Mobile.de, a subsidiary of Adevinta, is Germany’s largest online vehicle marketplace. With a 20-year history and thousands of employees, the company blends enterprise scale with a fast-moving culture. Ingo Bartel, Director of Technology, leads IT and Business Operations, supporting critical platforms and processes across HR, Finance, and Customer Service.
The challenge
As Mobile.de grew, so did the complexity of its internal operations. Teams relied heavily on Google Sheets and Confluence to manage workflows like onboarding, performance tracking, and employee data. These tools often led to data inconsistencies, duplicated work, and inefficient collaboration.
Although Bartel recognized these issues, introducing a new platform was not straightforward: Teams were accustomed to their existing tools, and prior attempts to drive change had seen limited success.
Docs’s solution
Bartel began building solutions in Docs to streamline operations, starting with a centralized doc that housed more than 50 custom fields of employee data. This doc extended the capabilities of Workday and reflected Mobile.de’s unique organizational structure. What began as a side project quickly evolved into a foundational platform for the organization’s HR and performance workflows.
When it came to cross-functional buy-in, what made the difference was how easily others could see and understand Docs’s value. As different teams encountered the resources created in Docs—through onboarding flows, OKR tracking, or internal dashboards—they began asking to use it themselves. “People saw Docs and said, ‘Wait, can I use that too?’” Bartel shared.
Rather than enforce a top-down rollout, Bartel supported a more organic approach. Agile coaches introduced Docs across product and tech teams, while internal champions adopted it for critical infrastructure such as employee onboarding and internal documentation. Even customer service teams began using Docs to improve knowledge sharing and eliminate redundant processes.
With Bartel’s ongoing guidance and Docs’s cross-doc functionality, these independently created docs remained connected. Over time, the platform powered everything from leadership workflows to team-level tracking, all anchored in a single, consistent data set.
Once people see what’s possible, they’ll want in.
The impact
Several hundred Mobile.de employees now use Docs to manage and improve their work. Confluence pages, fragmented Sheets, and disconnected systems have been replaced with collaborative, flexible resources that reflect how teams actually operate.
Today, HR, customer service, and agile teams continue to expand their use of Docs company-wide. The system remains adaptable yet consistent, with the original master document still serving as the backbone of shared data.
Bartel’s advice: start with teams who are naturally curious and looking to solve real problems. “Once people see what’s possible, they’ll want in.”
