Discover the Vision of Steven Bérard, Director of Controlling at B&B Hotels
"When we take over establishments, the main challenge is to integrate them as quickly as possible at all levels. Our task is to validate the income statements and balance sheets, so as to ensure consistency between the hotels in our portfolio.
In an environment marked by strong external growth and a strong desire to structure performance on a large scale, the finance department plays an increasingly strategic role at B&B Hotels.
To support the rapid expansion of the hotel portfolio, Steven Bérard, Director of Management Control for the Western Europe business unit, is steering an organization resolutely focused on data reliability, automated management and close collaboration with operational staff. In this interview, he reviews the Group's priorities: standardization of reporting, deployment ofAnaplan to ensure budget reliability, progressive structuring of field performance indicators, and ramping up of BI tools to support decision-making in a context of sustained growth.
His testimony is part ofa series of interviews with finance players conducted for an exclusive study carried out in collaboration with Ifop "IA, métiers, réglementations : les priorités des fonctions finance 2025-2026" for the white paper La Finance à l'horizon 2030 : pilotage et transformation technologique.
In just a few years, this Breton brand has become a major player in the hotel sector. With over a hundred openings last year, it is continuing its acquisition policy, both in France and abroad. Steven Bérard, Director of Controlling for the Western Europe business unit, explains how his teams are supporting this development.
In recent years, B&B Hotels has pursued a policy of strong external growth. What impact does this have on finance functions?
Over the past three years, B&B Hotels has enjoyed sustained expansion, particularly in France, with the opening of over 120 hotels, a dynamic that accelerated after the COVID crisis.
Drawing on my expertise in transaction services, I contribute to these operations by drawing up business plans and assessing the profitability of each establishment with the operational teams. We also work closely with our technical department to estimate renovation investments for each asset. These multiple parameters must guarantee reliable financial data, essential for management's strategic decisions.
Does the integration of new hotels require a major overhaul of financial and accounting procedures?
When we take over establishments, the main challenge is to integrate them as quickly as possible at all levels (sales, accounting, management...). This is more or less possible, depending on timing and volume, particularly from an accounting and management point of view.
As we are constantly making acquisitions - for example, we bought over twenty hotels in 2024 - we are sometimes forced to outsource the accounting side of our business.
Nevertheless, it remains essential for us to be able to monitor their performance, and our main difficulty lies in obtaining reliable data. Our task is to validate the income statements and balance sheets presented to us, so as to ensure consistency between the hotels in our portfolio.
Until last year, the budget exercise was drawn up in Excel, but with over 400 hotels in the Western Europe zone, we need to limit risks and be agile in the budgeting process.
Do you have any technological projects underway to facilitate this standardization?
Our JDEdwards ERP, hosted locally for historical reasons, is designed for SMEs but still meets our needs, with maintenance provided by the publisher.
We also use a MicroStrategy Business Intelligence (BI) suite for reporting and analysis, which we are continuing to develop in order to improve our reporting and monitoring, and facilitate operational decision-making at management level.
Within the Western Europe division, data management remains largely manual, but we have improved our financial planning with the help of Micropole, by deploying Anaplan software.
Until last year, the budget exercise was drawn up in Excel, but with over 400 hotels in the Western Europe zone, we need to limit risks and be agile in the budgeting process.
How do you work with operational staff?
Management Control works closely with the other departments, notably Development, where a member of staff is dedicated to acquisitions, and Operations. Two controllers support the regional managers on a daily basis to monitor and optimize hotel performance.
We have set up monitoring indicators for each of our sites, which we analyze on a monthly basis. A review is carried out between the two departments in order to identify corrective actions to rectify deficient ratios.
Hotel management involves the analysis of a wide range of data, such as linen costs, fluid consumption (water, electricity...) and other profitability criteria, over and above occupancy rates or revenue per room. Updating this data on a monthly basis takes up a lot of my team's time, and in an environment as unautomated as ours, communication between operations and finance is all the more essential. Our controllers, acting like auditors, have to be ingenious to obtain reliable data and carry out relevant analyses.
Finance and management control, in particular, play a growing role, at the crossroads and in support of all departments.
What are your priorities for the coming years?
My top priority is to succeed in standardizing reporting for our entire portfolio. Our growth is set to continue at a steady pace, with the Group going from 800 to 3,000 hotels over the next decade. This implies scalability in all areas.
For our part, the main challenge is tooptimize and automate performance management. We need to develop our tools so that we can be more reactive in identifying"slippage" and alerting the people concerned. This will enable us to keep pace with this growth, while preserving the profitability of all our facilities.
This is all the more true as finance and management control, in particular, play a growing role at the crossroads and in support of all departments.
Would you like to discover new testimonials? Find out about the other exclusive interviews conducted as part of the study "AI, businesses, regulations: priorities for finance functions 2025-2026".
