Computer Help for Midsize Businesses

Microsoft and Cisco Consulting Best Practices
Progent’s team of Microsoft and Cisco Premier Certified experts average more than ten years of real-world professional background, at the front lines of IT service, performing a wide range of IT tasks for an extensive mix of businesses. Each Progent consultant shares a proven set of leading practices which are combined into shared best practices training that Progent instills in its support staff. This ensures that you get not only expert IT capability, but also a consultant with proven approaches for using technical knowledge to resolve real-world IT problems efficiently.

Features and benefits of Progent's best practices include:

• Individual Professionals
  Progent’s staff of network consultants is made up of among the most accomplished Microsoft and Cisco experts in the industry. With more than a decade of professional experience per engineer, Progent's Microsoft Certified experts offer a proven set of methodologies for resolving network problems, planning 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 technique for finding fast and affordable network solutions.

• Reliance on Teamwork
  When required, Progent utilizes a team approach to resolving the most stubborn technical problems. By leveraging hundreds of man-years of background from Progent's Microsoft and Cisco Premier professionals, Progent can rapidly and cost-effectively solve even the most vexing problems. Consulting with hundreds of clients and completing thousands of sophisticated implementation and integration jobs annually gives Progent a special perspective on which approaches succeed and which don't. Complex software compatibility issues are a minefield for even the most talented consultants unless they bring an extensive and varied history in hands-on work with a broad variety of technologies.

• Corporate-wide Policies for Best Practices
  Progent has used the aggregate background of its senior consulting personnel to create an in-house, company-wide collection of best practices designed to ensure timely, cost-effective solutions of information technology issues and to track and maximize customer satisfaction. These methodologies include a powerful emphasis on client communication and services documentation. Progent's Founder and President, Les Kent, has a 35-year background of successful technology consulting, business management, sales and marketing, and administration. Progent's corporate-wide best practices are strongly driven by Mr. Kent's experiences developing challenging technical solutions while working as a network architect, program developer, project manager, implementation expert and troubleshooter.

• Continuing Professional Education
  As a certified partner with Microsoft, Progent makes sure that staff engineers participate in ongoing technical and best-practices training that contains important lessons and methods for new product integration that have been developed from the experience of thousands of computer professionals around the world. This results in increasingly efficient delivery of support to Progent's clients.

• Internal Database of Problems and Proven Solutions
  Progent's advanced service documentation system offers comprehensive records for all delivered services. Each authorized Progent team consultant has full access to all the details of services provided by any staff member to each client. This database of issues and solutions, plus false alarms and missteps, is arranged as readily searchable in-house information store that enables Progent's support professionals to share their knowledge corporate-wide to ensure that the general effectiveness of Progent's consulting services expands continuously. This database also eliminates your dependence on an individual consultant by making it possible for any Progent expert to take up where another left off while saving time spent getting familiar with your network environment. Another advantage of Progent's support documentation database is that your company can more smoothly take on network support services in house if it appears cost-effective to do so, or you can move to another IT outsourcing firm if you grow dissatisfied with Progent's service.

• Microsoft Solutions Framework Project Methodology
  For major initiatives, Progent engineers use the Microsoft Solutions Framework (MSF) model for delivering service. Microsoft Solutions Framework separates major initiatives into distinct and rational phases that reduce the risk of a project falling off track. Every step creates a strong foundation for the completion of later phases. Design and integration issues are identified at the start of the project cycle so problems can be pi pointed and dealt with before customer workflow is disrupted. This also prevents expenses from skyrocketing due to unexpected crises during major roll outs. All phases are documented to create a detailed database of technical services provided and to assist in ongoing network support.

• Access to External Support Databases
  As authorized consulting partners of Microsoft and Cisco, Progent has the benefit of the industry's largest technical databases and resources. Among the most helpful support knowledge bases available to Progent's consultants are the operational leading practices built into the various Management Packs published by Microsoft and other vendors for use in conjunction with Microsoft System Center Operations Manager, the automated network monitoring platform that is the foundation of Progent's special IT outsourcing packages. Management Packs (MPs) consist of specially designed processing rules that can respond to events, thresholds, and warnings tracked by Microsoft System Center Operations Manager. Management Packs can also provide expert advice on how to deal with certain problems by programmatically finding appropriate technical notes from the vast Microsoft support database.