The Challenge

OTM-ASMED is a medical equipment distributor with a growing presence across Brazil and Latin America. The company operates a dual revenue model—selling high-value equipment and consumables while also offering equipment leasing with purchase options. It's a business model that works. But behind the scenes, the financial operations were struggling.

Data lived everywhere. The ERP system held transaction records. Spreadsheets held analysis. Email chains held requests for numbers. When leadership needed to understand profitability, cash flow, or the performance of a specific product line, the answer took days to assemble—and often came with conflicting figures.

"We had numbers scattered across different systems," one team member explained. "There was no single source of truth. Every time someone asked for a report, we'd have to dig through multiple files, reconcile by hand, and hope the numbers matched."

The real problem wasn't the data itself. The company was recording transactions faithfully in its ERP. The problem was visibility. Financial information wasn't organized in a way that leadership could trust or act on quickly. Month-end closes dragged on. Reconciliations between what the system said and what the bank said revealed discrepancies that took weeks to resolve. And without clear visibility into margins by product line—equipment versus consumables versus services—the company couldn't make confident pricing or inventory decisions.

Cash flow was another blind spot. The company operated with a dual revenue model that created timing mismatches: equipment sales generated large, infrequent cash inflows, while consumables and leasing created smaller, more frequent ones. Without a clear picture of when money was coming in and going out, planning felt reactive rather than strategic.

For a company with ambitions to expand across Latin America, this lack of financial clarity was a growth barrier. Leadership couldn't confidently forecast. The sales team didn't have clear margin targets. And the finance team was drowning in manual work, leaving little time for strategic analysis.

The Solution

The transformation started with a simple decision: make financial data visible, reliable, and actionable. The company didn't need a complete system overhaul. It needed to organize what it already had.

The first step was standardizing the financial close process. A centralized workflow—called "Financial Close 3.0"—was created to collect data consistently each month. Instead of scattered spreadsheets, a single template captured all the key information: transaction date, amount, classification, payment date, and category. Responsibility for data collection was clearly assigned. The result fed directly into an automated DRE (income statement) that updated without manual intervention.

Next came data cleanup. The team identified and corrected misclassifications—entries that had been recorded as sales when they were actually receipts, or items tagged incorrectly as equipment when they were consumables. About 40 problematic postings were removed. Eighteen entries with incorrect dates were corrected. The goal was simple: make sure the numbers in the system reflected reality.

Then came standardization of categories. The company separated revenue into clear buckets: equipment sales, product sales (consumables), and services (leasing, maintenance, training). This wasn't just about organization—it was about understanding which parts of the business were actually profitable. A product that looked good in aggregate might have thin margins when examined separately.

Data quality controls were built in. Before any report went to leadership, it was validated twice. Recebimentos (receipts) were cross-checked against faturamento (invoices). Discrepancies were flagged and resolved. The team applied filters to exclude non-operational items—transfers between accounts, investment yields—that could distort the true picture of cash receipts.

The company also implemented a standardized reporting template that consolidated data from multiple sources. Instead of exporting from different modules and manually assembling a report, the template pulled from four distinct bases: receivables, equipment sales, product sales, and service revenue. Filters by month ensured consistency. The result was faster, more accurate month-end closes.

"Once we had a single, trusted source of data, everything changed," a finance team member noted. "We could answer questions in hours instead of days. And we could trust the answers."

The transformation wasn't just technical. It required commitment from the entire team. Silvana, who manages data entry and extraction, became the central point of responsibility for the financial close. Nicole oversaw the governance process. Henrique, the owner, engaged directly in validating the numbers and setting targets. This wasn't a project handed off to IT—it was a company-wide commitment to financial discipline.

The Transformation

The impact was immediate and measurable.

Month-end closes that once took days now happen on schedule. The DRE is generated automatically from standardized data, eliminating hours of manual consolidation. Errors from inconsistent formatting or misclassification have dropped dramatically. The team can now close the books reliably by the last day of each month.

More importantly, leadership now has visibility into what's actually happening. The company can see, month by month, how each revenue stream is performing. Equipment sales, consumables, and leasing each have clear margin profiles. Pricing decisions are now based on actual cost data, not guesses. The company identified that service revenue (leasing) was growing significantly—month-over-month growth rates of 19%, 33%, and even 88% in consecutive months—and could confidently invest in that line.

Cash flow visibility improved dramatically. By separating the accrual view (what was earned) from the cash view (what was actually received), the company could see exactly where timing mismatches were happening. This revealed that while the company was profitable on paper, cash flow was tighter than expected. That insight led to concrete actions: accelerating collections, renegotiating payment terms with suppliers, and exploring options like receivables factoring to smooth cash flow.

The company also calculated its break-even point with precision. Knowing exactly how much revenue was needed each month to cover fixed costs and variable expenses gave the sales team a clear target. It also helped leadership understand the impact of cost-cutting measures or pricing changes.

Beyond the numbers, the transformation created a culture of financial discipline. Data governance became a shared responsibility. Processes became repeatable and auditable. New team members could be trained quickly using documented procedures and recorded walkthroughs. The company moved from a state where financial information was fragmented and hard to trust to one where it was centralized, consistent, and actionable.

The foundation is now in place for the next phase of growth. With reliable financial data, the company can confidently expand into new markets. Pricing strategies can be tested against real margin data. Inventory decisions can be made based on actual product profitability. And leadership can forecast with confidence.

"We went from asking 'What happened?' to asking 'What should we do next?'" one executive reflected. "That shift in mindset—from reactive to strategic—is what this transformation really delivered."

For a company with ambitions to scale across Latin America, that shift is everything. Financial visibility isn't just about closing the books faster. It's about enabling growth.