Markas Streamlines Service Supply Chain for 14,000+ Employees

The Customer

Markas is a global leader in specialized facility management services (cleaning, catering, hospital logistics, patient assistance and housekeeping services). Founded in 1985, Markas has built its reputation on delivering top-notch service to public and private institutions like hospitals, nursing homes, universities, schools, enterprises and hotels.

Today, the company operates in Italy, Austria and Germany and employs over 14,000 employees in a massive “Service Supply Chain.” Unlike a traditional supply chain moving goods, Markas moves and connects people and services across several countries and industries in a complex regulatory landscape.

The Challenge

Markas serves thousands of customers across multiple industries and regions — and that puts constant demands on speed, reliability and operational control. While the company’s IT environment connected core systems such as ERP, CRM, HCM solutions and others through an iPaaS platform, it was not built for rapid change. As demand increased, these limitations led to manual workarounds, process delays and reduced visibility, constraining the business’s ability to respond quickly and operate efficiently.

• The “Gray Area” of Process: Critical business processes fell between the cracks of the ERP, CRM, HCM and other apps. These gaps were managed via emails, phone calls and spreadsheets, leading to data silos and slow response times.
• Location Granularity: The ERP could track a customer Cost Center (e.g., a hospital), but could not manage the operational reality. For instance, a specific hospital might have 30 different locations, each requiring different services (cleaning vs. pest control, etc.) and specific staffing certifications. Strict regulatory stipulations, at both the industry level and the national level, presented an additional hurdle.
• Workforce Management: With 14,000 predominantly blue-collar employees across three countries and countless cultures, managing internal requests (like benefits) and regulatory compliance (like Health and Safety roles) on paper was inefficient and prone to error.

Markas had previously attempted to bridge these gaps using another low-code platform, but the product did not meet their expectations for customization and autonomy. Creating or modifying applications was slow and resource-intensive, leaving critical gaps in service workflows. They needed a robust app development and collaboration solution that would enable various functions — particularly HR — to build and manage apps quickly and integrate them with ease, without constant external dependency.

The Solution

Markas narrowed the field of possible low-code app creation platforms to two, and based the final evaluation on technology and support. The company selected the low-code Jitterbit App Builder based primarily on Jitterbit’s philosophy of autonomy. Not only did App Builder offer the ability to quickly build, deploy, manage and scale apps—it also empowered the team to do all work internally, maintaining compliance and security while integrating seamlessly with existing systems.

According to Walter Sester, Information Technology & Innovation Director for Markas, both the solution’s TCO and its ability to customize the UI to fit diverse user needs also played a role in their selection of Jitterbit App Builder to support its complex, global service supply chain.

With the support of partner Mind Mercatis, Markas went live with their first App Builder application — designed to be a “Back Office Accelerator Hub” — in early October 2025. Called “the Hub” for short, this app acts as a digital bridge, integrating data from the ERP and CRM while handling the complex logic the other systems could not.

Key Modules of The Hub:

• The Tender-to-Operations Workflow: Previously a manual handoff, this app digitalizes the process after a contract is won. When a tender closes in CRM, the App Builder workflow triggers the Operations Director to define profit centers and assign resources, pushing cleaner data back into the ERP.
• Granular Location Management: This module manages the “last mile” of the service supply chain. It maps specific services to specific physical addresses (e.g., “Location B requires cleaning service, Location C requires pest control service, too”), linking granular operational data to high-level ERP Cost Centers and customer data to the CRM.
• Health & Safety Compliance (Digital Org Chart): To ensure regulatory compliance in sensitive environments like hospitals, Markas is building a module to track specific safety roles (e.g., Fire Marshal, First Aid Officer) per location. This replaces static paper lists with a live digital view, ensuring that if an employee leaves, the compliance gap is immediately visible.
• Employee Benefit (Christmas Coupon App): This web app allows employees to self-service requests for Christmas gifts. It replaced a manual email process, allowing the system to run 24/7 rather than just during HR office hours.

The Results

The Hub has bridged the gap between sales and operations, and allowed Markas to digitize manual workflows and manage complexity. What’s more, Sester estimates that App Builder is already 10-20 times faster than their original low-code application creator for standard implementations—and he expects it to get even faster with time.

The Hub is also saving the company money: Previously, when Markas wanted to create, deploy and modify apps and modules, they had to contract with costly external developers. But according to Sester, he and the three other people on his team — all of them “citizen developers” and “citizen technologists” — can now build and manage applications internally. As adjustments are needed for back-office processes, the team can make them quickly instead of waiting for outside help.

What’s more, by eliminating the risk of lost information during the handover from Sales to Operations, Markas can ensure that the services delivered match the contract sold—removing time spent doing uncontracted services or going back to resolve contracted services that weren’t performed.

Sester says that business leaders are now coming directly to them for help with requests, knowing that automated solutions to their business problems can be prototyped and deployed in days, not months. “Because we are very, very involved in creating the apps, we can work with our key users to improve processes,” Sester said.