and Proven Solutions
  Progent's advanced service documentation system provides detailed records for all provided services. Each authorized Progent staff member has complete access to all the specifics of services delivered by any engineer to every customer. This history of problems and resolutions, plus false alarms and missteps, is arranged as readily searchable in-house database that enables Progent's support professionals to share their experiences company-wide to ensure that the overall efficiency of Progent's consulting services grows over time. This support history also reduces your dependence on a single consultant by making it possible for one Progent expert to take up where another stopped while saving time wasting getting up to speed on your information system setup. An additional advantage of Progent's service reporting database is that your company can more smoothly handle network support duties internally if it becomes economical to do so, or you can move to another IT outsourcing company if you grow unhappy with Progent's service.

• Microsoft Solutions Framework Project Methodology
  For major initiatives, Progent consultants follow the Microsoft Solutions Framework methodology for delivering service. Microsoft Solutions Framework breaks down major initiatives into distinct and manageable components that minimize the chance of a project getting off track. Each phase creates a solid foundation for the completion of later phases. Planning and deployment requirements are identified early in the project cycle so difficulties can be pi pointed and resolved before client workflow is disrupted. In addition, this prevents expenses from skyrocketing due to unforeseen crises during major roll outs. All project components are documented to build a comprehensive description of technical services delivered and to help in ongoing system support.

• Access to External Support Databases
  As certified consulting partners of Microsoft and Cisco, Progent has the benefit of the world's most extensive information technology databases and resource pool. Among the most powerful support knowledge bases available to Progent's consultants are the industry best practices built into the various Management Packs created by Microsoft and third parties for use in conjunction with Microsoft Operations Manager, the proactive network monitoring software that is the basis of Progent's special IT outsourcing packages. Management Packs consist specially designed scripted rules that can react to events, thresholds, and warnings tracked by Microsoft Operations Manager. Management Packs can also provide expert suggestions on how to handle specific problems by programmatically finding relevant technical notes from the vast Microsoft support database.

To get in touch with Progent for mid-size business network support, call 1-800-993-9400 or send email to network-support-help@progent.com.