Computer Help for Small Companies

Microsoft Consulting Best Practices
Progent's staff of Microsoft and Cisco Premier Certified experts average more than ten years of hands-on industry background, in the trenches of network support, executing a wide range of technical tasks for a large mix of clients. Each Progent support professional shares a proven collection of leading practices that are combined into shared best practices standards that Progent teaches its consulting team. This means that you get not just expert IT help, but also a consultant with proven approaches for using technical knowledge to resolve real-world network problems quickly.

Key features and benefits of Progent's best practices include:

• Individual Experts
  Progent's staff of IT engineers is made up of some the most accomplished Microsoft and Cisco professionals in the industry. With more than a decade of real-world experience per engineer, Progent's Microsoft and Cisco Certified experts offer a proven set of methodologies for solving technical issues, managing projects, and providing consulting support. The technical scope of Progent's engineering staff allows Progent to provide your company a consulting expert with tested skills and an effective approach for finding fast and affordable IT solutions.

• Problem Escalation Through Teamwork
  When appropriate, Progent relies on a team approach to resolving the most stubborn technical issues. By aggregating hundreds of man-years of experience from Progent's Microsoft and Cisco Premier experts, Progent can rapidly and cost-effectively solve even the most vexing problems. Working with hundreds of customers and performing thousands of sophisticated implementation and integration jobs every year offers Progent a unique perspective on which techiques succeed and which ones do not. Subtle software interactions are a potential trap for even the most talented engineers unless they bring an extensive and diverse background in hands-on work with a broad variety of technologies.

• Company-wide Standards for Best Practices
  Progent has incorporated the aggregate experience of its senior engineering personnel to develop an internal, corporate-wide set of best practices intended to ensure timely, affordable resolutions of information technology problems and to track and maximize customer satisfaction. These methodologies include a strong focus on client communication and support recording. Progent's Founder and President, Les Kent, has a 35-year track record of innovative network integration, corporate management, marketing, and administration. Progent's company-wide best practices are significantly influenced by Mr. Kent's experiences developing challenging technical solutions while acting as a system designer, program developer, project manager, implementation professional and diagnostic engineer.

• Ongoing Training
  As an authorized partner with Microsoft and Cisco, Progent makes sure that in-house engineers participate in continued product and best-practices education that contains important lessons and procedures for new product adoption that have been developed from the experience of thousands of computer professionals around the world. This results in continually more effective delivery of support to Progent's clients.

• Internal Database of Problems and Proven Solutions
  Progent's highly evolved service reporting system provides comprehensive records for all delivered support. Each Progent staff consultant has full access to all the details of services provided by any staff member to every customer. This record of issues and solutions, as well as false alarms and missteps, is organized as readily accessible internal database that allows Progent's support professionals to communicate their knowledge company-wide so that the general effectiveness of Progent's consulting services expands over time. This support history also reduces your dependence on a single consultant by allowing one Progent expert to take up where another left off while minimizing hours spent getting ramped up on your information system setup. Another advantage of Progent's support documentation system is that your business can more easily take on network management duties in house if it appears cost-effective to do so, or you can move to a different consulting company if you grow unhappy with Progent's support.

• Microsoft Solutions Framework Project Methodology
  For major projects, Progent engineers follow the Microsoft Solutions Framework (MSF) methodology for providing support. Microsoft Solutions Framework separates projects into discrete and manageable components that minimize the chance of a project getting off track. Every phase builds a strong foundation for the completion of later phases. Planning and deployment requirements are defined at the start of the project continuum so problems can be pi pointed and resolved before customer workflow is disrupted. This also prevents costs from skyrocketing because of unexpected crises during major deployment. All phases are documented to create a detailed description of consulting services delivered and to assist in ongoing network maintenance.

• Access to External Support Databases
  As authorized support associates of Microsoft and Cisco, Progent has the benefit of the industry's most extensive information technology databases and resource pool. Among the most helpful support knowledge bases available to Progent's consultants are the industry best practices built into the various Management Packs published by Microsoft and other vendors for use with Microsoft Operations Manager, the proactive server monitoring platform used as the basis of Progent's IT outsourcing and network monitoring packages. Management Packs (MPs) consist of custom built processing rules that will respond to events, thresholds, and warnings tracked by Microsoft Operations Manager. Management Packs can also provide expert suggestions on how to deal with specific issues by automatically extracting relevant articles from the extensive Microsoft Knowledge Base.

For an example of how Microsoft Operations Manager helped a business achieve enterprise-class network management, read the Microsoft Operations Manager Case Study.

To contact Progent about consulting services for your small business network, call 1-800-993-9400 or visit Contact Progent.