Microsoft and Cisco Consulting Best Practices
Progent’s staff of Microsoft and Cisco Premier Certified experts average more than a decade of hands-on industry background, in the trenches of IT support, executing a broad variety of IT tasks for a large mix of clients. Each Progent support professional shares a proven collection of best practices that are combined into company-wide best practices standards that Progent teaches its consulting staff. This ensures that you get not just expert technical skills, but also a consultant with field-tested approaches for using computer knowledge to repair real-world network problems quickly.

Features and benefits of Progent's best practices include:

  • Individual Professionals
    Progent’s team of network consultants is composed of some the most accomplished Microsoft and Cisco professionals in the industry. Averaging more than 10 years of real-world background per consultant, Progent's Microsoft Certified experts bring a proven set of methods for solving technical issues, managing projects, and providing consulting support. The technical scope of Progent's engineering team enables Progent to provide your business a consultant with task-relevant skills and an efficient technique for finding quick and affordable network solutions.

  • Reliance on Teamwork
    When appropriate, Progent utilizes a team approach to solving the most difficult technical issues. By aggregating hundreds of man-years of background from Progent's Microsoft and Cisco Premier experts, Progent can quickly and cost-effectively solve even the most vexing problems. Consulting with hundreds of customers and performing thousands of complex deployment and configuration jobs every year gives Progent a special view on which techiques succeed and which don't. Subtle software compatibility issues are a minefield for even the most talented engineers unless they have an extensive and varied history in real-world experience with a wide range of technologies.

  • Corporate-wide Policies for Best Practices
    Progent has incorporated the combined experience of its senior consulting personnel to create an in-house, corporate-wide set of best practices intended to promote fast, affordable solutions of technical problems and to measure and optimize customer satisfaction. These practices include a strong focus on client communication and support recording. Progent's Founder and President, Les Kent, has a 35-year background of successful network integration, corporate management, marketing, and operations. Progent's corporate-wide best practices are significantly driven by Mr. Kent's background creating challenging information technology solutions while acting as a network designer, program developer, task manager, deployment expert and diagnostic engineer.

  • Continuing Professional Education
    As an authorized partner with Microsoft and Cisco, Progent makes sure that staff consultants undergo ongoing product and best-practices education that contains important lessons and methods for technology adoption that have been developed from the experience of thousands of computer experts around the world. This promotes increasingly effective delivery of services to Progent's customers.

  • Internal Database of Problems and Proven Solutions
    Progent's advanced service documentation system offers comprehensive records for all delivered support. Every authorized Progent staff consultant has complete access to all the details of services delivered by any staff member to every client. This database of issues and solutions, plus false alarms and miscues, is organized as an easily searchable internal information store that allows Progent's consultants to communicate their experiences corporate-wide to ensure that the general effectiveness of Progent's consulting services expands over time. This database also eliminates your reliance on an individual engineer by making it possible for any Progent consultant to take up where another stopped while minimizing hours spent getting familiar with your network environment. Another advantage of Progent's service reporting system is that your company can more smoothly take on network management services in house if it becomes cost-effective to do so, or you can migrate to another consulting company if you grow dissatisfied with Progent's support.

  • Microsoft Solutions Framework Project Methodology
    For major projects, Progent engineers use the Microsoft Solutions Framework methodology for providing service. Microsoft Solutions Framework separates major initiatives into distinct and manageable components that minimize the chance of a project getting out of control. Each phase builds a strong foundation for the success of following phases. Planning and integration requirements are defined early in the project cycle so problems can be pi pointed and dealt with before client producivity is disrupted. In addition, this keeps expenses from skyrocketing due to unforeseen problems during large scale roll outs. All project components are recorded to create a detailed description of consulting services delivered and to help in ongoing system support.

  • Access to External Support Databases
    As certified support partners of Microsoft and Cisco, Progent has access to the industry's most extensive information technology databases and resource pool. Some of the most helpful technical knowledge bases available to Progent's engineers are the operational best practices built into the assorted Management Packs published by Microsoft and third parties for use in conjunction with Microsoft System Center Operations Manager, the automated server monitoring platform used as the basis of Progent's special IT outsourcing packages. Management Packs (MPs) contain specially built processing rules that can react to events, thresholds, and warnings monitored by Microsoft Operations Manager. MPs can also provide valuable advice on how to deal with specific problems by programmatically extracting appropriate articles from the vast Microsoft Knowledge Base.
To get in touch with Progent for mid-size business network support, call 1-800-993-9400 or visit Contact Progent.