Computer Outsourcing for Medium-size Businesses

Microsoft and Cisco Consulting Best Practices
Progent's team of Microsoft and Cisco Premier Certified consultants average longer than a decade of hands-on industry background, at the front lines of network service, executing a wide variety of IT projects for an extensive array of businesses. Each Progent support professional shares a proven set of leading practices that are incorporated into shared best practices training that Progent instills in its support staff. This guarantees that you get not only world-class technical help, but also a support engineer with proven methods for applying computer knowledge to fix actual IT problems quickly.

Features and benefits of Progent's best practices include:

• Individual Professionals
  Progent's staff of network engineers is made up of some the most accomplished Microsoft and Cisco experts in the industry. Averaging more than 10 years of professional background per engineer, Progent's Microsoft Premier experts offer a tested set of methods for resolving network issues, planning projects, and delivering consulting support. The technical depth of Progent's engineering team allows Progent to provide your business a consulting expert with task-relevant ability and an efficient technique for delivering fast and affordable IT solutions.

• Reliance on Teamwork
  When appropriate, Progent utilizes a group approach to resolving the most stubborn technical problems. By aggregating hundreds of man-years of background from Progent's Microsoft and Cisco Premier Certified professionals, Progent can rapidly and cost-effectively handle even the most challenging problems. Working with hundreds of customers and completing thousands of sophisticated deployment and configuration projects annually offers Progent a unique perspective on which approaches work and which ones do not. Subtle software interactions are a potential trap for even the most skilled engineers unless they bring an extensive and varied background in hands-on work with a broad variety of technologies.

• Corporate-wide Policies for Best Practices
  Progent has incorporated the aggregate background of its top engineering personnel to create an in-house, corporate-wide set of methodologies designed to ensure fast, cost-effective resolutions of information technology issues and to track and optimize customer satisfaction. These practices include a powerful focus on client communication and support documentation. Progent's Founder and CEO, Les Kent, has a 35-year background of successful network integration, business management, marketing, and administration. Progent's corporate-wide best practices are significantly influenced by Mr. Kent's background developing challenging information technology solutions while working as a network architect, software developer, task manager, implementation professional and diagnostic engineer.

• Continuing Professional Education
  As an authorized partner with Microsoft, Progent makes sure that in-house consultants undergo ongoing product and methodology education that includes important information and procedures for technology adoption that have been developed from the practice of hundreds of thousands of computer experts around the world. This results in continually more effective provision of support to Progent's clients.

• Internal Database of Problems and Proven Solutions
  Progent's advanced service documentation system offers detailed records for all provided services. Every authorized Progent staff consultant has complete access to all the details of services provided by any consultant to every client. This record of issues and solutions, plus false alarms and missteps, is organized as readily accessible internal information store that allows Progent's consultants to communicate their knowledge corporate-wide so that the overall effectiveness of Progent's consulting services grows continuously. This support history also eliminates your reliance on an individual consultant by making it possible for any Progent consultant to pick up where another stopped while saving hours spent getting ramped up on your network setup. An additional benefit of Progent's support reporting database is that your business can more smoothly take on network management services in house if it becomes economical to do so, or you can migrate to another consulting firm if you become unhappy with Progent's service.

• Microsoft Solutions Framework Project Methodology
  For larger projects, Progent engineers follow the Microsoft Solutions Framework (MSF) model for delivering service. MSF breaks down major initiatives into distinct and manageable components that minimize the risk of a project getting off track. Every step builds a solid foundation for the success of later phases. Planning and integration requirements are defined early in the project cycle so difficulties can be anticipated and resolved before customer workflow is disrupted. This also keeps costs from spinning out of control because of unexpected problems during large scale deployment. All project components are documented to create a comprehensive description of consulting services delivered and to help in continuing network maintenance.

• Access to External Support Databases
  As certified consulting partners of Microsoft and Cisco, Progent has access to the industry's most extensive information technology knowledge bases and resources. Some of the most powerful support databases available to Progent's consultants are the operational best practices built into the various Management Packs created by Microsoft and third parties to be used with Microsoft System Center Operations Manager, the proactive network monitoring software used as the basis of Progent's special IT outsourcing packages. Management Packs (MPs) contain custom built processing rules that can respond to events, thresholds, and warnings monitored by Microsoft System Center Operations Manager. MPs can also provide expert advice on how to deal with certain problems by automatically finding appropriate articles from the extensive Microsoft support database.