Computer Network Support for Mid-size Companies

Microsoft and Cisco Consulting Best Practices
Progent’s staff of Microsoft and Cisco Premier experts average more than a decade of hands-on professional background, at the forefront of IT support, performing a wide variety of technical projects for a large array of businesses. Each Progent consultant shares a proven set of best practices that are combined into company-wide best practices training that Progent teaches its consulting staff. This means that you get not just expert IT help, but also a consultant with field-tested methods for applying technical knowledge to resolve actual network problems efficiently.

Features and benefits of Progent's best practices include:

• Individual Professionals
  Progent’s staff of IT consultants is made up of some the most accomplished Microsoft and Cisco experts in the industry. Averaging more than a decade of professional experience per consultant, Progent's Microsoft and Cisco Premier experts bring a tested set of methodologies for solving technical problems, managing projects, and delivering consulting support. The technical scope of Progent's support team enables Progent to offer your business a consultant with tested ability and an effective approach for delivering quick and inexpensive IT solutions.

• Reliance on Teamwork
  When appropriate, Progent relies on a group approach to resolving the most stubborn technical issues. By leveraging hundreds of person-years of experience from Progent's Microsoft and Cisco Certified experts, Progent can rapidly and efficiently solve even the most vexing issues. Working with hundreds of customers and completing thousands of complex deployment and configuration projects annually gives Progent a unique perspective on which approaches work and which don't. Complex software interactions are a potential trap for even the most skilled consultants unless they bring a long and diverse background in real-world experience with a wide range of technologies.

• Corporate-wide Policies for Best Practices
  Progent has incorporated the aggregate background of its top consulting staff to create an in-house, company-wide collection of leading practices intended to promote fast, cost-effective resolutions of information technology issues and to track and optimize customer approval. These practices include a powerful emphasis on customer communication and services recording. Progent's Founder and CEO, Les Kent, has a 35-year background of successful network integration, business management, sales and marketing, and operations. Progent's corporate-wide best practices are significantly driven by Mr. Kent's experiences creating complex information technology solutions while acting as a network architect, program developer, task manager, implementation professional and diagnostic engineer.

• Continuing Professional Education
  As a certified partner with Microsoft, Progent ensures that staff consultants participate in continued technical and methodology education that includes important lessons and methods for technology integration that have been gleaned from the experience of thousands of technical experts around the world. This results in increasingly efficient provision of support to Progent's clients.

• Internal Database of Problems and Proven Solutions
  Progent's advanced service documentation system provides comprehensive records for all provided services. Every Progent team member has full availability of all the specifics of services delivered by any engineer to every customer. This history of problems and solutions, as well as false alarms and missteps, is organized as readily searchable internal information store that allows Progent's support professionals to communicate their knowledge company-wide to ensure that the overall efficiency of Progent's support grows continuously. This database also reduces your reliance on a single consultant by making it possible for one Progent consultant to take up where another left off while minimizing time spent getting familiar with your network environment. Another advantage of Progent's support reporting database is that your company can more smoothly handle IT management services internally if it becomes economical to do so, or you can move to another IT outsourcing company if you become dissatisfied with Progent's support.

• Microsoft Solutions Framework Project Methodology
  For major projects, Progent consultants follow the Microsoft Solutions Framework (MSF) methodology for providing service. Microsoft Solutions Framework breaks down major initiatives into distinct and manageable phases that minimize the chance of a project falling out of control. Each phase creates a solid foundation for the completion of later phases. Planning and integration requirements are identified at the start of the project cycle so difficulties can be anticipated and resolved before client workflow is impacted. This also keeps expenses from going through the roof due to unexpected problems during major deployment. All phases are recorded to build a detailed description of consulting services provided and to help in ongoing network maintenance.

• Access to External Support Databases
  As authorized support associates of Microsoft and Cisco, Progent has the benefit of the world's most extensive technical knowledge bases and resources. Some of the most helpful support knowledge bases accessible by Progent's consultants are the industry leading practices built into the various Management Packs published by Microsoft and third parties to be used with Microsoft System Center Operations Manager, the proactive network monitoring platform that is the basis of Progent's special IT outsourcing packages. Management Packs (MPs) contain specially built scripted rules that will respond to events, thresholds, and warnings tracked by Microsoft System Center Operations Manager. MPs can also provide expert suggestions on how to deal with specific issues by programmatically finding appropriate articles from the extensive Microsoft Knowledge Base.