Network Support for Small Companies

Microsoft Consulting Best Practices
Progent’s staff of Microsoft and Cisco Certified experts average more than a decade of real-world industry experience, in the trenches of IT support, executing a broad variety of IT projects for a large mix of customers. Each Progent consultant shares a proven collection of best practices which are incorporated into company-wide best practices training that Progent instills in its support team. This means that you get not only world-class IT capability, but also a support engineer with field-tested methods for using technical knowledge to repair actual network problems quickly.

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

• Individual Experts
  Progent’s staff of IT engineers is made up of some the most accomplished Microsoft and Cisco experts in the industry. Averaging more than 10 years of professional experience per consultant, Progent's Microsoft Certified experts offer a proven set of methodologies for solving network issues, planning projects, and providing consulting support. The technical depth of Progent's engineering team enables Progent to provide your company a consulting expert with task-relevant ability 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 technical problems. By leveraging hundreds of man-years of experience from Progent's Microsoft and Cisco Premier experts, Progent can rapidly and cost-effectively handle even the most challenging problems. Working with hundreds of customers and completing thousands of sophisticated implementation and integration jobs every year offers Progent a special view on which approaches work and which ones do not. Subtle software compatibility issues are a minefield for even the most skilled consultants unless they have a long and varied background in real-world work with a wide range of technologies.

• Company-wide Standards for Best Practices
  Progent has used the aggregate experience of its top engineering staff to create an in-house, corporate-wide set of leading practices designed to promote fast, affordable resolutions of technical problems and to track and maximize client approval. These methodologies include a strong emphasis on customer communication and services recording. Progent's Founder and CEO, Les Kent, has a 35-year background of successful network integration, corporate management, marketing, and administration. Progent's company-wide best practices are strongly driven by Mr. Kent's experiences creating challenging information technology solutions while acting as a system architect, program developer, task manager, implementation expert and troubleshooter.

• Ongoing Training
  As an authorized partner with Microsoft, Progent ensures that in-house consultants undergo continued product and methodology training that includes important lessons and procedures for technology adoption that have been developed from the practice of hundreds of thousands of technical professionals around the world. This results in continually more efficient delivery of support to Progent's clients.

• Internal Database of Problems and Proven Solutions
  Progent's highly evolved service reporting system offers detailed records for all provided services. Each authorized Progent team member has full access to all the specifics of services provided by any staff member to each customer. This database of issues and resolutions, as well as false alarms and missteps, is arranged as readily searchable in-house information store that enables Progent's support professionals to communicate their experiences corporate-wide so that the overall efficiency of Progent's consulting services grows continuously. This database also eliminates your dependence on a single consultant by making it possible for one Progent consultant to take up where another stopped while saving hours wasting getting familiar with your information system environment. Another advantage of Progent's support reporting database is that your business can more easily handle network management duties internally if it becomes economical to do so, or you can move to another consulting firm if you grow dissatisfied with Progent's service.

• Microsoft Solutions Framework Project Methodology
  For larger initiatives, Progent consultants use the Microsoft Solutions Framework methodology for delivering service. Microsoft Solutions Framework breaks down projects into distinct and rational components that minimize the chance of a project getting off track. Every step builds a solid foundation for the success of later phases. Design and integration issues are identified early in the project continuum so problems can be pi pointed and dealt with before client workflow is impacted. This also prevents expenses from going through the roof due to unexpected problems during major deployment. All project components are recorded to create a detailed database of consulting services delivered and to assist in ongoing system maintenance.

• Access to External Support Databases
  As certified support partners of Microsoft and Cisco, Progent has the benefit of the world's most extensive information technology knowledge bases and resources. Among the most helpful support databases available to Progent's consultants are the industry best practices incorporated into the various Management Packs created by Microsoft and other vendors for use in conjunction with Microsoft System Center Operations Manager, the proactive server monitoring software used as the foundation of Progent's IT outsourcing and network monitoring packages. Management Packs contain custom designed scripted rules that will respond to events, thresholds, and alerts monitored by Microsoft Operations Manager. Management Packs can also provide valuable suggestions on how to deal with certain issues by programmatically extracting relevant technical notes from the vast Microsoft Knowledge Base.

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.