Microsoft Consulting Best Practices
Progent’s staff of Microsoft and Cisco Premier consultants average longer than a decade of real-world industry experience, at the forefront of network service, performing a wide variety of IT tasks for a large mix of customers. Each Progent support professional shares a refined collection of leading practices that are combined into shared best practices standards that Progent teaches its support personnel. This ensures that you get not only expert IT help, but also a consultant with proven approaches for using computer knowledge to solve real-world IT problems rapidly.

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

  • Individual Experts
    Progent’s staff of network consultants is composed of some the most accomplished Microsoft and Cisco experts in the industry. With more than a decade of professional experience for each consultant, Progent's Microsoft Premier experts offer a tested set of methods for solving technical issues, planning projects, and delivering consulting services. The technical scope of Progent's support staff enables Progent to offer your company a consulting expert with tested ability and an effective technique for finding fast and affordable network solutions.

  • Problem Escalation Through Teamwork
    When appropriate, Progent relies on a group technique to solving the most difficult technical issues. By aggregating hundreds of man-years of background from Progent's Microsoft and Cisco Certified professionals, Progent can rapidly and efficiently handle even the most vexing issues. Working with hundreds of customers and performing thousands of complex deployment and integration projects every year gives Progent a special view on which techiques work and which don't. Subtle software compatibility issues are a minefield for even the most talented consultants unless they have 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 aggregate experience of its senior engineering staff to create an internal, company-wide set of methodologies designed to promote timely, affordable resolutions of information technology problems and to measure and optimize customer satisfaction. These practices include a strong focus on customer communication and services recording. Progent's Founder and President, Les Kent, has a 35-year track record of successful network integration, business management, sales and marketing, and operations. Progent's company-wide best practices are strongly driven by Mr. Kent's background developing complex technical solutions while working as a system architect, software developer, project manager, deployment expert and troubleshooter.

  • Ongoing Training
    As an authorized partner with Microsoft and Cisco, Progent makes sure that staff engineers participate in ongoing product and best-practices education that includes important lessons and procedures for new product adoption that have been developed from the experience of thousands of computer experts around the world. This promotes continually more efficient provision of services to Progent's clients.

  • Internal Database of Problems and Proven Solutions
    Progent's highly evolved service reporting system provides comprehensive documentation for all provided support. Every authorized Progent team consultant has full availability of all the specifics of services provided by any staff member to every customer. This history of problems and resolutions, as well as false alarms and miscues, is organized as an easily searchable in-house information store that enables Progent's support professionals to communicate their knowledge company-wide so that the general effectiveness of Progent's consulting services expands continuously. This support history also eliminates your dependence on a single consultant by making it possible for one Progent consultant to take up where another left off while minimizing hours spent getting up to speed on your network setup. An additional advantage of Progent's service reporting database is that your company can more smoothly handle IT management services internally if it appears economical to do so, or you can migrate to another IT outsourcing firm if you grow unhappy with Progent's support.

  • Microsoft Solutions Framework Project Methodology
    For major initiatives, Progent consultants follow the Microsoft Solutions Framework methodology for providing service. MSF separates major initiatives into distinct and rational components that minimize the risk of a project falling off track. Every step builds a solid foundation for the success of following phases. Design and integration issues are identified early in the project continuum so problems can be pi pointed and resolved before customer producivity is disrupted. In addition, this prevents costs from spinning out of control due to unexpected crises during large scale deployment. All project components are recorded to build a comprehensive description of consulting services delivered and to help in continuing network support.

  • Access to External Support Databases
    As certified consulting associates of Microsoft and Cisco, Progent has access to the industry's largest technical knowledge bases and resources. Among the most helpful technical knowledge bases available to Progent's engineers are the operational leading practices built into the various Management Packs created by Microsoft and other vendors for use in conjunction with Microsoft Operations Manager, the proactive server monitoring software used as the basis of Progent's IT outsourcing and network monitoring packages. Management Packs (MPs) contain specially designed scripted rules that can react to events, performance margins, and warnings monitored by Microsoft Operations Manager. Management Packs can also provide valuable suggestions on how to deal with certain problems by automatically extracting relevant technical notes from the extensive Microsoft Knowledge Base.
For additional information about Progent's network support packages, refer to Progent's Network Service Outsourcing Datasheets, available in Adobe Acrobat format 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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