Handling development & production builds Apple App Store

Question

I am fairly new to mobile app distribution and I want to know how to improve my current process from more experienced people in this field.

My process is currently as follows:

• CI/CD pipeline builds and pushes dev mobile app to TestFlight
• App is tested and bugs are fixed.
• CI/CD pipeline builds and pushes live mobile app to TestFlight
• Live build is promoted from TestFlight to App Store

There are a few concerns I have about this process and after some Googling its still unclear to me what other people are doing.

• I would like to, first of all, to be able to distinguish between dev & live builds in test flight (because numeric characters are enforced I cannot apply letters)
• I would like our testers to be able to have BOTH the live app (app store) and dev app (from test flight) installed on their mobile phones to allow easy comparison of functionality. Currently, whatever version exists on the phone is just overwritten.

I hope this question is not vague, I cannot be the only one wondering about this on this planet. I appreciate any and all comments. My goal is simply to have a more concise process that makes sense for devs and testers.