I just used parallel tasks to decrease the time a process took from over an hour to about 2 minutes.  I was wary of creating so many database contexts, but it paid off in a major way!

See the snippet of code below to see how I used the Parallel.ForEach.  .Net created almost 100 threads during the execution.

Parallel.ForEach(qry, issue =>
{
	using (var _db = new WCO())
	{
		dobType dob;
		List<dobType> birthdays = new List<dobType>();

		foreach (
			var subIssue in
				issue.DOBValue.Trim().Split(new string[] { " TO ", " to ", "-", " - " },
					StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries))
		{
			string valueToTest = subIssue;

			// Try Month Year regex
			if (tryDateFirstPart(valueToTest, out dob))
			{
				logger.Info(string.Format("Parsed {0} to Month: {1}, Day {2} Year: {3}", issue,
					dob.month,
					dob.day, dob.year));
				saveParseDOB(dob, issue, _db);
			}
			else
			{
				logger.Error(string.Format("Could not parse {0}", issue.DOBValue));
			}
		}

	}
});

If you need someone with my ability to decrease processing times on a full time basis, please contact me through LinkedIn 

Have a great day!