In organizations with mixed work schedules and mobile teams, the hardest people to reach aren’t always the ones you expect.
MAPEI Kft. is the Hungarian subsidiary of the international MAPEI Group, which employs more than 12,000 people worldwide. The Hungarian operation has a 35-year history, 264 employees and two fixed locations, Budaörs and Sóskút, with 107 production employees in Sóskút. Sales representatives, application technicians and product managers work in the field all over Hungary. This structure made unified reach a key issue.
Improving internal communication had been on the agenda for years. Physical workers had no corporate email, information came through TVs and notice boards, several channels ran in parallel, and leave requests required a VPN-based system. The team first assumed production workers would be the hardest to reach. In fact, the real “invisible layer” turned out to be field colleagues: they had Outlook and Teams, but the laptop wasn’t the main tool of their daily work.
· Reaching every employee, regardless of position and work schedule
· Including physical workers without corporate email and field staff who rarely use a laptop
· Replacing multiple parallel channels, TVs and notice boards
· Making administration such as leave requests accessible without a VPN
· Creating two-way communication with measurable reach
MAPEI launched its own internal platform, MIA, on January 8, 2024. The goal was not a new communication channel but a unified, two-way and measurable operational space. MAPEI wanted a system that works fully on mobile, handles more than just news, supports administration and offers measurable reach.
MIA was not launch with an empty interface. From day one it offered a shop, administrative modules, a “Who’s who” directory and an employee referral system. Downloading was not mandatory, and adoption grew organically by word of mouth.
· 264 employees in Hungary, 2 fixed locations plus nationwide field teams
· Full organizational coverage
· 97.1% active users
· VPN-free leave management from mobile, including manager approval
· Paperless cafeteria and digital event registration
· Support for internal recruitment through the employee referral system
· Nearly 60 colleagues joined the 2025 movement challenge, and around 90% completed it
The MAPEI story shows that adoption follows real usefulness. Once everyday administration like leave requests moved to mobile, using the app became beneficial for everyone. Information now reaches field workers just as effectively as the office team, and communication has shifted from one-way announcements to dialogue.
