Computer Network Support for Medium-size Businesses

Microsoft and Cisco Consulting Best Practices
Progent’s staff of Microsoft and Cisco Certified consultants average more than a decade of hands-on professional background, in the trenches of IT service, performing a broad variety of technical projects for a large array of customers. Each Progent consultant shares a refined set of leading practices which are incorporated into company-wide best practices standards that Progent instills in its support staff. This ensures that you get not just world-class technical help, but also a support engineer with proven approaches for applying technical knowledge to repair real-world network problems quickly.

Features and benefits of Progent's best practices include:

• Individual Professionals
  Progent’s team of network engineers is composed of some the most accomplished Microsoft and Cisco professionals in the industry. Averaging more than a decade of real-world background per engineer, Progent's Microsoft Certified experts bring a proven set of methodologies for resolving technical issues, managing projects, and providing professional support. The technical scope of Progent's engineering staff allows Progent to offer your business a consultant with tested ability and an effective approach for delivering quick and inexpensive network solutions.

• Reliance on Teamwork
  When required, Progent utilizes a group approach to resolving the most stubborn technical issues. By aggregating hundreds of man-years of experience from Progent's Microsoft and Cisco Premier Certified professionals, Progent can quickly and cost-effectively solve even the most vexing problems. Working with hundreds of customers and performing thousands of complex implementation and integration projects every year offers Progent a special view on which approaches succeed and which ones do not. Subtle software compatibility issues are a potential trap for even the most talented consultants unless they have an extensive and diverse background in hands-on work with a broad range of technologies.

• Corporate-wide Policies for Best Practices
  Progent has used the combined background of its top consulting personnel to develop an internal, corporate-wide collection of leading practices intended to promote timely, cost-effective solutions of information technology problems and to track and optimize customer satisfaction. These practices include a strong focus on client communication and support recording. Progent's Founder and CEO, 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 complex information technology solutions while working as a network architect, software developer, task manager, implementation expert and troubleshooter.

• Continuing Professional Education
  As a certified partner with Microsoft and Cisco, Progent ensures that staff engineers undergo continued product and methodology education that contains important information and procedures for technology adoption that have been developed from the experience of hundreds 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 advanced service documentation system offers comprehensive documentation for all provided services. Every Progent staff consultant has full access to all the details of support delivered by any staff member to each client. This record of issues and resolutions, as well as false alarms and miscues, is organized as readily accessible internal information store that allows Progent's support professionals to communicate their knowledge corporate-wide so that the general efficiency of Progent's support grows continuously. This support history also reduces your dependence on a single consultant by allowing any Progent consultant to take up where another stopped while minimizing hours spent getting familiar with your information system setup. An additional advantage of Progent's service reporting system is that your company can more easily handle IT management services internally if it becomes economical to do so, or you can move to a different IT outsourcing company if you become dissatisfied with Progent's support.

• Microsoft Solutions Framework Project Methodology
  For larger initiatives, Progent engineers follow the Microsoft Solutions Framework methodology for providing service. Microsoft Solutions Framework breaks down projects into distinct and manageable components that minimize the risk of a project getting off track. Each step builds a solid foundation for the success of following phases. Planning and integration requirements are defined early in the project continuum so problems can be anticipated and resolved before client producivity is impacted. In addition, this prevents costs from going through the roof due to unexpected crises during large scale deployment. All phases are documented to create a detailed description of technical services provided and to help in continuing system support.

• Access to External Support Databases
  As authorized support associates of Microsoft and Cisco, Progent has access to the industry's largest information technology knowledge bases and resources. Some of the most helpful technical databases accessible by Progent's engineers are the operational best practices incorporated into the assorted Management Packs created by Microsoft and third parties to be used in conjunction with Microsoft System Center Operations Manager, the proactive server monitoring software used as the basis of Progent's special IT outsourcing packages. Management Packs (MPs) consist of custom built scripted rules that will react to events, thresholds, and warnings tracked by Microsoft Operations Manager. Management Packs can also provide expert suggestions on how to deal with certain issues by automatically extracting relevant articles from the vast Microsoft support database.