The Swiss railway infrastructure company Bahninfra AG opted to use Microsoft Power Apps to digitally map, simplify and speed up its work processes. With support from novaCapta, the company was able to develop apps tailored precisely to its employees’ individual requirements and to map the relevant process chains optimally. As a result, Bahninfra is now able to benefit from the comprehensive advantages of Power Apps.
New major customer project with numerous, repetitive operational stages, all of which must be documented alongside specifications
Manual filling out of forms as well as manual creation, insertion and saving of image files
Tedious and error-prone collection of the required information
High workload and time consuming due to multiple tools
Development of five Microsoft Power Apps for the optimization, automation and digitalization of work processes
Automatic generation of documents as well as automatic storage of data and images in SharePoint
Custom-fit solution with individual functionalities and a user-friendly interface
Enormous time saving and workload reduction
Simplified work, also with external service providers
Process reliability and control
Simple, intuitive operation on desktops, tablets and smartphones
Increased know-how sharing between teams
The apps make our daily work much easier. We benefit not only from great time savings, but also from greater process reliability and control.
The track construction company Bahninfra AG has obtained a new large customer order from the Swiss Federal Railways SBB: Over a period of two years, the company is planning to install the foundations for the planned “smart information display” devices at around 300 Swiss stations. This requires numerous operational steps in each case, which need to be accurately documented according to customer‘s specifications.
Previously, documentation was done by manually filling out forms and creating PDF documents. In addition, the individual operational steps had to be photographed and the image files manually selected, inserted, saved and forwarded. „The amount of work and time we spent was enormous. Compiling the information was tedious, error-prone and not efficient. We were urgently looking for a solution,“ says Florian Weimann, project manager at Bahninfra AG, explaining the original situation.
The solution sought was to help the employees of Bahninfra to digitally map their operational steps, to simplify and to accelerate their work. Given that Bahninfra had already Microsoft 365 tools in place, the decision was made in favor of Microsoft Power Apps. The step taken to collaborate with the Microsoft experts novaCapta was an obvious choice, as novaCapta had already helped Bahninfra during the introduction of MS Teams.
In close coordination with the project managers, the experts of novaCapta developed five Microsoft Power Apps to optimize, automate and digitalize the operational processes. The apps are precisely tailored to the individual requirements of Bahninfra employees and precisely map the respective process streams.
Today, Bahninfra employees can document their operational steps directly in the application and document them directly in the application and upload images quickly and easily. In addition, the necessary protocols can then be generated and forwarded automatically.
Another feature is that within the app the information of the individual devices can be stored so that they can be found rapidly. The user-friendly interface also enables simple and intuitive operations, both on desktops, tablets and smartphones.
The comprehensive benefits of Power Apps are clearly noticeable. While previously it took 20 minutes to fill out the logs manually, today this can be done in just a few minutes. The apps ensure that all necessary information is accurately collected. With the apps as a new „single source of truth“, those who are responsible for the projects can easily check the status and any related information of the project at any time. Given that not only Bahninfra employees can use the apps, but also external service providers, collaboration with external partners has become easier and more efficient.
Mr. Weimann reports on the course of the project: „Due to the productive, uncomplicated collaboration with novaCapta, we were able to implement our Power Apps and thus quickly benefit from their use. Thanks to the project, we can also gain know-how in our company, which will certainly be of use to us in other projects as well.“
Bahninfra AG, part of the Müller Frauenfeld AG Group, with headquarters in Frauenfeld, Switzerland and with around 400 employees, is a provider of construction and related services in all aspects of railroad facilities. Their core tasks include the construction and maintenance of railroad tracks and safety at railroad construction sites. Although track construction as well as the company can look back on a long tradition, Müller Frauenfeld AG relies on modern, efficient and technically sophisticated machines.
https://www.mueller-frauenfeld.ch/bahninfra-ag.html
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Head of Intelligent Business Platforms
