Microsoft Consulting Best Practices
Progent’s staff of Microsoft and Cisco Certified consultants average longer than ten years of hands-on industry background, at the front lines of IT service, performing a wide variety of IT tasks for an extensive mix of clients. Each Progent consultant shares a proven collection of leading practices which are incorporated into company-wide best practices training that Progent teaches its support team. This guarantees that you get not only expert IT capability, but also a support engineer with proven methods for using technical knowledge to fix actual IT problems quickly.

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

  • Individual Experts
    Progent’s team of network consultants is made up of some the most experienced Microsoft and Cisco professionals in the industry. Averaging more than 10 years of real-world background per consultant, Progent's Microsoft and Cisco Certified experts bring a tested set of methodologies for solving technical issues, managing projects, and providing consulting support. The technical depth of Progent's engineering team enables Progent to provide your company a consultant with tested skills and an efficient approach for finding quick and inexpensive network solutions.

  • Problem Escalation Through Teamwork
    When appropriate, Progent utilizes a team approach to resolving the most stubborn network problems. By aggregating hundreds of man-years of experience from Progent's Microsoft and Cisco Certified experts, Progent can rapidly and cost-effectively handle even the most challenging issues. Working with hundreds of clients and completing thousands of complex implementation and configuration projects annually offers Progent a unique view on which approaches work and which don't. Complex software compatibility issues are a potential trap for even the most talented consultants unless they have an extensive and diverse background in real-world work with a broad variety of technologies.

  • Company-wide Standards for Best Practices
    Progent has used the aggregate experience of its senior consulting staff to develop an in-house, company-wide set of methodologies designed to ensure timely, affordable solutions of technical issues and to track and maximize client approval. These methodologies include a strong focus on customer communication and support recording. Progent's Founder and CEO, Les Kent, has a 35-year track record of innovative technology consulting, business management, marketing, and administration. Progent's company-wide best practices are strongly driven by Mr. Kent's experiences developing challenging information technology solutions while working as a system architect, program developer, task manager, implementation expert and diagnostic engineer.

  • Ongoing Training
    As an authorized partner with Microsoft, Progent makes sure that in-house engineers participate in ongoing technical and best-practices training that includes important lessons and procedures for new product adoption that have been developed from the practice of thousands of technical professionals 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 offers comprehensive documentation for all provided services. Each authorized Progent staff consultant has full access to all the details of services delivered by any staff member to each customer. This history of issues and resolutions, plus false alarms and miscues, is arranged as readily accessible internal database that allows Progent's consultants to communicate their experiences company-wide to ensure that the general efficiency of Progent's consulting services expands continuously. This support history also eliminates your reliance on a single engineer by making it possible for one Progent consultant to take up where another left off while saving time wasting getting up to speed on your information system environment. An additional benefit of Progent's support reporting database is that your business can more smoothly handle network management services internally if it appears cost-effective to do so, or you can migrate to a different IT outsourcing firm if you become unhappy with Progent's service.

  • Microsoft Solutions Framework Project Methodology
    For larger initiatives, Progent engineers use the Microsoft Solutions Framework methodology for providing support. Microsoft Solutions Framework divides major initiatives into distinct and manageable components that reduce the chance of a project getting off track. Every phase creates a solid base for the success of later phases. Design and integration issues are defined at the start of the project cycle so problems can be pi pointed and resolved before customer workflow is impacted. In addition, this keeps costs from going through the roof due to unexpected crises during major roll outs. All phases are documented to create a detailed database of consulting services delivered and to assist in ongoing system maintenance.

  • Access to External Support Databases
    As authorized consulting partners of Microsoft and Cisco, Progent has access to the world's most extensive information technology knowledge bases and resources. Among the most helpful technical knowledge bases accessible by Progent's consultants are the industry best practices incorporated into the various Management Packs created by Microsoft and other vendors to be used with Microsoft Operations Manager, the proactive server monitoring software that is the foundation of Progent's IT outsourcing and network monitoring packages. Management Packs consist of custom built processing rules that can respond to events, performance margins, and warnings monitored by Microsoft System Center Operations Manager. Management Packs can also give expert suggestions on how to handle specific issues by automatically extracting relevant technical notes from the vast Microsoft Knowledge Base.
For more information about Progent's IT service packages, check out Progent's IT Support Outsourcing Datasheets, downloadable 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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