Microsoft Consulting Best Practices
Progent’s team of Microsoft and Cisco Certified experts average longer than ten years of real-world professional experience, at the front lines of IT support, performing a broad variety of technical projects for an extensive array of businesses. Every Progent support professional shares a proven set of leading practices which are incorporated into company-wide best practices standards that Progent teaches its support staff. This means that you get not just world-class IT capability, but also a consultant with proven methods for applying computer knowledge to resolve real-world network problems quickly.

Key features and benefits of Progent's best practices include:

  • Individual Experts
    Progent’s staff of network engineers is made up of among the most experienced Microsoft and Cisco professionals in the industry. Averaging more than a decade of real-world experience for each engineer, Progent's Microsoft Premier experts bring a tested set of methods for solving network issues, managing projects, and delivering consulting services. The technical depth of Progent's engineering staff enables Progent to provide your business a consulting expert with tested ability and an efficient approach for finding quick and affordable network solutions.

  • Problem Escalation Through Teamwork
    When required, Progent utilizes a group technique to solving the most stubborn network problems. By leveraging hundreds of person-years of background from Progent's Microsoft and Cisco Certified experts, Progent can rapidly and efficiently solve even the most vexing issues. Working with hundreds of customers and completing thousands of complex implementation and integration projects annually gives Progent a special view on which techiques succeed and which ones do not. Subtle software compatibility issues are a minefield for even the most skilled engineers unless they bring a long and diverse background in hands-on experience with a wide range of technologies.

  • Company-wide Standards for Best Practices
    Progent has incorporated the combined background of its senior engineering personnel to create an internal, corporate-wide set of best practices intended to promote timely, affordable solutions of technical issues and to track and optimize customer satisfaction. These practices include a powerful emphasis on client communication and support recording. Progent's Founder and CEO, Les Kent, has a 35-year background of successful technology integration, corporate management, sales and marketing, and operations. Progent's corporate-wide best practices are strongly influenced by Mr. Kent's background developing complex information technology solutions while acting as a system architect, program developer, task manager, implementation professional and troubleshooter.

  • Ongoing Training
    As a certified partner with Microsoft, Progent ensures that staff consultants undergo continued technical and best-practices training that contains important information and methods for technology integration that have been developed from the practice of hundreds of thousands of computer experts around the world. This promotes increasingly effective provision of services to Progent's customers.

  • Internal Database of Problems and Proven Solutions
    Progent's highly evolved service reporting system provides comprehensive records for all delivered support. Each Progent staff member has complete availability of the specifics of support provided by any staff member to each client. This record of issues and resolutions, plus false alarms and missteps, is arranged as an easily searchable internal database that enables Progent's consultants to communicate their experiences corporate-wide to ensure that the general efficiency of Progent's consulting services grows continuously. This database also reduces your dependence on an individual consultant by allowing any Progent expert to pick up where another left off while minimizing hours wasting getting up to speed on your information system setup. An additional benefit of Progent's support documentation system is that your company can more easily handle network support duties internally if it becomes economical to do so, or you can move to another consulting company if you grow unhappy with Progent's support.

  • Microsoft Solutions Framework Project Methodology
    For larger initiatives, Progent consultants follow the Microsoft Solutions Framework (MSF) methodology for providing support. Microsoft Solutions Framework divides projects into distinct and rational phases that minimize the chance of a project falling out of control. Every phase creates a solid base for the success of following phases. Design and integration requirements are identified early in the project continuum so problems can be pi pointed and resolved before customer producivity is impacted. In addition, this keeps costs from going through the roof due to unforeseen problems during production roll outs. All project components are recorded to create a comprehensive description of consulting services delivered and to assist in continuing network support.

  • Access to External Support Databases
    As certified consulting associates of Microsoft and Cisco, Progent has the benefit of the world's most extensive technical knowledge bases and resource pool. Among the most helpful support knowledge bases accessible by Progent's consultants are the industry best practices incorporated into the assorted Management Packs published by Microsoft and other vendors to be used in conjunction with Microsoft Operations Manager, the proactive server monitoring platform that is the basis of Progent's IT outsourcing and network monitoring packages. Management Packs (MPs) consist of custom designed scripted rules that will react to events, thresholds, and alerts tracked by Microsoft Operations Manager. MPs can also give valuable advice on how to deal with certain issues by programmatically finding relevant technical notes from the vast Microsoft Knowledge Base.
For additional information concerning Progent's network service packages, refer to Progent's Network Support Outsourcing Datasheets, available in Acrobat files for easy printing.

For an example of how Microsoft Operations Manager helped a business achieve enterprise-class network management, read the Microsoft Operations Manager Case Study.

To contact Progent about consulting services for your small business network, call 1-800-993-9400 or visit Contact Progent.

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