Microsoft Solutions

Batch Release Tracker: Efficient Batch Management with Microsoft Power Platform

Manual data processing is still daily fare in many companies, but this is rarely the way forward when managing complex production processes.

Alignment between various teams and systems multiple times a day is crucial. With the Microsoft Power Platform-based Batch Release Tracker, you can eliminate time-consuming manual workflows and empower teams with a tight management and collaboration solution.

With data becoming a key enabler in transformations, the ‘gold rush’ has already begun on how to tap into the vast data pool that is available in your production and quality systems which were once relatively inaccessible.

This is now changing.

With technology advancing rapidly, many organizations still rely on proprietary tools or costly customizations to access and utilize their data. Microsoft Power Platform offers a modern alternative, enabling the quick development of low-code/no-code apps to streamline processes.

At NNIT, we often see companies with access to Power Platform struggle due to a lack of awareness or expertise. This leads to departments creating expensive, disjointed solutions that fail to align workflows across the organization.

The Batch Release Tracker showcases the Power Platform's potential, unifying data from multiple systems into a single dashboard that tracks tasks for batch releases, ensuring efficiency and collaboration.

Power Platform is what’s known as a low code tool, designed to enable non-IT Department personnel to use it. That shifts responsibility to the departments with a need, and frees up IT personnel to concentrate on the jobs only their expertise can tackle, without compromising security and compliance.

What is Power Platform?
Convert urgent needs and good ideas into tools you can use to digitize procedures and create value for the business. That’s the concept behind the Microsoft Dynamics 365 Power Platform, designed to make it possible to develop a complete range of apps and IT solutions that are streamlined and secure. The benefits are efficient business development, rapid time-to-market, and relief for the IT Department, allowing various business units to develop their own solutions for their own needs.

Power Platform consists of nine different tools that can be used and combined according to requirements.

Power BI: Gather knowledge and data to identify business opportunities at a detailed and high level

Power Apps: Convert knowledge into apps and solutions

Power Apps Mobile: Adapt your apps for mobile devices

Power Apps Portals: Mix data from various apps (internal and external)

AI Builder: Use artificial intelligence to develop pre-defined “point & click” models

Power Automate: Bind your solutions together and automate business processes

Power Virtual Agents: Build AI-powered bots for a range of support requests

Power Pages: Design and publish websites able to run across a range of devices and browsers

Microsoft Dataverse: Store and process your app data securely and in one location

Power Platform is what’s known as a low code tool, designed to enable non-IT Department personnel to use it. That shifts responsibility to the departments with a need, and frees up IT personnel to concentrate on the jobs only their expertise can tackle, without compromising security and compliance.

Goodbye to manual task handling

Many companies today operate with distributed teams using diverse processes and software systems. In the life sciences and manufacturing industries, it's common to see companies relying on multiple production systems to manage a single batch release.

These systems often lack integration across departments, leading employees to bridge gaps with manual tools like Excel. While Excel works for simple tasks, handling complex processes with up to 120 tasks per batch quickly becomes inefficient.

As Mads Mossin Mortensen, Advanced Consultant, explains:
– Manual tools result in inefficient, time-consuming processes that hinder collaboration and information sharing, creating more confusion than clarity.

Power Platform accelerates productivity

Fortunately, help is available for the many pharmaceutical and manufacturing companies struggling daily with the challenges involved in ensuring a strong information flow and a clear overview of their work. The help comes in the form of Microsoft Power Platform, which for many is already a well-known to most users:

– Most companies already have access to Power Platform applications such as Dataverse and Power BI as part of their Microsoft license. SharePoint can also be utilized. This means that companies can avoid extra licensing costs, and many of them are already used to the look and feel as well as navigating Microsoft’s user-friendly functionalities, explains Mads Mossin Mortensen, Advanced Consultant, adding:

The solution makes it possible to track and manage a large number of tasks across departments. It allows manual data and system data required for a Batch Release to be combined, tracked and managed, ensuring that all relevant stakeholders have the same up-to-date information available on the status of task and can manage the process safely from start to finish.

Using a combination of applications available on the Power Platform, you can develop very simple low-code and highly functional applications in a short timeframe following the NNIT Power Platform Accelerator process as described in the white paper that you can download here. The Batch Release Tracker solved multiple problems experienced with the previous Excel solution:

The Batch Release Tracker has several benefits. Among other things, you can:

develop and deploy small low code applications in a fast and efficient timeframe in just six weeks
in average, reduce your daily batch release management tasks from 30 hours to 30 minutes
bring down your expenses by utilizing your existing license agreements
reduce training man-hours as users are already familiar with the look and feel of Microsoft products
have a common overview in real time that strengthens collaboration and work quality
connect data from different data sources into one application
securely share the tracker, tasks and dashboards with external users with a configured gateway
use data you collect in the tracker to setup KPIs and performance charts for your processes.

See all

Customer case

Lonza's Digital Journey: From Spreadsheet to Batch Release Dashboard

The healthcare manufacturer Lonza needed to improve their batch release process. A dedicated team of specialists from NNIT designed and implemented a solution that provided a better overview for all stakeholders and reduced Lonza’s daily batch release management tasks from several hours to just a few minutes.

Suitable for different industries, teams and processes

Even though the batch release tracker is an example of a tool that we at NNIT have developed on the basis of our in-depth knowledge within the life sciences and manufacturing processes, this type of solution as a more general concept can be used to digitize manual processes used in different business areas across different industries:

– Any company or team that currently handle processes in different and/or manual systems can benefit greatly from a collaboration tool built on the Power Platform, says Mads Mossin Mortensen, Advanced Consultant. As an example, he describes a tool that he and his team developed for a company that needed a simple overview of their product portfolio:

The tool enabled the company’s various teams to add and track their projects, giving management a comprehensive overview of all upcoming and ongoing projects. At the same time, the system made it possible to allocate resources to the various tasks and follow the projects from idea to execution.

– With transparency and a shared overview, management is now able to analyze, think creatively, and discuss on a much more enlightened and well-informed basis. And it doesn’t require expensive software or thousands of development hours, says Mads Mossin Mortensen, Advanced Consultant, in conclusion.

Would you like more information on how we can help you define your business needs and strengthen collaboration using Power Platform? Contact us below.

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