Innovative QMS technologies

Exploring Innovative Technologies for Better Quality Management

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BPA is constantly exploring innovative technologies in the context of quality management with the objective to simplify processes, engage collaborators and stay compliant.

BPAQuality365 technology overview video.

Microsoft is inventing the way companies will work in the future and BPA QMS software directly benefits from these modern technologies. Combining 20+ years of Quality Management + Microsoft technology expertise, we designed innovative software solutions on Microsoft 365, Teams, SharePoint & Power BI, bridging the gap in Microsoft’s offering for quality management solutions.

BPA’s end-to-end QMS software includes over 30 different integrated modules to continuously improve the overall quality of the final products and services and comply with regulations. The main modules include the management of stakeholders, processes, compliance documents, incidents, audits and inspections, risks, collaborator competencies, training, and equipment.

BPA modular components extend Microsoft capabilities, providing a great user experience while filling in the gaps of missing features that are needed for a high-performing QMS. This includes relational capabilities, report generation, graphical charts, eSignatures, intelligent forms, reminders and more.

Companies can further select options to boost capabilities of the QMS software by using prebuilt extensions leveraging Microsoft Teams, Power Automate, Power Apps, Power BI, and Artificial Intelligence.

With Teams, end user interact with the QMS while chatting. Documents and quality events can be shared with team members, with the option to schedule meetings and assign tasks without leaving the chat box.

We designed prebuilt Power Automate workflows to match typical organizations needs with no need to reinvent the wheel, including document approval, problem solving, and audit management workflows.

Power Apps for non-conformances and failure catalogue management, and audit management are generic front-end solutions to use on any device, anywhere even offline.

By using artificial intelligence, end users find the right documents by asking common questions to a chatbot.

With BPAQuality365, organizations get a complete solution to continuously improve, comply with regulations, and leverage innovative Microsoft 365 technologies.

>> Ask For a Free Trial

Microsoft Teams

Announcing BPA Teams Productivity

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Great news for our clients! BPA Teams Productivity is announced to be released soon.

Interact with your Quality software (or CRM, Medical) while chatting in Teams, share cards with colleagues and simplify task & meeting management.

BPA Teams Productivity brings the business context back to Microsoft Teams and transforms discussions into productive teamwork. The tool allows end users to interact with the QMS software – or Medical, CRM – and assign tasks or schedule meetings while chatting in Microsoft Teams.

This video goes through a typical use case where you have to discuss about a specific supplier nonconformity with your Quality team and schedule a meeting to take action. Finally you want to make sure your purchasing SOP is still accurate.

BPA Teams Productivity was developed to solve similar business scenarios happening every day, making discussions productive and leveraging tasks and meeting management with Microsoft Teams.

While discussing, end users can search the QMS and share cards with team members, including links to view items in the QMS software, and buttons to schedule meetings and assign tasks.

As a conclusion, end users get a better collaboration experience and take faster decisions with productive real-time chat messages while eliminating frustration spending too much time on emails.

Turn to a new way of working with productive chatting and BPA Teams Productivity.

>> Contact us for a free demo

Share To Teams button in BPA Software

Introducing Share To Teams in BPA Software Solutions

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Breaking news – You can now start a discussion in Teams in a click of a button from any page in our QMS, Medical and CRM software.

Navigating away from your software to start a discussion in Teams and losing context is not a smooth experience. With the Share To Teams feature, you can launch a discussion from any item or document without leaving the BPA software and context, boosting productivity and enabling instant decisions.

Share To Teams

Share To Teams is a quick and easy way to start a Teams discussion without leaving the software page context.

It’s simple as 1-2-3. Initially, you click a button to start a discussion. Secondly, you select a Teams or Channel you want to post the discussion. Finally, you add your discussion text. A link to the current page (the page you started the discussion) will be automatically appended to the conversation, and team members will be instantly alerted to view the page (e.g. an incident, document, or sales opportunity) and reply to the discussion.

This will drastically reduce time to solve problems, take faster decisions, and streamline processes.

This feature will be introduced to all modern Office 365 customers in June, at no additional cost.

Ask us for a free trial

Modern Components on Office 365

Breaking News: Announcing BPA Modern Components on Office 365

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Modern Components on Office 365

Revolutionize the way to build modern apps to run on any device, with your favorite tools, like Teams or SharePoint. 

Over the last 14 years, we have developed software solutions built on SharePoint and SharePoint Online.

Today, we are very excited to announce brand new modern components, entirely redesigned with the latest Microsoft development technologies.

Performance was the main consideration that guided the entire development team from the project start: “we want to give end users the best performance”. Still, we keep aligned with our main differentiators to provide simple and innovative solutions with the highest flexibility. Modern components make it easier for power users to extend existing apps or create new ones.

Thanks to the responsive design, apps and components can be used on desktops (as back-office solutions) or mobile devices as frontline solutions (e.g. in the field or on the production line). Apps and components have been designed to work with SharePoint, or Microsoft Teams.

Based on our experience with hundreds of clients, we have developed new components and redesigned existing, commonly used “pillar” components. The new Master-Detail component increases productivity while navigating in the software. BPA Forms brings new capabilities, such as previewing and testing forms in the designer.

We will soon release modern apps for quality and compliance, medical and CRM. In addition, the coming modern app building platform will enable business people to build responsive apps to run on any device.

Ask us for an online presentation.

TeamsAppVideoScree

Introducing BPA List Search App on Microsoft Teams

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Search and share information from BPA directly within a chat conversation in Microsoft Teams.

Over the past months, we investigated different ways to achieve 2-ways communication between our SharePoint apps and Microsoft Teams. First, we explored a new way to solve problems with instant discussions. Secondly, we looked at adaptive cards to better interact with external stakeholders.

Today, we proudly introduce a new app to search and insert information from BPA directly within a chat conversation in Teams. The app prevents users to switch context away from the discussion, find the needed information in BPA and return back in Teams to continue the conversation.

The BPA List Search App works with desktop, web and mobile versions of Teams. In one click while discussing, allowed users can start the app and search for a specific record in a list. Matching records will be displayed by typing. When selecting a record, an easy-to-read card will be appended in the conversation, showing record information with a button to open contextual details in the BPA software (and BPA software will soon run on Microsoft Teams as well).

For example, you can use the app to retrieve a specific nonconformity while discussing with your compliance team. By opening the nonconformity in BPA, your team gets all details about the current incident. In a different context, while discussing with your sales team, you could search for a specific sales opportunity and share details.

The BPA List Search App brings useful business information to workers on the field or on the shop floor and back-office collaborators, anywhere, on any device, when they need it. The app covers the gap between structured business content (in BPA apps and SharePoint) and unstructured instant discussions in Teams.

As a result, people take faster decisions and organizations, processes become more efficient.

At BPA, we truly believe instant collaboration is becoming the next move in digital transformation.

Contact us if you’re interested to view a product demo or use it for your organization.

>> Access the BPA List Search App Page

ExtensionScreen

Introducing BPA Power Extensions on Office 365

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BPA Power Extensions are powerful add-ins to extend capabilities of your existing BPA software on Office 365.

BPA Apps run on SharePoint with Office 365 and natively interface with technologies like Microsoft Teams for instant collaboration, Power Apps for mobile solutions, and Power Automate for process automation. With BPA Power Extensions, organizations will discover the almost unlimited capabilities of Office 365 by using our business applications. We have grouped extensions in 3 groups, by technology:

Instant Collaboration with Teams Apps

Microsoft Teams is used by millions of users for instant collaboration. Teams can be used as “interface” to BPA Apps for accessing or adding data. A new App had been released for searching and sharing business information in BPA Apps while discussing in Teams, without leaving the chat box (view video here: BPA List Search with Teams)

Workflow Templates on Power Automate (Flow)

Microsoft Power Automate, formerly named Flow, is becoming the most powerful process automation tool on the market, bringing a lot of cross-technology automation capabilities and connectors. We have developed prebuilt workflow templates to be plugged in your BPA Apps, like compliance document, nonconformity or audit workflow sets. Process automation brings information to the concerned users on the tools they are working with, productivity is improved and cost is reduced.

Mobile Solutions on Power Apps.

We are working on mobile solutions with Power Apps to give the best user experience and ergonomics for processes like inspection, audit or incident reporting. These mobile apps run on mobile phones and tablets, and can be used by workers on the field or production lines to register incidents or controlling items by taking photos, videos or recording voice.

>> Access the BPA Power Extensions Page

 

CommunityPortal

Building a Community Portal App on Office 365

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Community portal app built with BPA’s no-code app building platform on SharePoint/Office 365.

A community portal is a great way for any organization to centralize communication with their communities of clients, partners, stakeholders, or employees replacing inefficient emails. Portals can be used for different purposes, like help desk/ticketing, customer service, HR or others.

In this example, we have built a community portal app on Office 365 and SharePoint, using BPA’s app building platform. The app is completely configurable and was built in one day with no code!

The community portal app can be used as a standalone solution or can be connected to other BPA apps like CRM or Quality and compliance. At BPA, we are using a community portal since years to better serve our clients, answer tickets rapidly, share tutorials, documentation, FAQ, grant access to software packages and release notes.

With Office 365 and SharePoint, it’s possible to grant a secure guest access to users outside your organization (for example client organizations). External users can access a shared community portal with their Microsoft account or a non-Microsoft personal email with no Office 365 license needed (e.g. using a gmail account). External users will have limited permissions to access the community portal, post requests, view their own requests only, and access shared documentation in read-only.

Once a request is logged, it’s automatically linked with the right client organization and contact person. A discussion can be started between the client organization and the internal support team. Alerts are automatically sent to both parties. Documents or images can be attached to discussions. Internal discussions are not visible to the client organization.

The community portal app is be a perfect match for small and mid-sized organizations running on Office 365. The app will drastically reduce time to answer client requests, improve service efficiency and increase stakeholders satisfaction.

Ask us for an online presentation !

Introducing Contextual Help & Training Add-in for BPA Software

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BPA Solutions entered into a partnership with VisualSP, editor of a walkthrough software for SharePoint and Office 365.

Not only end users will benefit from contextual help to use BPA’s software, they will get online training about quality, risk, GDPR processes and documents to improve quality of the delivered products and services.

Splash screens provide visible instructions to end users, including multimedia content, images or videos. Instructions can point to a specific context or graphics in the user interface, like a navigation link or button. By clicking the help button, users can access contextual help, start a walkthrough tour or view multimedia resources.

In this example, end users who access the compliance document module in BPA Quality can take a walkthrough session by clicking the contextual help button. They will learn about the company document approval process, understand how to search for documents, discover how to accomplish a document training and more.

Example: Contextual help on how to use the compliance document module with BPA Quality.

Once a document is distributed, targeted end users need to get trained about the document content. A different training-oriented walkthrough guides end users to understand the purpose of the document.

Example: Compliance document training walkthrough (HR Procedure).

Once the walkthrough is completed, end users can log training evidence in the BPA Quality software.

These 2 examples demonstrate how the VisualSP add-in brings value to end users, guiding them to use the BPA software and train them about compliance documents and good practices.

The VisualSP add-in is a separate module that can be used jointly with BPA software for quality, risk, GDPR or CRM.

Request for a free trial and discover how BPA Quality and VisualSP work together.

Office 365 App Builder by BPA: Build No-Code Apps in Hours

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What are possible scenarios when developing no-code apps for your most pressing business challenges?


Discover how to build a professional HR recruiting app in 2 days using BPA App Builder.

Most companies still use Excel spreadsheets for storing business data, like incidents, actions, risks, measures, controls, etc. While Excel is very good at advanced calculations and pivot charts, it’s really not suited for effective collaborative work and automated tasks.

Since Access Web Apps have been retired by Microsoft, SharePoint lists is the best way to manage business processes. SharePoint and Office 365 technologies include all tools needed for the modern workspace experience, like emails, calendar, reminders, workflows, mobility, office tools and more. Most of Office 365 plans include SharePoint (Office Essentials starts at 5 USD/user/month).

The BPA App Builder platform includes tools to replace InfoPath, like an intelligent form building solution and tabs to display relational data. BPA App Builder brings unequaled user experience when using SharePoint. It provides intuitive navigation, prefilled data-entry forms, productivity tools, and displays contextual data and documents by topic.

Ask us for a free discovery access today.

Cost Saving

Calculate Your Cost Savings with a Digital Solution

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It’s not easy to deliver engaging, efficient experiences when you’re held back by pen-to-paper-based processes.

A digital solution offers a centralized location where organizations can efficiently store, organize, manage, access, and distribute information.

Cost Saving

For the quality/regulatory department, information typically includes forms (audits, incidents, non-conformances, CAPA, indicators, risks, equipment maintenance, training, etc.) and quality/regulatory documents. By giving collaborators quick and easy access to the information they need anytime and anywhere, digital systems help employees focus more time on their core activities.

What are cost saving opportunities with a digital regulatory compliance solution?

  • Electronic forms enforce collaborators to enter consistent information quickly and easily, reducing errors and manual rework.
  • Automated workflows accelerate the process of creating and distributing forms and documents across devices and platforms.
  • A digital system prevents collaborators to retype data at some point during the process thanks to data relations and automated reporting tools.
  • No paper processing is needed anymore, saving printing, scanning, postage and archiving costs.
  • Users spend a huge amount of time each day searching for information — an average of 37 minutes or 8% of the work day. Digital search tools can reduce search time by up to 50%.

Let’s crunch the numbers to see how much money your organization/department can save with BPA’s solutions.