Computer Outsourcing for Medium-size Companies

Progent's Shared Service Desk
Progent's Shared Help Desk service is intended for organizations with between 50 and 500 end users and allows your IT staff to split responsibilities for Service Desk support seamlessly between your in-house support resources and Progent's nationwide pool of certified IT service engineers and subject matter experts (SMEs). Progent's Co-managed Help Desk service is a joint IT support solution based on ConnectWise Manage, the leading Professional Services Automation (PSA) platform for managing IT service calls, generating trouble tickets, assigning responsibility, monitoring status, and producing management reports. The price for Level 1 support for Progent's Shared Help Desk service is typically under $18 per user per month.

Progent's Shared Help Desk Service offers a transparent extension of your core support resources. End user access to the Service Desk, delivery of support, problem escalation, trouble ticket generation and updates, performance metrics, and maintenance of the support database are consistent regardless of whether issues are taken care of by your internal support organization, by Progent's team, or both. All end-user support requests are ranked as Level 1, 2 or 3 incidents. Progent handles whatever service levels you specify (typically Levels 1 and 3). Original support calls are assigned either to your internal support group or to Progent's Technical Response Center, based on your preferences. Level 2 or Level 3 tickets can be escalated to Progent's Experts Team of subject matter experts (SMEs). The assignment process is transparent to your clients. Your business has complete flexibility to expand or shrink your share of support activity as required. Progent takes care of initial deployment and onboarding of the professional services automation software as well as documentation, testing and training.

Progent's Technical Response Center (TRC)
Progent's Technical Response Center (TRC) has been providing online IT assistance for more than two decades and serves active clients in each state in the country (see Progent's client testimonials.) The Technical Response Center maintains the pool of certified desktop technicians who can handle Level 1 trouble tickets, which represent the majority of Service Desk service requests. The Technical Response Center, like Progent's Experts Team, uses the ConnectWise Manage professional services automation software platform to automate ticketing, tracking, ownership assignment, problem escalation and reporting. This keeps tickets from falling through the cracks and offers clients clear understanding about all services provided. The Technical Response Center targets 90% in-person answer rate and allows Progent's Shared Help Desk program to include a 60-minute service-level agreement (SLA). Service times are 5am to 7pm Pacific Time on normal business days. Extended hours and onsite help are offered at additional cost. To learn more about the TRC, visit Progent's TRC Customer Commitment.

Service Levels
Progent provides three distinct levels of remote technical service, which correspond to industry-recognized Tier 1 through Tier 3 support. You can choose which support levels will be handled exclusively or in part by Progent and your internal resources. The size and knowledge of Progent's roster of subject matter experts (SMEs) enables rapid and efficient ticket escalation and permits you to count on Progent as a one-stop source for the majority of support problems at any Tier. Also, Progent's practice of knowledge transfer permits important support problems to move from higher to lower Tiers as resolution processes become recorded and standardized so they can be performed by less skilled and lower-cost service personnel.

Service levels are defined as:

• Level 1 Support: Categorizes Service Desk requests and delivers basic technical support and debugging, like password issues, printer configurations, break/fix procedures, ticket assignment and escalation to Level 2 and Level 3 support. A Level 1 tech gathers and analyzes information about the user's issue and determines the best way to resolve the problem. Level 1 service can also include assistance for familiar Level 2 and 3 problems where mitigation solutions have previously been documented.
• Level 2 Support: Primarily handles break/fix, setup issues, troubleshooting, application or OS installations, and hardware fixes including on-premises repair or orchestrating depot services. This Level deals with promoted problems that Level 1 support is not qualified to handle. Level 2 will occasionally evolve to Level 3, based on the problem and the manner the Service Desk is structured.
• Level 3 Support: Debugging, setup, DBA, and migrations for server, datacenter, messaging, file shares, and common integration issues. Besides having the capability to deploy fixes to novel problems, a Level 3 engineer typically has the most real-world expertise.

This particular deployment of Progent's Co-managed Help Desk Service has a 4-stage ticket lifecycle:

1. Your users initiate service requests via the online service portal, a dedicated telephone number, or by sending a message to a dedicated email address. This immediately becomes an open request in the trouble ticket system.
2. Progent's Technical Response Center gets the ticket request and determines whether it will be serviced or escalated to your in-house Service Desk.
3. Your Help Desk receives the forwarded trouble ticket request and decides the appropriate way to resolve the issue. If necessary, your Service Desk can in turn escalate the open request back to Progent for assignment to Progent's Experts Team.
4. Progent receives the updated ticket request, selects the best suited subject matter exert from the Experts Team, and tasks the chosen subject matter exert to work with your support group until the issue is resolved or closed.

Key Features of Progent's Service Desk
Important aspects of Progent's Shared Call Desk offerings include:

• Pooled desktop support from Progent's Technical Response Center team
• Level 1 remote help provided 5 days a week, 5am-7pm Pacific Time, One-hour SLA
• Discounted hourly support rate with one-minute granularity for Level 1 support for end users
• Typical cost of Level 1 support is about $18 per user per month
• Level 2 and Level 3 support from Progent SME available as an option at Progent's normal consulting fees
• De-escalation permits issues that at first require Level 2 or Level 3 expertise to move to a lower, less costly Tier after solutions are documented
• StreamlineIT includes a complete implementation of ConnectWise service desk software with multi-tenant security

• Offered only in USA and US territories
• One-time startup fee based on complexity of the deployment
• Live Answer of inbound service requests to Progent Technical Response Center (TRC) with a goal of 90% Live Answer of all requests
• After determining if server or network infrastructure support is needed, some requests will be escalated to Level 2 or Level 3 support
• All assistance requiring Level 2 or 3 expertise will be worked on by a Progent expert after receiving your approval
• 1 hour SLA for Level 1 desktop support in most cases
• Level 1 Support is for end users and applies to Windows-based systems and Apple systems
• Progent Level 2 or Level 3 services will be provided at regular hourly consulting rates
• Progent will provide skilled personnel - Technical Response Center desktop engineers daily, Level 2 and Level 3 as needed
• Progent will provide a phone number and email mailbox for incoming support calls
• Free Remote Control agent with screen sharing for efficient IT support
• Free ProSight IT Asset Management solution for cloud-based IT documentation management
• All Level 1 online support is billed at a special hourly rate with one-minute granularity
• All Level 1 service is performed remotely, no onsite work included
• All onsite support is billed at regular hourly consulting rates
• All on-premises support will have an added fixed charge as well as any documented travel expenses
• All travel expense estimates will be provided and need client agreement before work or travel will be performed
• Contracted projects and separate Statements of Work will include their own estimates and costs stipulated and will be undertaken only after authorization by client

First Phase

• Create your personalized Help Desk experience, including your internal team, locations, and client data
• Progent's consultants will work closely with your company's support group to analyze current inbound support requests
• Configure your incoming support request system to incorporate email, software agents, and a dedicated telephone number

• Progent delivers ticket management education for your company's service group
• Work together to create basic workflow and ticket escalation processes
• Add all your teams and resources that will deliver support
• Create the announcement description and promotion of the new Help Desk solution
• Pick a specific location or manageably-sized clusters of users to onboard first
• Integrate additional users into the solution at determined intervals

• Review reports and system configuration for efficient data and workflow
• Add additional reports or fields needed to enhance the identification or monitoring of common IT problems
• Surface missing information that might enable a higher success rate for Level 1 support requests

• All users have been exposed to the service desk and can access it
• All required user and equipment information is populated in the service system
• You are able to transfer and administer trouble tickets transparently between your in-house team and Progent
• You can monitor support performance

• Retain complete control of your IT service requests: you choose what trouble tickets are escalated to Progent's support desk or taken care of by your in-house service staff.
• Rapid access to additional IT service experts when you need them: Progent's professional services automation software automatically distributes in-house trouble tickets or permits you manually escalate to Progent's Technical Response Center.
• Productivity: Progent's Call Desk experts will review your inbound service requests and propose missing data that would promote a higher resolution rate for common Level 1 requests. Progent's IT support experts can also help you with tag creation to speed up solutions.
• Seamlessness: Progent's Co-managed Service Desk acts as a virtual extension of your internal Call Center with unified ticketing and reporting so no ticket drops between the seams.
• Happy workers: Users have the ability to monitor the progress and status of their IT service requests quickly and easily.
• Management insight: You benefit from the metrics, accountability, and activity monitoring of an advanced PSA platform to assist your organization to create a custom Help Desk experience that provides top business value.
• Concentrate on your strategic business initiatives, not IT support requests and unhappy workers: Your IT managers avoid being bogged down trying to manage day-to-day support requests.

To find out more, download our white paper: Is co-managed IT a good idea? (PDF - 632 KB).

Download Progent's Shared Service Desk Datasheet
To download a single-page datasheet in PDF format describing Progent's Shared Service Desk, see:
Progent's Shared Service Desk Datasheet. (PDF - 108 KB)

Related Services
Progent has developed the ProSight suite of remote monitoring and management (RMM) services to streamline critical processes associated with network management, cybersecurity and upkeep. Any of these services can be used with Progent's Co-managed Help Desk service by deploying agent software on machines to be tracked and managed. Notifications generated by these software agents can be forwarded directly to Progent's Technical Response Center (TRC), managed via the ticketing and tracking platform, and triaged for Level 1, 2 or 3 treatment.

Examples of ProSight RMM services include:

• ProSight Email Guard: Email Content Filtering, Spam Blocking and Data Leakage Defense:
  ProSight Email Guard is Progent's spam and virus filtering and email encryption service that incorporates the technology of leading information security companies to deliver centralized management and world-class protection for all your email traffic. The hybrid structure of Email Guard combines a Cloud Protection Layer with an on-premises gateway appliance to offer complete protection against spam, viruses, Dos Attacks, Directory Harvest Attacks, and other email-based threats. Email Guard's Cloud Protection Layer acts as a preliminary barricade and blocks the vast majority of unwanted email from making it to your security perimeter. This decreases your vulnerability to external attacks and conserves system bandwidth and storage. Email Guard's onsite gateway device provides a deeper level of inspection for inbound email. For outgoing email, the on-premises gateway offers AV and anti-spam protection, policy-based Data Loss Prevention, and email encryption. The local gateway can also help Microsoft Exchange Server to monitor and safeguard internal email that stays inside your security perimeter. For more details, visit Email Guard spam and content filtering.

• ProSight Active Security Monitoring (ASM): Behavior-based Threat Analysis and Ransomware Protection:
  Progent's ProSight Active Security Monitoring is an endpoint protection solution that utilizes next generation behavior analysis tools from SentinelOne to defend physical and virtual endpoint devices against new malware attacks like ransomware and file-less exploits, which routinely escape traditional signature-matching anti-virus products. ProSight ASM protects on-premises and cloud resources and provides a single platform to manage the entire malware attack progression including protection, detection, containment, cleanup, and post-attack forensics. Top features include single-click rollback with Windows Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) and automatic system-wide immunization against new threats. Progent is a certified SentinelOne Partner. Find out more about Progent's ProSight Active Security Monitoring next-generation endpoint protection and ransomware defense with SentinelOne technology.

• ProSight Data Protection Services: Cloud Backup and Disaster Recovery:
  Progent has partnered with advanced backup/restore product vendors to create ProSight Data Protection Services (DPS), a portfolio of offerings that provide backup-as-a-service. All ProSight DPS products manage and monitor your data backup processes and allow transparent backup and rapid restoration of critical files/folders, applications, system images, plus virtual machines. ProSight DPS helps you protect against data loss resulting from equipment breakdown, natural disasters, fire, cyber attacks like ransomware, user mistakes, malicious insiders, or application glitches. Managed services available in the ProSight DPS selection include ProSight DPS Ataro VM Backup, ProSight Ataro Office 365 Backup, ProSight ECHO Backup based on Barracuda dedicated hardware, and ProSight MSP360 Cloud and On-prem Backup. Your Progent service representative can help you to determine which of these fully managed services are best suited for your IT environment.

• Patch Management: Patch Management Services:
  Progent's managed services for software and firmware patch management offer organizations of any size a versatile and affordable solution for evaluating, validating, scheduling, applying, and tracking software and firmware updates to your dynamic IT system. In addition to maximizing the security and reliability of your IT network, Progent's patch management services permit your in-house IT team to focus on line-of-business initiatives and tasks that derive maximum business value from your information network. Find out more about Progent's software/firmware update management support services.

• ProSight Duo Two-Factor Authentication: ID Confirmation, Endpoint Policy Enforcement, and Secure Single Sign-on (SSO):
  Progent's Duo MFA services utilize Cisco's Duo cloud technology to defend against stolen passwords by using two-factor authentication (2FA). Duo enables single-tap identity verification on iOS, Android, and other out-of-band devices. With Duo 2FA, whenever you sign into a protected online account and give your password you are requested to confirm who you are via a unit that only you possess and that uses a separate network channel. A wide selection of devices can be utilized for this second means of authentication including an iPhone or Android or watch, a hardware/software token, a landline telephone, etc. You may register multiple verification devices. For details about Duo identity authentication services, go to Cisco Duo MFA two-factor authentication services for access security.