.bat file help

Hello all! I am new here and I am in desperate need of some help. I need to create a .bat file that acts as a program shortcut. Sounds easy enough right? Well here is the catch: I need the .bat file to be smart. I need it to look to see if there are processes running, if there are, I need an error message to come up to the end user. If the processes are no longer running, I need it to pull up the application as normal. Any help anyone can give will be much appreciated.

Thanks in advance,

Andrew