The Challenge

Grupo Fricon operates across multiple business units—transportation, distribution, and logistics—serving diverse industries with a fleet of vehicles and a team of over 60 employees. The company had built a solid foundation, but growth was being held back by something invisible: a lack of clear financial visibility.

The core problem was fragmentation. Financial data lived in multiple spreadsheets, email attachments, and disconnected systems. When leadership needed to understand profitability by business unit or by route, the answer wasn't clear. Was the transportation division actually profitable? Which routes were losing money? Nobody could say with confidence.

"We had numbers everywhere, but no single truth," one team member explained. "We couldn't tell if we were making money or losing it. The data was there, but it was scattered across so many places that making a decision felt like guessing."

Beyond the numbers, operational challenges compounded the problem. Merchandise losses were running high—sometimes over 100,000 per month. Payroll costs were difficult to allocate accurately across business units. And critical processes—from accounts payable to fleet management—relied heavily on a few key people, creating bottlenecks and risk.

The company was also struggling with intercompany transactions. Two main entities, Jataí and TAF, operated with unclear cost allocations between them. This made it impossible to see the true profitability of each unit. Leadership couldn't make informed decisions about pricing, investment, or resource allocation without reliable data.

Growth was possible, but it felt constrained. The team knew they had the operational capability to scale, but without clear visibility into costs and margins, every decision carried uncertainty.

The Solution

The transformation began with a clear decision: make data the foundation of every decision. Leadership committed to building a unified financial reporting system that would give them visibility into every corner of the business.

The first step was structural. The team designed a new chart of accounts organized by cost center—separating Jataí and TAF, and breaking costs down further by route and city. This wasn't just reorganizing numbers; it was fundamentally changing how the company thought about its operations.

"We needed to see the business the way it actually works," explained a key finance leader. "Not as one consolidated blob, but as distinct units with their own economics. That's when we could start making real decisions."

Payroll became the next focus. A centralized spreadsheet was built to consolidate salary data, benefits, and allocations by cost center and employee. This single source of truth replaced the scattered records that had made accurate cost allocation nearly impossible. For the first time, leadership could see exactly how much each business unit was spending on people.

Automation followed. Dynamic spreadsheets with formulas and pivot tables replaced manual consolidation. The team set up a process where data pulled directly from the system would automatically update the financial reports. What used to take days of manual work now happened with a few clicks.

But the real innovation was dual reporting. The company implemented two parallel views: one based on cash flow (what actually moved in and out of the bank) and one based on accrual accounting (what was earned and owed in each period). This gave leadership a complete picture—both the economic reality and the liquidity reality.

"Having both views changed everything," a team member noted. "We could see we were profitable on paper, but also understand our actual cash position. That's when we could plan properly."

The team also tackled merchandise losses head-on. They implemented strict controls: tracking product expiration dates, using FIFO inventory rotation, automating purchase orders, and creating a tighter approval process for returns and exchanges. A dedicated person was assigned to oversee the process.

Organizational structure was clarified too. A new organogram defined clear reporting lines and separated strategic, tactical, and operational responsibilities. A supervisor was appointed to own logistics operations—from routing to fleet maintenance to expeditions. This eliminated confusion about who was responsible for what.

The Transformation

The results came quickly and compounded over time.

Merchandise losses dropped dramatically. What had been running at over 100,000 per month fell to around 30,000—a reduction of roughly 70,000 per month. Over a year, that's nearly a million in recovered margin.

Financial visibility improved immediately. For the first time, leadership could generate a detailed income statement (DRE) by business unit, by cost center, and even by route. They could see which routes were profitable and which were dragging down results. Pricing decisions became data-driven instead of intuitive.

Payroll accuracy improved. With centralized tracking by cost center, the company eliminated discrepancies and gained confidence in their cost allocations. They could now see that personnel costs were running at about 13% of revenue and had a clear target to bring that down to 10%.

The dual reporting system gave the company better control over cash. They could see the gap between when revenue was earned and when it was actually collected. This visibility enabled smarter working capital management and better forecasting.

Operational efficiency gains followed. With clear process documentation and defined responsibilities, the company reduced dependency on key individuals. New hires could be trained faster. Decisions moved quicker because people knew their roles and the data was reliable.

"The transformation wasn't just about numbers," a leader reflected. "It was about giving the whole team confidence that we understood our business. When you know where you stand, you can move forward with conviction."

The company also positioned itself for the next phase of growth. With clear profitability by unit and by route, they could make strategic decisions about where to invest, which routes to expand, and where to tighten costs. The data foundation they built became the platform for scaling.

Looking ahead, Grupo Fricon is exploring fleet modernization, further automation of logistics operations, and expansion into new routes—all backed by the financial clarity they now have. The transformation from fragmented operations to data-driven decision-making has unlocked growth potential that was always there, just hidden beneath layers of scattered information.

"We went from hoping we were profitable to knowing exactly where we stand," the team concluded. "That's the difference between managing a business and growing one."